Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Is cohousing a consumer product?

[Kathleen Lowry (kathleenlowrylpcclmft]

My first foray into cohousing didn’t work because I was unclear about my real 
priorities. I bought a lot in a beautiful area surrounded by woods on a hill 
with a view of the Smokies.
At the time I wasn’t clear that my priorities were 1. Community with some 
closeness and sense of spirituality 2. Natural beauty 3. Architecturally, small 
and beautiful. When I bought the lot, that’s how it felt.
It turned  out, I misinterpreted what I saw when I first saw the community. 
Newcomers built big houses reflecting  little interest in architectural beauty 
or living small,
 there was no community structure (or governance) and the primary common 
interest was organic farming and chickens. That was was fine, but not me. 

I could have certainly traded some of what I care about for other things I have 
a passion for, like a community interest in music, or educational volunteering, 
or a few other passions of mine. That’s how I find friends in my regular life- 
but I for some reason didn’t think of that when it came to looking for 
community. Duh. 



> On Mar 11, 2023, at 2:23 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> Wonderful thread on the ability/inability to find a place in cohousing. It 
> brings to mind two experiences and one conclusion:
> 
> 1. When I went to my first cohousing conference I was surprised at how many 
> people were there not to learn how to form a community but how to find one. I 
> was only meeting people who were shopping. And they were shopping far and 
> wide.
> 
> 2. When I much later tried to build a forum for people who were committed to 
> and needed a cohousing community in which the units cost $100,000 or less, it 
> didn’t work. The major reason was that no cluster of people formed that 
> wanted to work on forming a specific community in a specific place. No 
> commitment to a solution specific enough to materialize it.
> 
> Cohousing communities are created; they aren’t found. 
> 
> Your perfect community can’t exist until you are in it.
> 
> Sharon
> —————
> Sharon Villines, Washington DC
> 
> We don’t agonize, we organize. — Nancy Pelosi
> 
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