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

[Steve Welzer (stevenwelzer]

> been following you and various NJ/NY/PA groups since the mid-2000s.

Yes, right.

The last time I saw Katie was when our group, for inspiration, visited the
Rocky Corner Cohousing project in New Haven, CT.

Some inspiration. A year later Rocky Corner went bust and quite a few
people lost a significant amount of money.

Ditto with the Three Groves Ecovillage project.

And others.

In 2014 I met with Patrick Han, who was, at the time, the CohoUS
representative in our area (he was based in New York City). I said to him,
“It’s not looking as if just-us will be able to get together the resources
to buy a property, obtain zoning variances, hire professionals, etc. to
make a cohousing project come to fruition. But dozens surely would move in
if a developer would take the lead.” He said: “That’s not cohousing.” I
said, “I’m afraid it just won’t happen otherwise. We have no deep pockets
or real estate construction expertise.” He practically screamed at me:
“That not cohousing!”

It used to be the conventional wisdom that nine of ten initiatives never
come to fruition. I don’t know if there’s been progress toward better
prospects, but in my experience, in my area, ten out of ten don’t come to
fruition ... even after genuine effort, clear vision, commitment of time,
and contribution of money.

Loss of money.

In 2015 we took encouragement from Katie McCamant’s launching of the 500
Communities initiative to train and deploy hundreds of cohousing
facilitators nationwide. Exactly what’s needed! We were naive enough to
think that, surely, within three or four years there would be one or
several make-it-happen professionals in our area.

Nope.

After an article about cohousing runs in the *New York Times* or there’s a
segment about it on NPR we get dozens of calls. The resonance of the idea
is undeniable. The recognition that cohousing and ecovillage living
prefigure the pathway toward the necessary greening of our society is
obvious to more and more people. But the paradigm of amateurs coming
together to try to start bonding, then losing money and getting their
hearts broken ... needs to be addressed.

The movement needs green-conscious, communitarian-minded,
social-change-oriented developers. Let them make their profits. Let us
realize our vision of networks of eco-communities in every state of the
country.

Steve Welzer
Altair EcoVillage project participant