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

[Kathleen Lowry (kathleenlowrylpcclmft]

Mobility, love of freedom and novelty and the corresponding lack of
commitment-to-place and stability-in-place is exactly a major reason there
is so little sense of community in the US.

Cohousing might need to appeal more to those interests, rather than fight
them.  In other words, consider atlernative goals, like maybe tiny home
communities with a common house and gardens, where the goal is experiencing
community, cohousing, consensus, green environments, with the expectation
is that they'll be there, fully participate, but not stay long, typically.
It would be affordable and meaningful, perhaps.

Kathleen Lowry
MA, LPCC, LMFT
952-270-1654
kathl <kathleenlowryLPCCLMFT [at] gmail.com>eenlowryLPCCLMFT [at] gmail.com
<kathleenlowryLPCCLMFT [at] gmail.com>



On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 4:10 PM Steve Welzer <stevenwelzer [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Sharon wrote:
>
> > A developer couldn’t just build and sell 40+ units
> > arranged around a green and a common house
> > to 40 individual households who all move in
> > at the same time and expect cohousing to happen on Monday.
>
> A cohousing community has, of course, more to it than just a green and a
> common house. What it is, what we’re talking about, is known worldwide by
> now, after forty years of the movement’s growth.
>
> > It’s about the hours that that process requires to build
> > a community of people who can work together to get
> > things done. It builds a core that then can incorporate more people.
>
> Great ... if the core group has or can come up with the resources to get
> things done. If we want to generalize this beyond the affluent, well, how
> many groups can buy a parcel of land or purchase an old building to
> retrofit, then hire professionals to deal with zoning, engineering,
> legalities, site design, etc.?
>
> And until there is something tangible that people can consider actually
> residing in (a specific parcel of land in a particular place with some
> floor plans, approximate pricing information, and a projected believable
> timeline for move-in) there is a strong tendency for “incorporated members”
> to come and go. Counterproductive is: As people come and go, they express
> preferences that ultimately don’t mean much because, in the end, they don’t
> purchase and move in, after all.
>
> OK: Forty units. Ten occupied by the core group of households that endured
> throughout. Thirty occupied by folks who peripherally watched the process
> and liked what got constructed. Or who, living in California, saw an ad in
> Communities Magazine and, having family in Pennsylvania, decided to
> relocate into Pennsylvania cohousing. Thirty households who didn’t
> participate in the designing or the pre-bonding, but among whom the ethos
> of cohousing is understood and desired. The working-together and
> self-management among all forty households actually does mostly take place
> after move-in. Not all on Monday, of course. Over years.
>
> Our movement needs to foster commitment-to-place and stability-in-place.
> The EcoVillage at Ithaca has such a solid ecological and social foundation
> that it should endure for seven generations, at least. After fifty years
> few founding-designing households will be left. So what. The idea is that
> the people who move in should know about cohousing, love cohousing, be
> prepared to commit to the community and the place. They bond into and
> become part of the self-governing community after-the-fact.
>
> >I don’t know what would replicate that time and focus before
> > suddenly taking charge of a $10 million housing complex.
>
> What Jack Wilbern mentioned suggests why a cohousing developer would need
> to be a special kind of developer, committed to “pulling together the
> project, finding the land and setting up the professional team -- and the
> bone structure for a shared development LLC made up of themselves and
> prospective future residents.”
>
> If I was in my twenties I would aspire to establishing a cohousing
> development company. It would be green-conscious, communitarian-minded, and
> social-change-oriented.
>
> Anyway, meanwhile, at the macro level we should be working on having
> government entities adopt legislation or local ordinances that foster
> eco-communitarian living options, as is being successfully done in Europe.
>
> At the micro level and at the macro level ... our movement needs this and
> humanity needs this.
>
> Steve Welzer
> Altair EcoVillage project participant
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