Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: making cohousing affordable

[Mac Thomson (macthomson]

From my perspective of leading the development of Heartwood Cohousing Phase 1 
(24 homes, 25 years ago) and Phase 2 (14 homes, breaking ground this spring), 
the main problem, as Ty points out, is the the incredible restriction on supply 
due to government regulations.

If there are only 1000 lots permitted each year in a market with a demand of 
5000 permits, developers will use those 1000 permits to build the most 
expensive homes the market will bear. That’s where they’ll make the most money.

If 5000 permits were to issued, then maybe 1000 will be for high end housing, 
but the other 4000 could be for middle and low end housing. Developers will 
cater to the low end of the market if they are allowed to get enough permits. 

Just like there are grocery stores that cater to the high end of the market 
(Whole Foods) and those that cater to the low end of the market (Walmart). If 
grocery store permits were limited like housing permits, we would probably only 
see high end grocery stores.

When my father started a home building company in 1960, he bought 400 acres and 
had obtained permits for 400 lots within two months. I applied for our plat for 
14 Phase 2 homes in 1997 and was only able to get plat approval this past June 
– 27 years later. If I were a for-profit developer, I would have given up long 
ago.

Cohousing is a labor of love made much more difficult and expensive because of 
the permitting process, IMO.


-- 
Mac Thomson

Heartwood Cohousing
Southwest Colorado
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


"Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right."
        - Henry Ford
**********************************************************





> On Jan 27, 2025, at 12:31 PM, R Philip Dowds via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> As usual, I’ll offer a contrarian response:
> 
> I do agree that Balkanized land use control, where each county or city or 
> town devises development rules favoring tax revenue generators (namely, 
> commercial, or maybe luxury retirement villages and MacMansions on 5-acre 
> lots) but discouraging revenue- and service-demanding occupancies (namely, 
> family housing) is a big part of the problem.  I will also agree that the 
> finance and insurance industries are often risk-averse (although when you 
> recall the savings and loan fiasco, the Enron bankruptcy, the collateralized 
> debt obligation catastrophe, the Bernie Madoff boondoggle and the FTX 
> implosion, you do have to wonder if our conservatives spend most of their 
> time asleep at the wheel.)
> 
> Nonetheless, I will assert the real problem is a grossly unequal distribution 
> of wealth and income.  The USA is now, by a significant margin, the most 
> unequal economy in the modern world.  This inequality distorts the entire 
> housing market, such that most developers and investors chase profits in the 
> highest of high-end projects, which then bid out and drain off much or most 
> of the available labor and material.  Few professionals are interested in the 
> hard work and limited reward of building “ordinary” housing for “ordinary” 
> families.
> 
> If I’m right about this (and I think I am), then pecking away at the edges 
> with modular bathrooms and tax credits is not going to solve our American 
> housing problem.  The only solution that will have impact — as it did 
> splendidly (and also tragically) in the housing boom of 50s and 60s — is a 
> prosperous society based on greater equality.
> 
> ———————————
> Thanks,
> Philip Dowds
> Cornerstone Cohousing
> Cambridge, MA
> 
>> On Jan 27, 2025, at 1:54 PM, Sophie Rubin <yophiest [at] gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I just responded to second Ty’s response before seeing Hafidha’s response
>> below, which is also excellent!!
>> 
>> On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 07:34 Hafidha Sofia <hafidhaao [at] gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Tl;dr: As I understand it, affordability is definitely a value of
>>> cohousing. The issue is that housing is incredibly and increasingly
>>> expensive these days (up 25% since 2019).
>>> 
>>> Cohousing communities are created by people, for people. Not developers
>>> getting tax breaks, and not the gov't.
>>> 
>>> So yes, we have a problem. It's now MUCH harder for ordinary people to
>>> create cohousing.
>>> 
>>> Long read:
>>> Nobody is out there creating communities for us - WE do. We make them,
>>> govern them, and maintain them. Communities are created because a handful
>>> of people who know each other decide to think collectively, and embark on
>>> the long journey toward a shared future.
>>> 
>>> Unless they've died, the people selling their cohousing units have to be
>>> able to live somewhere else. If the general market is expensive, it follows
>>> that the cohousing market will be too.
>>> 
>>> I believe that buying undeveloped land and taking 5-10 years to dream it
>>> and build 15-25 units on it is 1) not meeting the demand, 2) more expensive
>>> now than it has ever been, 3) a bigger risk than it's ever been.
>>> 
>>> The model of cohousing creation has to adapt and expand from this model in
>>> order to be financially realistic. Otherwise new  "cohousing" will look
>>> more and more like self-funded gated communities.
>>> 
>>> Which is NOT a cohousing community.
>>> 
>>> Hafidha
>>> Seattle WA
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jan 26, 2025, at 7:54 PM, b farris via Cohousing-L <
>>> cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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