Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: making cohousing affordable RE: Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 252, Issue 21

[b farris (btgf]

Hi,Sophie;
What systemic changes do you recommend?
Izzy

> On Jan 27, 2025, at 1:48 PM, Sophie Rubin <yophiest [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I second Ty.
> 
> Affordability for a wider range of folks is a widely shared value among
> most co-housers.
> 
> I’m a professional “affordable” housing developer with a decade of
> experience  who has worked on projects from micro units to large family
> units in wood, concrete, steel, and mass timber - traditional construction,
> panelized construction, and modular construction. I’ve worked ok
> traditional tax credit projects (the standard model for income-restricted
> affordable housing in the US) as well as non-tax-credit acquisition and
> rehabilitation projects, including working with land trusts.
> 
> The people enabling the construction of co-housing (that is, prospective
> co-housers) are never making the housing more expensive than necessary to
> get an easily buildable and re-sellable unit.
> 
> It’s an extraordinarily complex issue and without financial subsidies -
> public and/or private - or time and individual/community generosity (eg
> units restricted after initial ownership or donated for affordability,
> there are very few options for how to make units cheaper without otherwise
> changing large portions of the cohousing model.
> 
> Doesn’t mean I don’t want people to continue to care, be creative, and try.
> 
> I just want folks who think the issue must be self-interest among the
> majority of current or would-be cohousers to understand that, as Ty said,
> it’s not a solvable problem without systemic changes.
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 10:02 Ty Albright via Cohousing-L <
>> cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Re: Affordable coho.
>> 
>> I have explored this in great length over the years.  The solution requires
>> a fundamental change in how the housing industry works.  In short, its
>> ultimately a political issue that requires change in regulations.
>> 
>> The key issues are:
>> 1). Municipality requitements and limitations which add cost to
>> construction.  Some locations are worse than others.
>> 2). The mortgage industry in entrenched in how it does business.  It's a
>> well-oiled machine that generates and issues mortgages in great volume.
>> However - with few exceptions - mortgages are only available for "tired and
>> true" product types - such things as wood framed 3BR / 2Bth single family
>> detached homes are easily understood in the underwriting process and can be
>> issued a mortgage easily.  Alternative (i.e. "not proven") technology and
>> construction techniques are not easily understood by an industry that now
>> makes plenty of money and has no incentive to change - so getting a
>> mortgage
>> on a "earth house" for example is difficult.
>> 3). Home Insurance industry - same challenges as the Mortgage industry.
>> 
>> For these reasons it has been more difficult to develop coho - this results
>> in mostly - "only people with money" having access to coho.
>> 
>> Changing municipality regulations and the home mortgage and home insurance
>> industry is too big a challenge for any one person to take on.
>> 
>> In my experience - the only way to have lower cost housing of any type is
>> to
>> move to a location that cost less to live.  Not everyone wants to live in
>> Oklahoma.
>> 
>> Ty
>> 
>> 
>> -----
>> 
>> 
>> 
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