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

[R Philip Dowds (rphilipdowds]

Maybe it’s not so simple.  Many or most of those buying into cohousing choose a 
smaller unit because the common house provides access to many amenities — a 
play room, a workshop or arts and crafts space, an exercise room, a reservable 
kitchen/dining for weddings, guest rooms, etc — that would otherwise be 
accommodated in the finished basement or “extra” rooms of a single family home. 
 When my wife and I chose Cornerstone, we intentionally downsized and went 
small, because common house spaces supported so many the things we liked to do. 
 I do know that our overall housing costs at Cornerstone are well below the 
overall costs of the 50% larger single family home we left behind in another 
Cambridge neighborhood.

On the other hand, we paid really big bucks for our Cambridge MA coho condo.  
Location matters.  What we paid for our little condo (with convenient subway 
access to Harvard, MIT and downtown Boston) would have bought two or three 
similar dwelling units in Oklahoma.  Be careful not to scramble the price of 
location preference with the price of cohousing construction.

Speaking of construction:  The Boxable example is an interesting instance of 
the tiny house experiment.  Please recognize that the tiny house is inherently 
highly inefficient:  It offers very little living space relative to the exposed 
exterior surface and weight of materials involved.  Yes, it can be “affordable” 
— in the way a motorcycle is usually more affordable than a car.  If you’re 
looking for maximum flexibility and elbow room for least cost per square foot, 
a multi-family format will serve you better.

Finally, if you really want to drive down cost per square foot, standardize.  
Let me be more clear: STANDARDIZE!  For your 30 unit coho, offer two or three 
floor plan variants, with a choice of two kinds of kitchen or bathrooms.  Light 
it up with four kinds of light fixtures, not forty.  Get the job done with five 
kinds of windows, not twenty.  Go easy with on-the-fly customizations to suit 
specific members.  Etc, etc.  But ...

But then … how does this uniformity mesh with your goals for diversity of 
household types and price points?  For personal self-expression?

As I said, it’s probably not so simple.

Thanks, RPD
Cornerstone Cohousing
Cambridge, MA

> On Jan 27, 2025, at 10:15 PM, Barbara Brant via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hello, Not sure if anyone on this platform is familiar with Boxabl housing. 
>> This company has delivered a low cost home product that might be able to 
>> meet the needs for lower cost but with a much better quality. Here is the 
>> link… https://www.boxabl.com/ 
> 
> One reason Cohousing comes in more expensive is the added cost of paying for 
> the common house on top of each individual home. This added cost is not only 
> the buildout but the ongoing operating expense involved in having a larger 
> space that generally includes another larger kitchen, dining area, 
> living/meeting space and guest rooms along with any additional shared space 
> and the costs associated with these spaces.
> 
> Barbara
> Aria Cohousing
> Denver
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