making cohousing affordable
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2025 10:49:11 -0800 (PST)
> On Jan 27, 2025, at 8:48 AM, Shane Strano <shaneclairestrano [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:

> Anyway, the topic of affordability is going to be a big one. I have visited 
> cohousing in the US and England and spoken to people on the phone (mostly 
> urban, as we are doing urban) - no one seems to have found a way to do 
> affordable CoHousing. Especially in an urban setting.  I've been in touch 
> with Katie McCamant for a while because I eventually want to put her on 
> retainer, and I paid her to speak on Zoom during our Interest Meeting. To me, 
> she plainly said that holding on to things like diversity won't serve you in 
> creating a community, you need to just get it done. 

Wonderful to have such a happy, exciting message from a first meeting. While 
these will feel like the hardest, they are also the most energizing. 

The advice that you can only do one thing at a time -- I’ve heard it from many 
directions and from every cohousing professional that I’ve talked to. The 
bottom line is getting built. You have to do what you have to do. Katie will 
also tell you that every cohousing group starts by wanting to be affordable to 
everyone. It just isn’t possible. Groups become discouraged and even feel 
guilty that things are costing so much. From working with adults in other 
settings, my opinion is that adults can only put their lives on hold to 
accomplish a goal that isn’t income-producing for 2-3 years. They can’t hold 
off on making commitments to schools, jobs, a tennis prodigy, etc., forever. 
The longer the project extends, the more people who have to drop out for 
personal reasons. 

Keep a good paper record of facts and figures and decisions. I find 
spreadsheets to be so useful because you can build a workbook of related 
information. You can have chronological pages and sorted by topic pages. And 
they make numbers stand out on the page.

Mosaic is a software developed for cohousing, it is free, and you can start 
now. Use it to organize your people contacts first. Get everyone used to using 
it. It has private pages for each household as well as a large number of 
modules for the whole group. Pages can be open to the world and restricted 
later to those who are financially committed. The flexibility is wonderful. The 
Modules include:

Household and People files — you can email people from Mosaic so it is a 
perfect place to keep your mailing list. People can easily be added to this 
list or that. Or archived — don’t be too hasty to write anyone off. You will 
later be wondering who the guy was who knew about thermal floors.

Documents — minutes, policies, bids, etc. Even if the digital file of documents 
seems like an unsorted mess, keep everything. Memory is not an issue. You can 
sort and reclassify forever. You can have a current folder to group the 
documents you need today.

Photographs — take photos. I love history and photos are an easy way to begin 
building the history of the group. To make it tangible.

Financial records — a simple financial feature for meals, plus a major one for 
keeping a full set of books.

Calendars — There can be many calendars of all kinds of things that can be 
viewed singly and in an all-on-one calendar. Meetings, meals, site visits, 
financial deadlines or targets, and later CH reservations. all of this stays 
with you as long as you want to keep it. The people module information becomes 
drop down menus for all the other pages. A name is only typed once. Email lists 
of groups of people in teams, etc. A meeting scheduler like Doodle. Surveys. 
The workshare module is wonderful. There are additional pages for a lending 
library, pets, bicycles, etc. Most of these are entered on the household page 
and viewed on other pages. It’s a fully relational database that is fabulous.

Mosaic is the work of Sean Davy and is developing every day but it has been in 
use for at least 10 years and 100+ communities use different modules. I’ve been 
spending a lot of time on the user experience — the aesthetics instructions. So 
far Sean is the only developer (so we pray for his soul) but he is always 
looking for more coders to work with him. All the software is open source. You 
could download a version and host it yourself — but it is a learning curve. At 
first, I recommend just using the modules that are helpful — like the 
households, calendars, the Facebook-like feed of announcements (I forget what 
he calls this). Just get started.

There is a sandbox and other information here;

https://mosaicsoftware.org/

The development possibilities are infinite. But like cohousing, it is limited 
by available volunteer time. I do think there are income possibilities for one 
or two people who want to work full-time, but that is down the road. The 
objectives are not commercial. 

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org




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