Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: making cohousing affordable

[Shane Strano (shaneclairestrano]

Hey Sharon, 

Thank you for your positivity, the  thoughtful advice and for recommending 
Mosaic - I will definitely check it out. I think you're right that getting 
things organized and documented, even early on, is a great idea. 

I think it's really cool to credit Sean Davy, and cool that you've been working 
on user experience. If we end up with anyone who is good with coding and has 
time to volunteer, I will send them his way. 

Thank you again. 


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 28, 2025, at 1:49 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>>> 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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