Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Graduating to Cohousing on Steroids

[Sophie Rubin (yophiest]

Sharon,


It’s such a beautiful dream and the model (“life plan community”) is
widespread but doesn’t exist beyond senior living because of the wealth
required to pay for the workshare done by employees, even at scale; see
note (1). At its core, your life is easier now than when you lived in
cohousing because you are paying for it to be so. Workshare “not working”
in cohousing isn’t a matter of scale. It’s a matter of wealth.


Seniors have an average net worth NINE TIMES that of the average
30-year-old American. And the Riderwood model with paid staff only works
when every. single. person. in the community contributes significant money
(hence the monthly service fee *per person*). The model stops working once
you try to spread the wealth; see note (2).


I see co-housing as the “affordable” alternative to Riderwood where there
is just enough demand for community to produce a small supply of
intentional community-based living. (And it's already not affordable.)


Put another way: the supply and demand lines cross at the product that is
cohousing, and they cross at the product that is life plan community, but
at least so far, they don’t cross anywhere in between, because there isn’t
a product that can provide enough of both (a) what people in a given market
want and can afford (demand), and (b) what can be reasonably built and
maintained for that price (supply).


We can certainly think about whether that product should exist, or consider
more carefully why it doesn’t. In my view, these are sociological
questions. Why don’t more people care more about community, to create a
bigger market for that? Why do Americans care so much about single family
homes, which limits new/alternative communities in a lot of ways? Why
aren’t people willing to volunteer more of their time or money to make the
community “shinier”? Are there ways to make markets more efficient, to do
more for less, in terms of producing housing, creating community, and
maintaining both? These are the things that would be required to create a
feasible product that lies in between cohousing and life plan community.


I’m sure there are things about the way that your new community functions
that cohousing and others could learn from, just as cohousing communities
learn from each other, from other intentional communities, from community
development principles, etc.


But sooo much of the ease and support and cleanliness and structure that
you feel in your habitat is because you’re surrounded by people who are
retired and wealthy, which means they have time and resources and
relatively little to worry about and a lot to “give”. We would all be more
generous and better at creating community if we had the means to live in
these conditions.


--

(1) The cost to live at Riderwood:

Entree fee for a 2-bedroom, 1 bath (the minimum most *families* could
accept as “livable”):

$330,000-440,000

Monthly payment for one person: $3300-$3500

Monthly payment for each additional person: $1200


And that’s already at your proposed scale of 3000 people! (And that is the
reason for their large size - life plan communities almost never work
financially at the scale of 40 households.)


As someone who develops residential property at a commercial scale
(nonprofit), I can tell you it doesn’t get cheaper to build more than 3000
units. A lot of “Riderwoods” are built by nonprofits with missions - if
they could do the same thing for cheaper, they would!


(2) If it wasn’t age restricted, could you also pay for your kids to live
with you in this community, if they continue to work and actively bring
in/contribute their current assets and incomes? If the answer is no (and it
is for almost everyone - as the total down payment for 2 small units would
be about $800k), then “spreading the wealth” doesn't work because there
literally isn't enough wealth to spread... unless you have some
extraordinarily rich and generous people willing to cover others' costs.
Because those people don’t exist, everyone who lives there has to bring
significant wealth to pay for the facilities maintenance and staff.


—
A little more about how a developer thinks about the “market”:


With two adults and one child, a family’s *monthly* payment for a
2-bedroom, 1-bath unit at Riderwood would be $5,700. While that rent is
technically considered affordable to a family who makes about $200,000/year
(which is twice your area median), it is about 3x the rent for the same
unit at market price (about $1,900). And that’s not even accounting for the
$400,000 the family would need to have on hand to get in the door.


If you provide waaaaay more amenities and services and community than a
normal apartment, but the same physical space for the private unit, are
there enough people who want that and can pay 3x the current market price?
No. Selling cohousing at its current price on the basis of the amenities
and community you receive in addition to your property doesn’t work for
99.9% of young families. It's often already largely because of cost, but
other considerations, like more freedom and more space, are valued more
highly than community when deciding where/how to live, even among families
who could pay for cohousing if they wanted it.


On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 7:51 AM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> The reason I have been signing my posts with just “Sharon” is that I have
> moved out of Takoma Village Cohousing and into a senior community.
> Riderwood Village is literally cohousing on steroids. Everything that
> existed at Takoma Village exists at Riderwood. Diversity of all kinds, for
> example. 200+ groups including services to the community, services to a
> local elementary school, integration of programs with a community college,
> book discussions, library management. 200+ is a lot and some are small or
> inactive. And the party planners do promise that their parties end at 9:30
> unless otherwise appropriate (New Years Eve).
>
> I began looking at a senior community 3 years ago because I could see the
> toll that caring for her father who had had a stroke was taking on my
> daughter. In the prime of her life, her fifties, when she had accomplished
> professional success and finanacial security so she could “retire” early
> and follow her dreams, she was spending days and weeks on the telephone or
> the train to supervise his 24/7 care. She was tense and sick and in no
> shape to even find out what her dreams might be.
>
> Takoma Village was approaching its 25th anniversary and the founders who
> remained in the community, including myself, were slowing down and more
> frequently just not available to do the work of supporting the community.
> We were adding to the work because we required more attention or were
> unable to provide attention. For several years, someone had warmed a frozen
> dinner or brought a dinner to a person who could no longer manage his
> microwave. It was a quick task and those how took it on enjoyed both
> cooking and the conversation. Then a 92 year old began being disoriented,
> particularly at night. A visiting schedule was set up so someone visited
> her everyday to keep her connected. Those examples are just 2 of many.
>
> At the same time, the buildings were all requiring their 200,000 mile
> maintenance—the really big one of 20-25 years. These were major projects
> that required making decisions about things we knew nothing about. On top
> of having to hire large contractors to do the work, we had to hire
> engineers to analyze what we needed. The contract for replacing the
> balconies and decks was almost 4 inches thick. We were no longer able to
> act as a group making facilities decisions by consensus because we knew
> very little about them. Consent focused on accepting a contract that seemed
> reasonable. It wasn’t like solar panels or insullation that many of us knew
> about.
>
> I gradually realized why other cohousing members had moved to senior
> communities in their 80s because they felt unable to contribute. They
> contributed a lot but they just didn’t have the energy to cope with
> thinking about the on and on of facilities management, orienting new
> residents to community values (which takes a lot of time and attention),
> and coping with their own lives and their adult children’s problems. It is
> a rude awakening to realize that those neat little families of 2 children
> would keep expanding into infinity until we had to have a calendar to
> remember birthdays which seemed to be happening weekly.
>
> My daughter’s stress level plummeted when I agreed to put down a deposit
> to reserve a space at Riderwood. I still had no intention of moving. Over
> the next 3 years I considered what Riderwood was really like. The
> experiences that convinced me that it was a possible place to live were (1)
> whenever anyone referred to “the community” they included the staff in the
> number. “A community of 3,000+ people.” (2) They held a gay pride parade on
> campus that included staff and residents and posted pictures on the
> website. (3) The 200+ clubs are mostly “teams” who manage all the tasks
> that cohousers do for each other. Except manage maintenance and repair and
> cooking meals.
>
> Cohousing has a scale problem. At 40-50 units, it is very difficult to
> maintain the facilities in any other way than a monthly work day to clean
> and do small repairs. The more expensive the units become the more people
> have to work to pay for them.
>
> The “Neighbors in Deed” directory at Riderwood is 46 pages of names and
> numbers of residents who have offered services: walking pets, opening jars,
> changing batteries, hanging pictures, taking a photograph, sewing buttons,
> mending, shopping, resetting clocks, wrapping packages, wake up calls,
> closet cleaning, errands, help with technology.
>
> Riderwood doesn’t stress it’s coninuing life care programs. It only admits
> people into independent living and most of the staff is focused on making
> independent living comfortable. Whatever I need, I call either "General
> Services" to fix things or a coordinator of a team/service for information
> or advice. Each door has a latch that someone sets late at night that flips
> up when the door is opened. Any latch not tripped by about noon means a
> knock on the door to be sure everyone is alright. They knocked on my door 4
> times in the first month. I was opening my door at 1-2 am to trip the
> latch, but the staff had decided to set the latches at 3-4 am becuase many
> people were still coming home at midnight.
>
> All of the security staff are EMS certified. If soneone is not okay, they
> know what to do. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” calls are responded to in
> 3-5 minutes.
>
> This is only part of what life is like here. People are very welcoming and
> friendly. People sitting next to each other talk to each other. It is
> literally cohousing on steroids. There are 4 residential buildings around a
> community building that is like a common house on sterioids — the wood shop
> is incredibly well stocked, 2 resturants (casual and finer dining), a front
> desk peopled 24/7, a bar open a few hours a few days a week, a craft  room,
> a classroom, a laundry, a salon, a gym, etc. Garden plots—flowers or
> vegetables.
>
> This is why I said I’ve graduated from cohousing. I want to figure out how
> a community of 3,000 people manages to feel like a community when some are
> paid staff and others residents and others are very busy volunteers. The
> Resident Handbook is written by the Resident Coordinator’s team and is 150
> pages. Somehow it manages to maintain a friendly suggestive tone instead of
> mandating rules.
>
> The residents also maintain a website of calendars, schedules, and email
> lists. I was here for 3 days without knowing about “Chatterwood” which is a
> general members list. It was a 3-day weekend and I really didn’t want to
> bother staff with newby questions or go around knocking on doors. All of
> which I could have done. But when I connected with an email list, I knew I
> was home. (There are also lists for ride sharing, politics, etc.) The
> topics are all the same as those on the Takoma Village members list.
>
> One feature of having staff is there are many highschool and college
> students who are running around. Three staff members where just promoted to
> management positions who began 20 years ago as college students with
> scholarships. Gifts and tips from residents to staff are “not allowed”
> because some staff are less visible — they don’t want the bias. The
> discussion at lunch with 2 total strangers was how to give gifts without
> violating the rules to 2 workers who were graduating from college this
> month. They decided that if they went to the graduation, they would not be
> giving Riderwood service gifts. These were clearly friends.
>
> So my plan is to continue writting about what cohousing could learn from
> other kinds of residential communities. Many things that people say only
> exist in cohousing is not true — many of them exist in traditional
> apartment buildings and certainly in condos. There are some areas where
> senior communities are behind cohousing and some that senior communities
> are ahead of cohousing.
>
> Sorry this is so long but I knew none of these things a few years ago and
> they make the move understandable. Workshare is a continuing problem in
> cohousing and I don’t see any alernatives without a change in scale.
>
> Sharon
> ——
> Sharon Villines
> Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD
>
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