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

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jun 12, 2025, at 1:04 PM, Diana Carroll <dianaecarroll [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> I'm curious about your thoughts about the size of forming cohousing 
> communities from your new perspective.  The guidance we received from many 
> sources was that if your cohousing group exceeds a certain size, it will lose 
> some cohousing je ne sais quoi. (I think being small and self-managed is 
> actually part of the definition of cohousing.) The logic, as I recall, was 
> that you can only have the kind of close relationships with your neighbors 
> that make up the, if you will, spiritual heart of cohousing with a certain 
> number of people. Past that, they are effectively strangers. Is this a myth?

I don’t think it is a myth but it may be over-rated. A major difference is the 
feeling of ownership. In Riderwood, I am essentially a renter with a life time 
contract. If I spend all my money, I am eligible for support from the 
Benevolent fund and that fund is a regular recipient of donations, fundraising, 
and inheritances from current residents. But the other side of “renting” is in 
this case more security. The technical “owner” a 501c3 organization is very 
strong, both in governance and funding. I can relax more about what “might” 
happen in the future. There are seemingly constant focus groups held and 
comment card boxes everywhere for feedback. It is not unusual for the chef to 
come around at meals and ask about the food. We had a long discussion at dinner 
last week about what was begin called bread pudding. 

The served plate was a fully-chef-inspired pile of crisp bread squares seasoned 
with cinnamon and sugar dribbled with a creamy milk-based sauce. It reminded me 
of Brothers BBQ fried-chicken that had hired an Israeli chef who dribbled the 
plate with swirls of hot sauce before putting the fried chicken on and served 
very lightly steamed kale. The kale was inedible and my dinner partner and I 
were challenged not to wipe the plate clean before eating. it was embarrassing. 
My table mates at Riderwood explained to the chef that bread pudding is close 
to dinner in and of itself — a good use of day old bread, milk, and eggs. Sugar 
was important but bread pudding wasn’t an iced dessert cake. It should be 
cooked in a casserole dish and cut in fairly large portions. The recipe was 
changed the next day. When the enchiladas were served with a dribble of sauce 
over the top of a soft corn tortilla light wrapped around freshly cooked 
chicken squares, shredded cheeses, and sauted peppers, people came ready the 
next night with pictures of real enchiladas fully soaked, inside and outside, 
and cooked in sauce.

>  Eventually, when her husband passed, she left that community to move here to 
> MA to join my cohousing neighborhood, which had been a dream of hers since we 
> formed.  Naturally, our neighborhood had one huge selling point over her 
> community -- her daughter lives there -- but putting that particular 
> hard-to-reproduce feature, it was her belief that there was something 
> available to her here that was not available there, though she was never able 
> to articulate it (and she has since passed).

Ownership, I’m sure. Everyone had a vested interest financially in the success 
of the community. And it was more inclusive since it was open to all age 
groups. But the reality is that with longer life-spans, if one moved into a 
senior community at age 55, they could live there for what until recently was 
almost a whole lifespan. There are people living here who have been here 25 
years — it opened 25 years ago or they might have been here longer. I question 
whether with 100 year life spans, the inclusion of all age groups is possible. 
I have actually enjoyed discussions with a table of 70-90 year olds who all 
have the same life perspective in common. There are 25 people here who are over 
100. Many people feel isolated when they reach 90 to 100 because they see the 
world differently.

> I'm interested in your take and whether you think there should be revised 
> guidance to forming communities going forward?

Not revised but to take into consideration the benefits of larger communities. 
That more may be gained than lost. The current view is that much would be lost 
but is that true? I remember many meetings of looking at the list of residents 
to find someone who would be good at  particular job and finding no one. 
Everyone was already committed or in a hard place in their private lives. And 
TVC had 60-80 adult residents. 

In a larger community, does the work also grow? Where is the tipping point. 

In size of building, for example. When TVC was built one restriction was the 
number of floors an elevator would serve. If you go above 3 floors and a 
basement — 4 levels — a different kind of elevator, much more expensive, is 
required. So if you have 5 levels you might need 10 just to offset the cost of 
the elevator. And then you will need 2 elevators because many people would be 
unable to walk up 10 flights when one elevator was not working.

To consider larger cohousing communities would require studying those kinds of 
trade offs. At Riderwood the divisions are called neighborhoods, so there are 5 
or 6 neighborhoods, each with common amenities and some unique amenities that 
can be used by the whole community. It means I have my choice of 8 restaurants 
with different menus and styles of casual to dinner.

> (I will say, one huge difference was financial. The condo fees were 
> astronomical because they included very luxurious services (weekly cleaning, 
> transportation around town, onsite EMTs) and facilities (olympic size pool, 
> banquet hall, etc. It was definitely a lifestyle only available to folks like 
> my mom who had been able to save substantially for retirement.) And the 
> "ownership" model was kind of weird, somewhere in between fee simple 
> ownership and leasing.)

This is true for the monthly fee because it includes so many things. It is more 
comparable to all your monthly living expenses, than to a condo fee. Mine 
includes electricity (heating and cooling), internet, very basic cable TV, a 
large pool, craft rooms, meeting rooms, private dining rooms, onsite 
inexpensive services (laundry, salon, trainers, computers, etc.) Not all senior 
or continuing care communities have all those ammenities. Some are more like 
cohousing.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD