Cohousing-L Mailing List: Reaction to Adawehi webinar Message-ID:

[Melanie Mindlin (sassetta]

Friends,
Let me offer a different outlook about this community’s age limitations. I 
don’t know about the legality involved in limiting older people from 
joining/buying and protected classes of people in the U.S.  However, I believe 
that in Scandinavia where Cohousing originates, it is common for senior 
Cohousing communities to limit entry to younger seniors. The basis for this is 
that they are organized to take care of each other as they age.  As the 
population of the community gets older, they need younger people to come in to 
help provide care to those who are now too old to do it. From an overall social 
engineering perspective, this makes a lot of sense.

In our individualistic society, this may seem overbearing and unreasonable, but 
it is working for those communities. I believe the story is that they have 
waiting lists to get in, and nobody minds doing their extra work when they 
first join. They expect to stay for the long term and reap their share of 
benefits later.

I’ve lost the original letters that started this thread on age limitations. I 
think it focused primarily on the lack of transparency of the community in 
question. I imagine that they will have gotten the point by now.

Melanie MIndlin
Ashland Cohousing Community