Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Ongoing insurability concerns for cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jul 1, 2026, at 9:30 PM, Cheryl Keil via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> In our search we had 4 insurance companies/brokers tell us
> they would not consider us because we were a cohousing development.  The
> insurance industry's lack of familiarity with cohousing + the idea of being
> "self managed and self maintained" did not appeal to them.  We were
> considered too much of a wild card.
> 
> I brought this up in a similar email to cohousing-L a few months ago and
> remember getting feedback from one responder stating "we don't tell
> insurance companies we're a cohousing community; we just tell them we're a
> condo association".


I’m not a lawyer but this same topic was originally raised when cohousing 
groups tried to get bank loans in the 1990s. The fact is that cohousing 
communities are formed and governed under local laws. Most are legally 
condominiums. The buildings the company would be insuring is like other 
communities legally established in the same state. So you are asking for 
insurance for a condo — that’s all. 

It isn’t lying about your activities or philosophy to just not bring it up. You 
aren’t asking for insurance for group meals or social change. All of that is 
your business. They don’t believe in it which is why they say it is an unknown. 
It isn’t unknown.

When the problem was with construction loans, a cohouser created a spreadsheet 
of banks that had made loans to communities. Banks coudl then see that they 
were loaning to a lot of cohousing communities already. Just keep the list 
updated and ask how many years the community has been insured by which 
companies. You will have to contact each community to collect the information.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD
Founding member and 25 year resident in Takoma Village, Washington DC