Posts Tagged ‘cohousing’
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
City officials in Cleveland, Ohio hosted a workshop with cohousing architect Chuck Durrett to explore the possibility of cohousing in Cleveland. This is a great step for the aging industrial city that is also the home of a burgeoning ecovillage project. Most cohousing is initiated by future residents or more recently by professional cohousing developers, but this is the first I've heard of a major city working to promote cohousing and help coalesce a forming group. They even have economic incentives in place that could help a group get started.
Cleveland officials and Cleveland State University are hosting a workshop today about the cooperative lifestyle in hopes cohousing will be part of the city's future.
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The idea for today's seminar began with Cleveland city planner Kim Scott, who first heard about cohousing eight years ago. The idea sounded appealing, especially as the divorced mother of six struggled to juggle commitments and relocate her aging mother.
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The city already offers some incentives, including 15-year tax abatement and $1 vacant lots for new homes that might attract groups interested in cohousing. Federal grants also are available for green and affordable communities.
Read the article on Cohousing in Cleveland
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
The NBC Today show did a feature on the top 5 friendliest cities in the country and Davis, California made the list in part due to being the home of cohousing and the first city with a city-wide network of bike paths. The article doesn't say much about cohousing but the video does.
Davis is where cohousing was founded, where the first young hippies wanted to live in a circle around a community center and love each other and that tone has permeated that whole city and housing market.
Ok so its not the most accurate description of the birth of cohousing in the US but at least its positive.
Read the article
See the video (Davis starts around 2:45 in)
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
The Seattle P-I Reader's Blog has a great interview with Cohousing Association Executive Director Craig Ragland on the topic of what cohousing has to offer baby boomers.
Craig gives the following benefits that cohousing offers:
- It brings more meaning to my life. I share leadership of this community with 25 other adults, and we learn from each other and our 12 children constantly.
- It's fun. I'm not a big party person, but I get to enjoy parties here all the time.
- It conserves resources and preserves natural spaces... here, I live in a modest-sized home on 11 acres of property. My home is about 1,100 square feet, but I share a common house (about 4,000 square feet), a barn (about 6,000 square feet), a few other outbuildings, a huge organic garden, an orchard, a forest, and a meadow. We share five meals per week in our common house, which means neither my wife nor I spend our time cooking or cleaning as much as we did before moving into cohousing. Our homes are all clustered on about two acres of those 11 acres... this means that there is lots of open, green space -- you know, the part of the earth that produces oxygen and allows non-human life...to thrive.
Ragland says that boomers are looking for some specific features in their cohousing communities: WiFi, efficient systems including good process, and an adult- and child- firendly environment.
The article does touch on senior cohousing as well.
Read the article about cohousing for boomers
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Related Posts Tags: baby boomers, cohousing, Seattle, senior cohousing
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Katie McCamant & Chuck Durrett won a Silver Award for Best of of Senior Living from the National Association of Home Builders on Tuesday according to various articles and a press release.
Nevada City architects, McCamant and Durrett's design for Silver Sage Village, a senior cohousing project in Boulder, Colorado, received the Silver Award for Best of Senior Living. Competing against hundreds of firms across America, the NAHB rated McCamant and Durrett's design as one of the country's best senior housing. Firm principal Charles Durrett was on hand to receive the award, "We are excited to see our ideas become working realities in communities shaped by residents, like Silver Sage."
Silver Sage Village cohousing is part of a trend towards less conventional solutions for aging with independence within communities, or as architect Charles Durrett so aptly puts it "the challenge of aging non-institutionally." Durrett coined the term cohousing - people buying homes in a community they plan and run together - for the type of communities he experienced as an architecture student in Denmark during the 1980's. America may be more ready than ever to consider cohousing's benefits, which include about 25% to 50% less driving, 75% less land used for housing, and at least 80% less energy used.
A recent article on McCamant and Durret also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle a few days before the award was announced where Durret speaks to the issue of senior cohousing:
Two years ago my follow-up book, "Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living," came out. In research, I kept asking them, 'Why are you bothering with this? You're 60 or 70 years old.' I marveled at the answers. People talked about things like, 'I'm not going to just sit here in this house and be bored and lonely and curate my furniture. I want to have fun.'
This month, we're starting construction for a 30-unit senior cohousing project in Grass Valley. One of the reasons I like working with seniors is that they are so much more impatient. These seniors tell me all the time, 'Hey Chuck. I don't even buy green bananas anymore. Let's make this thing happen."
Read the press release.
Read the article on McCamant andd Durret in the Sand Francisco Chronicle.
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Related Posts Tags: Chuck Durrett, cohousing, Katie McCamant, senior cohousing, Silver Sage Village Cohousing
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
The local paper in Brooklyn, New York has an article on Brooklyn Cohousing's efforts to start the first community in the New York burroughs. The Brooklyn group plans to buy an apartment building in the recently this recently trendy part of the city, sharing meals and common spaces within a condominium arrangement.
The article follows the standard "they're not hippies" line with an emphasis on the inherent cost of New York City condo ownership with the headline, "Wanted: Roommates with money".
"We want more out of life. We want more community. We were lonely and felt too isolated," said Alex Marshall, who started planning the first co-housing dwelling in the city with his wife last summer.
Alas, the 1970s are dead. This will not be a pot-smoking, patchouli-filled, free-loving, anything-goes compound.
"Take a commune and a condo, put them in a blender and this is what you get," said Ben Watts, a likely resident of the building, which will probably be in Park Slope, Prospect Heights or Windsor Terrace.
The article goes on to get some quotes from members of true communes from New York's past and finishes with a mildly humorous comparison of co-housing and communism noting that in cohousing the main source of conlfict is "Hectic, impersonal modern life" whereas in communism it is "Unequal ownership of the means of production."
For the real trash, see the commentary on the article at nymag.com where their only context to comment on the cohousing group is based on TV and movies and they snidely quip, "Something about a bunch of adults living as roommates seems inherently pervy to us."
Read the article on Brooklyn Cohousing.
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Another cohousing community is not big news these days but this article in Delaware Online had an interesting twist, drawing the connection to Delaware's historical Arden Villages. The three villages of Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft were founded in the early 1900s based on Henry George's single-tax theory and were part of the Garden City Movement.
While the goals and theories behind the Arden Villages and cohousing are quite different they are both examples of movements to intentionally reshape our human settlements for a greater good. Both foster a sense of community and an attention to the ecological effects of our homes, neighborhoods, and cities.
The article focuses on Empty-Nest Cohousing and Concord VIllage which are both looking for land in Delaware.
Read the article on Cohousing and Arden Village in Delaware.Cohousing in Delaware Evokes Historical Arden Villages
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Related Posts Tags: Arden Village, cohousing, Concord Vllage, Delaware, Empty-Nest Cohousing, Garden City Movement, Hennry George, Single Tax
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Monday, May 12th, 2008
The financial investment advice website, The Motley Fool has an article promoting Cohousing as a great option for retirement living. This fits with the recent trend of community on the business pages with recent articles in Forbes. For the most part it is your standard cohousing article with the added twist of stock symbols for any company mentioned.
The idea of settling into a rich, close-knit community in your post-working years appeals to many folks contemplating retirement. Such a community can be hard to find under the best of circumstances. As you age -- and as you or your old friends move to warmer climes or to downsized houses in different neighborhoods, grown children disperse, and interests long shared with friends start to diverge -- community can be a downright scarce resource.
As I've noted in the past, choosing to downsize one's house runs counter to the way many of us think about our own paths to success in life, but it can make a lot of sense. A smaller house costs less to buy, heat, and maintain -- good aspects anytime, but even more so during retirement. And if you can have a smaller house without losing the functionality of a larger home, why not?
Cohousing isn't for everyone, but if you're looking for a comfortable, friendly place to retire to, cohousing communities deserve serious consideration.
The author mentions plans to move to a cohousing community and follow-up blog posts indicate that it is Mosaic Commons in Massachusetts.
Read the Motley Fool article on Cohousing
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
 Meredith Medland of Living Green interviews Diana Leafe Christian on the subject of Ecovillages and Intentional Communities in this 24-minute podcast.
Diana was the editor of Communities Magazine for 14 years and is now the editor of the Ecovillages online newsletter. She is the author of two books Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community and Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities.
Diana shares her immense experience of community living and the communities movement in this interview. Here's some highlights:
I feel like I'm in a network of a lot of brothers and sisters and cousins. I feel like I'm living inside of a family of likeminded people going towards the goals of learning how to live more ecologically and economically and socially sustainably, and also we're learning, we're teaching what we learn to others through classes and workshops.
I got interested in intentional communities because I, like thousands and thousands of people across the country, this is in the early 90's, I began to feel like something was missing and I finally could feel my way to identify that what it was, was community.
Diana goes on to describe "13 kinds of Intentional Communities" including ecovillages, cohousing, communes, christian communities, other spiritual communities, retreat centers, student co-ops, and more.
She even explains how to find the community oyu are looking for:
Well, when you're checking communities out on the internet, and the website you need to know about is directory.ic.org, where you can look up any community by its name alphabetically or you can go to any state or province or country and look up the community. It's North America based, so you'll find most communities in the US and Canada, and then you can read the listing about the community and you can read their website if they've got one. Here's some things to look for: does the community have a lot of people? Do they have land and have they been there for a number of years? That tells me that they actually exist as a community. Read their mission and purpose. Is it in alignment with yours? Could you make a living there? Is it in the part of the country that you're interested in? Is there internal community finances, one that you like, income sharing, independent income? How would you make a living? What are the annuals dues and fees? What's the joining fee? How can you, can you afford it?
Diana gives a vision of the future where community is much more common:
Meredith asks: If you look ahead thirty years from today, what kind of transition and awakenings and new emergings do you think are going to be happening in the co-housing and intentional communities based?
Diana Leafe Christian: Well I think that many, many more people will be living in various kinds of intentional communities, including ecologically oriented ones like Eco Villages in cities and towns out in the country, I think that income sharing communities and independent income communities will be everywhere, and food co-ops and worker owned co-ops will be everywhere. People will be getting around I would say by bicycle and donkey cart and not using petroleum and using all kinds of transportation methods from olden times, people will be growing their own foods in urban areas, on their rooftops, on their balconies and in public parks in the median strips just like in Havana today, and people will be growing most of their food in towns and in rural areas because of the industrial shifts without petroleum.
This podcast is a great overview of intentional communities and a great listen. There are also a ton of community resources in Diana's bio on the site.
Listen to the Ecovillage interview with Diana Leafe Christian (also includes a full transcript).
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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, communes, Creating a Life Together, Diana Leafe Christian, ecovillages, Living Green
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
A lot of news about communities comes my way and its hard to pick and choose what to highlight on Community Buzz. Today, nothing stood out so I figured I'd do a round up of some news thats been languishing on my list but didn't seem quite enough for its own story.
Ithaca has a new community in the works, Farm Pond Circle, and they are already getting press in the Ithaca Journal for planting trees on their new community land. Obviously folks in Ithaca know about community and must be interested in whats new in their area.
The AP Wire put out a story on how many people are choosing to have only one child and they have quotes from folks at Tryon Life Farm community in Portland.
The local paper in Worcester, MA has an article highlighting the new cohousing communities in the Worchester area. They highlight Mosaic Commons and Camelot Cohousing but also have a nice map of cohousing throughout Massachusettes.
Champlain Valley Cohousing was in the Burlington Free Press in an article about the farm they have on site. The 22 unit cohousing community has a 25 acre farm on its land that works as a CSA and sells to wholesalers.
The Portland Oregonian had an article about Columbia Ecovillage, a community developing in Portland that started as a farm and sustainability education center and just bought the adjacent apartment complex with plans to convert them to green living cohousing. See photos on the Oregonian blog.
Then there's all the reviews of the movie Mister Lonely that is about impersonators (look-a-likes of Michael Jackson , Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, etc.) who come together in a commune in Scotland. The kicker is that according to some reviews filmmaker Harmony Korine spent some time as a child "on a commune near Nashville, TN". Most likely The Farm but there are many communes in the Nashville area.
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Related Posts Tags: Camelot Cohousing, Champlain Valley, cohousing, Columbia Ecovillage, ecovillage, Ithaca, Massachusettes, Mister Lonely, Mosaic Commons, Oregon, Portland, Tennessee, The Farm, Tryon Farm, vermont
Posted in Blog posts, News Articles, Video and TV | No Comments »
Written by:
Tony Sirna
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
 Cohousing can help residents reduce their carbon footprint and help prevent global warming according to a paper from the University College London.
Those living in cohousing consume nearly 60 per cent less energy in the home, and operate car-sharing and recycling schemes that greatly reduce the pollution from travel and landfill. Having facilities such as office space, workshops and gym within the community also reduces travel and associated emissions. Residents' direct involvement in the management and maintenance of these communities has also led to the adoption of more energy-efficient systems and renewable sources of energy.
The paper highlights new development models for cohousing which could help it reach a much wider market and increase its impact.
In a paper published in Futures Journal, Dr Jo Williams of the UCL Bartlett School of Planning says that until recently, cohousing has occupied a niche market in the US, largely because the development model adopted has been resident-led. The time, money and effort required to invest in such a project, along with the associated risks, has very much restricted market interest. It takes a minimum of five years to develop a cohousing project, the drop-out rate is high and projects can be expensive.
However, new development models have emerged in the US that reduce resident involvement, risk and cost - namely, partnership, speculative and retrofit models. Developers are beginning to finance and build cohousing both in partnership with prospective residents and speculatively. Residents are also forming their own cohousing communities in existing neighbourhoods, by taking down fences, creating communal facilities and taking on the responsibility for general management and maintenance.
Besides reducing carbon footprint Cohousing could help meet other social goals.
"With concerns about carbon emissions and energy savings, there has never been greater impetus for housing that offers low-carbon lifestyles. If the development models emerging in the US were adopted in the UK, the market for cohousing could be substantially expanded here. This could add to our options for shrinking our carbon footprint as well as meeting social needs, such as safe homes for an ageing population and local childcare facilities for parents who work."
Cohousing press release from UCL
Original paper 'Predicting an American future for cohousing' by Jo Williams is published in the April issue of Futures Journal.
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Related Posts Tags: carbon footprint, cohousing, global warming
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
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