Posts Tagged ‘senior cohousing’
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
In honor of the National Cohousing Conference which starts tomorrow in Boston, MA we'll do a little round up of cohousing in the news lately. This will also help me catch up on the news as I've gotten a little behind lately, in no small part due to the success of cohousing and its mainstream media appeal.
We'll start with the local Boston news. The Boston Metro News had a quick piece about the conference and highlights Jamaica Plain Cohousing.
This weekend, Bentley College in Waltham will host the 2008 National Cohousing Conference, an event that will focus on the growing number of cohousing communities - close-knit "mini-neighborhoods" that share common space, are environmentally-friendly and whose residents help each other out.
JP Cohousing consists of two buildings that house 30 multigenerational households in individual units, as well as a common house with dining rooms, a kitchen, offices and other communal areas, which resident Jeanne Goodman calls "an extension of our homes."
The common space helps to lower the community's carbon footprint, as well as to engender closeness and cooperation amongst the residents.
In Charlottesville, VA the C-ville paper has a nice piece about Blue Ridge Cohousing and some of the opposition they have faced from local neighbors:
Blue Ridge is a typical cohousing development. It consists of 26 houses, each individually owned, bought and sold. However, cars will be parked away from the houses, which are built close together. A historic house will serve as common space for meals and activities, and everything is pedestrian friendly. In many ways, the idea of cohousing exists as a cross between a traditional subdivision and a college dorm.
But during the approval process, some neighbors argued that 26 houses on the six-acre site was too dense for the outskirts of Crozet, which has already seen brisk growth. The nature of cohousing, putting housing close together to increase walking and preserve more green space, lends itself to being more dense than other traditional developments.
In Dallas, TX the Dallas Morning News had an extensive article about Wildflower Village the first senior cohousing community in Texas (ie only for older adults).
The Cedar Hill couple had considered other active-adult and senior-living communities where they might retire, but they were disappointed to find places that were too big or impersonal. That's when they joined a group of kindred spirits to build a close-knit community from scratch.
"We've planned for our retirement in reverse, I guess," Mr. Klipp said. "Typically, people pick out a community and then take their chances with the neighbors. Here, we've gotten to know our future neighbors as we've sat down to design our community."
The Nuwire Investor has an article, The Cohousing Life: Developments Bringing People Together which praises cohousing in general and has quotes from CoHo Ecovillage in Corvallis, OR and Puget Ridge Cohousing in Seattle, WA.
"It's all about community," said Colleen Dyrud of CoHo Ecovillage in Corvallis, Ore. "Not only knowing your neighbors, but sharing a piece of your life with them."
Forming a cohousing development is a process that can take several years. "It's been great so far, but it is still a long process," O'Brien said. "There is a big learning curve for a small group of us with no experience trying to put together a $12 million project."
Meanwhile in Sydney Australia the Sydney Morning Herald laments how cohousing has been slow to take off in Australia.
If Sydney co-housing follows the international model, it will not just be for hippies. In Sweden, everyone from doctors to teachers and lawyers chooses co-operative housing, with high status attached to membership. But while more than 360,000 Swedish apartments are part of co-housing, and the United States has more than 100 co-housing communities and 100 more being developed, it has been slow to take off in Australia.
So if you are at the cohousing conference, have fun, and if not you've got plenty of articles to read.
Articles Quoted:
Cohousing catching on in the Bay State - Boston Metro News
Cohousing creates community (and density) - Cville News and Arts
Dallas-Fort Worth group creating 1st Texas cohousing community - Dallas Morning News
The Cohousing Life: Developments Bringing People Together - NuWire Investor
Together to live better, yet still apart - Sydney Morning Herald
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Related Posts Tags: Blue Ridge Cohousing, Coho Ecovillage, cohousing, Jamaica Plain Cohousing, Puget Ridge Cohousing, senior cohousing, Sydney Cohousing, Wildflower Village
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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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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
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
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
 Your Health Connection has created a series of three videos on cohousing and how it can help enhance people's health. The site generaly focuses on health care and and medical issues but did a special report on cohousing as a healthier lifestyle.
Videos include interviews with folks from Frog Song Cohousing in Cotati, CA and Glacier Circle Cohousing a senior cohousing community in Davis, CA. The first video is an overview of cohousing including a look at senior cohousing. The second is a moving piece looking at the experiences of a woman diagnosed with cancer and how her cohousing community supported her during treatment.
Watch the Cohousing Videos.
More Videos on Intentional Community on Community Buzz
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
The LA Times ran a great article on cohousing just before Christmas. It profiles Wolf Creek Lodge and focuses on senior cohousing as an up and coming trend.
Along with the architects who imported the idea of cohousing from Denmark 20 years ago, they have designed their 30-unit complex from the ground up, complete with an elaborate common house where they plan to dine together several nights each week.
They've attended scores of meetings, made thousands of decisions -- all by consensus -- buried one beloved member and welcomed others. They have pledged to "support each other through rough times, whether physical, emotional and/or spiritual." They have learned how to listen and how to disagree.
The article seems to do a good job describing cohousing, getting at the social and ecological dynamics as well as the sense of community. They even seem to get consensus.
Read the article.
This article has also been picked up on blogs and other websites including:
planetizen.com - Will Retiring Baby Boomers Revive The Cohousing Movement?
treehugger.com - Cohousing for Aging Boomers
and more
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Related Posts Tags: cohousing, elder cohousing, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times, senior cohousing, Wolf Creek Lodge
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Monday, January 14th, 2008
The Rocky Mountain News has an article on Senior Cohousing in Colorado, specifically featuring Silver Sage Cohousing.
The couple, in their 60s, looked at various homes here until an ad in a Boulder Senior Center newsletter led them to Silver Sage Village. The community, one of the first active-adult co-housing communities in the United States, is open to homeowners 50 and up.
Read the article.
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Related Posts Tags: Boulder, cohousing, Colorado, senior cohousing, Silver Sage Cohousing
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Saturday, December 22nd, 2007
More and more people are talking about senior and elder cohousing as well as multi-generational cohousing as a way for seniors to live out their later years in a supportive community. This talk is not just from cohousing activists but from mainstream realtors and elder activists.
For many Seniors and Boomers, co-housing is more appealing than other living options, such as seniors-only buildings or nursing homes, because residents live in safe, nurturing environments, where neighbors care for one another.
Read the post.
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
WMBB discusses the tough question of how our society can care for our aging population as the baby boomers hit retirement. One option for aging boomers is cohousing:
"We think boomers are going to find ways to co-habitate to take care of each other," Thornhill said. "There's not going to be anybody else to do it."
He said one emerging option is co-housing, which combines the advantage of private homes with the benefits of "more sustainable living, including shared common facilities and ongoing connections with neighbors," according to the Cohousing Association of the United States (www.cohousing.org). Thornhill described it as "a modern-day version of communes."
Read the article.
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
The Southwest Florida Herald Tribune published an article on Elder Cohousing:
A retirement community with a communal touch.
The cohousing community is still in the forming stages but hopes to be in Englewood, FL. They are getting help from the Elder Cohousing Network and Paiss and Associates.
Read the Article
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Written by:
Tony Sirna
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