Living in Cohousing

A second Coho/US webinar by architect Laura Fitch will examine the philosophy and practice of “Getting the Work Done” in community life. Issues of equity, setting expectations, and implementation will be reviewed, including a close look at what has been put into practice successfully in one cohousing community.

The number of cohousing communities is increasing impressively. This map is based on the data from a recent census conducted by Betsy Morris, Ph.D., Coho/U.S.'s research director. As shown, built cohousing communities in the U.S. numbered 113 at mid-year. Other results of that census can be found in the Research Topic Room. (Registration as a member is required, although it is free.)

The National Cohousing Conference has traditionally drawn a large crowd of folks who are searching for answers, advice, connections and community. This year the conference will also address cohousing’s most valuable resource: those already living in community. The 2008 conference experience is geared toward helping those of you who’ve been living in community – whether for months or years or decades – to enrich your lives and the life of your group as well as to connect with each other.

As cohousing increasingly becomes a global phenomenon, I've become curious to learn how different countries mold the concept to reflect their cultural, financial and regulatory realities. I learned that firsthand after I had a chance to see three cohousing projects in Japan recently.

After attending the Japanese Ecovillage Conference in Tokyo in late November 2007, I visited the 28-unit Kankanmori no Kaze Cohousing project in Tokyo with two friends, Giovanni Ciarlo from Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage in Mexico and Akemi Miyauchi, one of our wonderful conference hosts. Giovanni and I had given presentations about intentional communities at the conference, and we were eager to see similar projects in Japan. There appear to be relatively few intentional communities there, and so far perhaps only a total of four cohousing communities – depending on how one defines the term.

I used to have contingency plans for where I wanted to live in another five years. For a while, it was New Zealand, then upstate New York, then a small town in western Colorado that doesn’t feel the pace of a fresh-air-challenged metro area like Denver. Where would I try to be comfortable next? Where would I try to meet as many needs as possible with a minimum amount of stress?

While community living is not a new phenomenon, one must acknowledge that with the success of cohousing, the idea is being spread for the first time on a global scale. If globalization tends to destroy cultural variation, the flexibility of cohousing has allowed it to resist that trend and to adapt to people’s needs in different cultural contexts. A look at how cohousing is being implemented in Europe demonstrates that idea.

As many of the requests on the cohousing List-serve demonstrate, when a community has to draw up an LLC agreement, bylaws, pet policies or other documents, they often ask if anyone would share what their community has created. Those same appeals come up time and again, with mixed results. The recent creation of the Wiki is another attempt to learn from the successful practices of successful communities.

Two areas are targeted for regional gatherings in Fall 2007. Coho/US hopes to see one event taking place in Massachusetts (Boston area) on Saturday, September 15, and one in Northern California (San Francisco Bay Area) at an early September date still to be announced.
We are seeking three or four people in each area to plan these events.

In every cohousing neighborhood I've lived in or visited, sustainability has been an explicit core value, particularly expressed in how the community was designed and built. Many of us have the luxury to choose to live lightly on the earth, "changing the world, one neighborhood at a time," as a Coho/US bumper sticker puts it.

How do people in cohousing create traditions? How do we mark the major life events of our members, such as births, coming-of-age, marriages and deaths? How do we celebrate community events, such as groundbreaking or community anniversaries? How about birthdays, new jobs or people moving in or moving out?

The cohousing movement in the U.S. has come a long way since the first community was built in the mid-1980s. There are currently an estimated 200 cohousing projects in 37 states – 93 of them completed! These numbers are expected to increase significantly in the next few years, as more people discover the joys of living in cohousing neighborhoods. Elder cohousing projects and retrofit cohousing will undoubtedly show the fastest growth, although the number of typical, multigenerational communities will also increase significantly over the next five years.

Chuck Durrett, along with his wife Katie McCamant, popularized the Danish concept of cohousing in this country with the publication of their 1988 book. Here Chuck offers an open letter about his personal experiences in avoiding a corrosive aspect of living in community.

Scan the vision statements of cohousing communities and you'll notice touchstone words such as neighborly, safe, close-knit, diverse, tolerant, nurturing and supportive. Independence and interdependence are highlighted as the mortar that cements these elements together. "What can I give to the community?" not "What can the group do for me?" provides the bedrock for vibrant and resilient cohousing.

Wow, the single-family house – what a workout it can be. After 12 years of living in Doyle Street Cohousing in Emeryville, CA, I'd forgotten how hard it is to live in a "regular" house. How do so many people do it and stay sane?

oe picks up the top brick from the pile on his left and adjusts it into position on the sliding tray of the tile saw. He braces the brick with one hand while flipping a switch with the other. ZZZZZZZZZ! The brick eases forward into the diamond-edge saw blade and soon becomes a custom-fit brick paver. He wears safety glasses, earplugs and rubber gloves to protect him from the intense noise, tiny chips of brick and cold water spraying from the whirling blade. The saw stands near the center of a grove of young aspen trees that commemorate the arrival of four babies in the first year of our village. The leaves of the aspens and the pea gravel under the trees are covered with a fine red film - water mixed with pulverized brick dust.

Year One: We waved goodbye – and good riddance – to the last of the construction trucks. For more than a year the vehicles had used for their staging area what the architects had neatly labeled the "community garden" on our blueprints. Dump trucks, pick-up trucks, 18-wheel delivery trucks, piles of lumber, stacks of pipes and industrial-size garbage dumpsters had squatted on our scraped dirt field during the building of our community. Now they were gone and we could begin to reclaim the land.

Last summer my friend Claire and I were sitting on the grass at the park, talking while our 3-year-old daughters played. When the two girls began throwing cedar mulch at each other, I asked my daughter Lila to stop. “Why can't they throw mulch?” my friend Claire asked. “It's not going to hurt anyone, is it?”

Giving neighborly support often has been easier for me than receiving it. A near-death car accident in September 2002 followed by extensive shoulder surgery changed my perspective in a heartbeat.

This list first appeared in our Fall 2001 issue. Cohousers across the U.S. offered the diverse list of suggestions below.