The Cohousing Company

February 2024 Newsletter

The Cohousing's Company office fun and Nevada City Cohousing's Reconnecting

Neighborhoods in the Sky

Repurposing Vacant Office Buildings Downtown with Urban Cohousing

The future of cohousing and the future of inner urban life design has to include the conversion of underutilized high-rise spaces to cohousing. Our firm has experience in repurposing empty office spaces, and I’m excited about the potential of revitalizing languishing big cities through inner urban cohousing communities. Cohousing groups will have a key role in repurposing vacant office buildings in downtowns.

Reports vary from 26% to 33% of high-rise square footage in San Francisco today falls below their highest and best use or stand empty. Seattle reports that 14% to 18% of floor area in high-rises are empty. That’s a lot of the constructed world sitting empty. Some of those spaces have been converted to childcare centers by our firm, about 20 altogether; we have repurposed high-rises over the years from San Francisco to Washington D.C.

High rise repurposed for childcare

But the big miss is that those empty or underutilized spaces need to be converted to housing. The number of moms and dads walking, strolling, and driving to work in downtown San Francisco, Seattle, and other cities is way down. What’s needed now is affordable and market-rate housing downtown and lots of it. And carless housing, or shared-car housing has got to be the future of sustainability. We have found the shared electric car to be the game changer—everyone wants in on that.

There are long-term sustainability benefits to living in the city, like some will have no-car, car-light, or shared electric car living. Shared Teslas have made this even more popular…

From an ecological point of view, we need to get folks of all incomes able to live downtown in order to have more efficient lifestyles, buy less, consume less, share more, and reinvigorate downtowns, and to create real neighborhoods, which is possible even in a high rise. As an architect, I have found that of all of the housing types, cohousing tends to be the most comfortable with varied affordability in the same building and in the same community.

Sweden has been repurposing high-rises to housing, specifically cohousing since the 1980s. I’ve been to many of those neighborhoods in the sky, and they work great. (See photo of urban Swedish cohousing below).

As the mega-leases of Google, Amazon, and others will be coming to a close soon, this turns into a real concern that we need to address head on. This can only be addressed by those who own high-rise buildings in downtowns, appreciate competent and appropriate design, and cohousing groups are the best at that - for one thing, it would be designed for and with a market.

Here is a proposition about that pending possibility. Redesigning these buildings to fit cohousing is easier than getting these high-rises to bend to any other use, because the shared common areas are the release valves for otherwise difficult interior adaptive reuse spaces. It allows for “fill in the gap” solutions that are not available to other uses—including larger bicycle storage in the windowless middle, a craft room, and common storage. And cohousing groups can get projects financed easier (because they are pre-sold or pre-leased), bring working capital to the table (their down payment), get projects approved easier (lots of allies at the podium), and get them largely if not entirely marketed themselves.

Many cities around the country are making public funds, financing and incentives available to developers (including cohousing groups) who make these conversions and include affordable units(1). Chicago (600 units); Pittsburgh; and Portland, Oregon adopted legislation in March, 2023 to name just a few. Cities like Chicago (who donated $197 million from locally collected property taxes) are starting to mitigate monoculture land-use. Mix it up a little bit.

(1) Evidence Matters, Fall 2023

Potential for the adaptive reuse of empty office buildings into cohousing.

Childcare and play areas are possible in high-rise solution with thoughtful design

Another option for the adaptive reuse of empty office buildings into cohousing.

Common dining areas and gathering nodes provide spaces for neighbors to spend time together

Cohousing groups, if you know someone who owns a building downtown, forward this to them. If someone calls me from say Chicago who owns a high-rise, I, along with a couple of locals, will organize a presentation in that town. The first step of feasibility is determining if there are enough people interested in that town to pursue a project, assuming someone who comes forward. The agreements with building owners have to be clear, and iron clad to mitigate risk for everyone.

We have already been contracted by others and would be interested in taking on more projects along these lines. If you’re interested in talking more about this possibility, feel free to email me at charles.durrett@cohousingco.com or call my cell at (916) 716-6721 or my office at (530) 265-9980.

Looking forward to embarking on this very important additional chapter for cohousing!

Sincerely,

Charles Durrett

Updates in Cohousing: Table of Contents

February 2024

• Port Townsend GIB Workshop LOCATION CHANGE NOTICE
• Antioch Continuing Education Classes in Addressing Homelessness & Grassroots Organizing
• Monterey AIA Talks
• Katharina Dress's Effective Communication for Living in Community Workshop

Port Townsend GIB Workshop

LOCATION CHANGE NOTICE

Grassroots Organizing and How to Address Homelessness in Your Town

CHANGE OF LOCATION NOTICE:

Art Building at Jefferson County Fairgrounds

4907 Landes St

Port Townsend, WA 98368

The new cohousing groups, Song Sparrow, Newt Crossing, and Puyallup Cohousing are coming together to put on a 2-Day Getting-It-Built Workshop on February 10–11, 2024 to start the process of creating these intergenerational cohousing communities.

This weekend workshop shares best practices and lessons learned throughout our over 35 years of experience, while also recognizing that each community is unique and each group needs to decide what approach makes the most sense for its specific location and situation. More cohousing communities have been started by the Getting-It-Built Workshop than by any other method in North America.

If you’re interested in attending, please contact Kate Nichols at katennichols@yahoo.com. 

Please also feel free to download THIS FLYER for more detailed information and to share with your friends, family, and neighbors.

Upcoming Antioch Continuing Education Classes

Grassroots Organizing and How to Address Homelessness in Your Town

We are beyond excited to continue our collaboration with Antioch University Continuing Education Program in 2024. We will kick off the year with 2 amazing programs below!

AIA Monterey's Housing Series

Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods

Date & Time: Tuesday, February 27, 6:00 P.M., Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Location: SandBox Sand City, 440 Ortiz Avenue, Sand City

Cost: $10 AIA Members, Sponsors, Students; $30 General Public

Credits: 1.5 HSW, pending approval

Presenter: Charles Durrett, architect, author, and advocate of affordable, socially responsible and sustainable design.

Session Description: 

In this session, you will learn from the leading architect and builder of cohousing globally. Durrett will impart his decades of experience so that you understand what cohousing is, how it’s designed, what its benefits are to the residents, and how it incorporates participatory design to promote more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable communities.

Go to Eventbrite to reserve your space.

Effective Communication for Living in Community:

Transcending Differences with Understanding and Compassion

Workshop by Katharina Dress of Aging in Harmony

A participatory workshop series

When: Wednesday, March 27, April 24, May 29, June 26, & July 31, 2024, 5 – 7 PM PT

Where: From the comfort of your home on Zoom

Facilitator: Katharina W. Dress, MA – Mediator, Facilitator, Conflict Coach, Trainer

Are you living in Cohousing, a Senior Community, or just share a home with housemates? Communication challenges can stand in the way of enjoying peace and harmony at home. Experienced Conflict Resolution Mediator and Trainer Katharina Dress invites you to join her for her new workshop series that will help you learn and practice how to transcend differences with understanding and compassion - together with others who also choose communal living.

For further information and to reserve your spot, visit:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/effective-communication-for-living-in-community-registration-791677959087?aff=oddtdtcreator

What others have said about Katharina’s trainings:

“I wanted to let you know that I have been thinking about many of the concepts you presented at your workshop. I appreciate the tools/perspectives you offered to help us create space for more empathetic conversations. I think the approach to problem solving which helps us listen more empathically is quite often the difference between conflict and low or no conflict. So I am sure the (workshop) experience will re-present itself in many future scenarios.”

- A Private Fiduciary from Contra Costa County, CA

“I came to Katharina’s Conflict Resolution workshop with no prior formal training in the field, although I had been a disputant using mediation services. I left with hands-on experience in simulated disputes, inspired and equipped with tools to guide my intuition on serving an aging population, in cohousing neighborhoods and beyond.”

-Raines Cohen, Community Organizer with Cohousing Coaches, Berkeley, CA

Books by Charles Durrett

Books have played a major role from the beginning in terms of getting cohousing to this country and built in your town, starting with our first book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (The European Story). Bookstores normally play a key role in culture change in general, and cohousing is no exception.



Many groups have contacted the publisher (New Society Press and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) directly to get bulk discounts, and I find that successful projects get started when lots of folks do this fun homework. I usually need to give a dozen copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities, Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living and Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods away to planners, banks, neighbors, mayors, new residents, local architects, builders, and so on—to give them context. It saves the group thousands and thousands of hours, dollars, and delays, and most importantly makes for a better project.

Cohousing is more than a sound bite; it is cultural pivot, and it takes folks doing some fun research first. Seattle and the surrounding areas have about a dozen cohousing communities today largely because the bookstores in town have sold more than 1,000 copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities and the San Francisco area has over 20 cohousing communities largely because the book has sold more than 2,000 copies there.

Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods

A Solution to Homelessness in Your Town

Also available HERE

Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities

with Kathryn McCamant

Revitalizing Our Small Towns

Cohousing's role in positively effecting waning small towns.

The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living

Also available in Spanish

State-Of-The-Art Cohousing: Lessons Learned from Quimper Village

with Alexandria Levitt

Happily Ever Aftering in Cohousing: A Handbook for Community Living

Facilitator Guide - Senior Cohousing Study Group 1 Guides

Finding A Site: Cohousing From the Ground Up



Participant Guide - Senior Cohousing Study Group 1 Guides

Growing Community: How to Find New Cohousing Members

Architecture for Ageing Population

with the staff of Images Publishing

The Cohousing Company Website