East Van Cohousing Design Closure Workshop, Chuck's Upcoming Europe Trip, and More | |
- East Vancouver Cohousing Successfully Completes Private House Workshop and looks forward to Design Closure
- Seeking Non-Profit Partners and Group Members for New Community in Beautiful West Placer County/North Auburn, CA
- Charles Durrett Returns to Denmark/Europe in September 2023
- Study Group One (SG1) Aging Successfully in Senior Cohousing: Online Facilitator Training 2023 - early bird registration ends Sept. 20
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Happy Mid-Summer From Nevada City! | |
East Van Cohousing Private House Workshop Recap
& the Upcoming Design Closure Workshop
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East Van Cohousing's Private House Workshop was a big success!
On the weekend of July 15th-16th, Charles Durrett and Nadthachai of The Cohousing Company, consultant Amisto, and Driftwood Cohousing hosted the Private House Design Workshop for the new East Van Cohousing Group, and it was a great success!
The weekend began with the group's feedback of the common house drawings that The Cohousing Company produced. This exercise ensured that the common house plans truly reflected the program that the group established in the previous workshop, and any adjustment that had to be made due to the architectural geometry were consented by everyone. Additionally, this exercise also helped frame the subsequent discussion about private house design.
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Unlike other types of housing projects, the common house and its extensive amenities in cohousing are truly an extension of each unit. This allows each private house design to be efficient and elegant. There is no need to have an extra room in your house for guests or kids that is rarely used when you have access to the state-of-the-art guest room and kids' room in the common house that you share with the community.
Following the consensus of common house plans was an important discussion about the affordability of the project. Working closely with their consultant Amisto and their current pro forma, each future resident expressed how important it is for the project to be affordable, so not only can they keep the people that had already invested their time and resources in the project, but also allow people from diverse background to join the project in the future.
| East Van Cohousing Floor Plans | Preliminary sketches for building's front elevation after the private house workshop. | With the common house design and affordability in mind, the private house design brainstorm session for each unit type was chock-full of amazing and innovative ideas. The group had a lively, insightful discussion about their culture and what they truly value in their home. And there were many instances when we were impressed by how socially and environmentally innovative this group is! | Section of East Van Cohousing. By far mostly millennials, this group put the ever evolving priorities of our ever adapting society on the table. | |
The group now has great momentum, and we are extremely excited to bring the Schematic Design to closure at the upcoming Design Closure Workshop.
If you too would like to see a new high-functioning neighborhood in Vancouver, then please come and make it happen. We would like to invite you to join us and register for the Design Closure on August 26–27. This workshop is when all the hard work that the the group had put into each participatory design workshop comes together into one final design for a beautiful and high-functioning community.
For more information about this workshop, please visit: https://www.eastvancohousing.ca/
or call Jen Mollins at (778) 269-4311.
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Affordable Cohousing Opportunity!
Seeking Non-Profit Partners and Group Members for New Community in Beautiful West Placer County, CA
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Placer County Project Overview:
36 single-story cottage units
22 market-rate units & 14 affordable units
7 units affordable to low income (50-80% AMI) &
7 units affordable to very low income (30-50% AMI)
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This is a great opportunity for a cohousing group and a non-profit partner that care deeply about building quality cohousing with a strong commitment to housing affordability. The Cohousing Company has entered into an “Exclusive Right to Negotiate Agreement” with Placer County for a wonderful 4.6 acre parcel. CHC recently conducted a feasibility analysis for this rolling oak woodland site, located in North Auburn, 30 minutes North of Sacramento and 1.5 hours to Lake Tahoe. | |
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It’s within the Placer County Government Center Masterplan, where plans are being drawn up for a more mixed-use and walkable community in the coming years, close to plentiful employment opportunities. They want this to be a model neighborhood – and we’re proud that this is the first time that a county government has reached out to us about including cohousing in a masterplan.
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Commitment to Quality
The Cohousing Company has already crafted a great site plan with elements to create successful cohousing: front porches facing pedestrian pathways, shared green spaces and play areas, a generous common house with amenities, and parking kept to the periphery to make room for safe and people-oriented spaces. Depending on what the group members bring to the table, this project also has the potential to include a veggie gardens, kids play areas, a bird-viewing platform, and more. (Let us know if you’re interested in joining this forming group to get in on the ground floor to make your suggestions!)
Commitment to Community in Placer County
Placer County realizes the social and fiscal benefits that come from building community-oriented housing and has set forth goals and policies in their housing element that promote this. All too often, county governments are laden with copious costs associated with services (after-school care, senior transportation, etc.) that could just as well be accomplished by friends and neighbors in a high-functioning neighborhood. What better way to save governments money while at the same time combatting our environmental crises and the epidemic of loneliness in our country?
Commitment to Affordability
Placer County is giving us a great deal in providing this site. In return, the project will need to comply with the Surplus Land Act, which requires at least 40 percent of the units be affordable to lower-income households (up to 80% Area Median Income or “AMI”), and that half of those units be affordable for very low-income households (30-50% AMI).
This site is perfect for 36 homes – so of the 36 units, 22 will be market rate and 14 will be dedicated to various levels of affordability. The trick is that a cohousing group, along with The Cohousing Company and Placer County, will need to partner with a Non-Profit Developer to help develop the 14 affordable units, as group members alone won’t be able to subsidize that amount. The idea is that the 22 market-rate units are also as attainable as we can make them – which we have had great success with in the past. But we need a non-profit to help obtain government subsidies for the 14 affordable units. As soon as we find a development partner and a group gets going, it’s off to the races, and we’ll make this dream a reality for 36 households. We’re so excited to be working together with Placer County and our future development partner to make this project happen.
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If you know of any non-profit housing developers that would be interested in joining us in this effort, please get in touch!
And if you are interested in becoming a founding member of this community, get in touch with us by calling (530) 265-9980 or email charles.durrett@cohousingco.com.
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Charles Durrett Returns to Denmark/Europe in September 2023 |  | |
"Traditional forms of housing no longer address the needs of many people. Dramatic demographic and economic changes are taking place in our society and most of us feel the effects of these trends in our own lives. Things that people once took for granted—family, community, a sense of belonging—must now be actively sought out. Many people are mis-housed, ill-housed, or unhoused because of the lack of appropriate options. These chapters introduce a new housing model which addresses such changes.
Pioneered primarily in Denmark and now being adapted in other countries, the cohousing concept reestablishes many of the advantages of traditional villages within the context of late twentieth-century life."
This paragraph was taken from the Introduction of the Katie and Chuck's first book: Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, which was first published in 1988. It's been 35 years and 55 projects since, and indeed has the cohousing concept been adapted in North America.
However, many things have also changed in the past 35 years. And in order for us to keep moving forward in the right direction, Chuck believes that a moment of reflection is needed, which is why he decided to return to Denmark and Europe this upcoming fall, not only to see how the communities he visited 35 years ago are now, but also to see what new and improved approaches are currently being explored in the place with the richest history of cohousing and community making. In particular, there is a movement in Europe to prove to the governments how much money is being saved by the governments by building more cohousing. Entitlement fees are often $10K to $50K per house, which is a considerable amount of money. However, cohousers can get these fees lowered if they prove to the government that living in cohousing will save them money on other costs.
It's also been great to get in touch with our old friends and colleagues over in Europe, as we are planning our trip and events along the way. Please see below the overview of our itinerary.
For more detailed information, please visit our EVENT PAGE on our website.
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First Name: Soe
Age: 27
Birth town: Namhkam, Burma (Myanmar)
Years in Cohousing: 0.25
Cohousing Community where you live: Nevada City Cohousing
Favorite food or pastime: Tea leaf salad
Your favorite cohousing activities: Cooking, picking up fresh vegetables, compost turning
What you like most about your cohousing community: Interconnected community, friendly, welcoming, safe and secure environment
Your average cost of living per month: $950
Notes from Charles Durrett: Soe is a great and talented designer here at The Cohousing Company since June. We have high hopes for his future career designing cohousing.
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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.
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