Our national cohousing community has the opportunity to make a true impact and difference in our country. Please, go out and VOTE if you have not done so already.
~ Katie McCamant
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What started as supposedly three weeks of bundling up inside, taking a break from work, spending quality time with our families and watching netflix has now shifted into it's sixth month of social distancing, quarantining and lockdowns. It seems that within this time, people have realized the necessity of community, the need for human contact and the continuous added benefits of living in cohousing. Across the nation, cohousing communities have become incredibly creative with the activities they do to keep connected, to grow new cohousing developments and to nurture our relationships. |
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With kids spending more and more time at home because of distance learning and less extra curricular activities, their creativity still seems to be sky rocketing! Future members of Bozeman Cohousing in Montana, Lochlan and Denali built their upcoming cohousing development with mega-tiles! So impressive!
"Notice how the parking is clustered at the front of the property to make a safe place for children to play. The interior pathways allow neighbors to interact face-to-face instead of car-to-car. The small clusters of homes face each other to create smaller pods within the larger community.
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If you look closely you can see the goats, chickens, bunnies, dogs, and some wildlife" says community member Kathleen Owkes of Bozeman CoHousing.
With evenings coming sooner in our day as we turn into fall, Wolf Creek Lodge decided to share their evenings with a comfy, distanced movie on their common patio. A good way to get out of the house and see your co-homies!
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While established communities keep communing, even if mostly outdoors, new communities keep moving forward in spite of challenging Covid road blocks. Washington Commons in West Sacramento officially submitted their building permits which brings them one step closer to common house meals, shared holidays and life long relationships.
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Anne Geraghty, a founding member of Washington Commons says,
"Today we submitted the application for our building permit. This step represents a tremendous amount of work on the part of our professional team and our community. It includes drawings, specifications structural calculations, a geotechnical report, and energy report, manufactured trust calculations etc .. in multiple copies. Now the City of West Sacramento begins its work to review our application. When it’s approved, we will be ready to break ground. We are thrilled to get to this important step."
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In times of adversity, the cohousing community spirit still shines bright. When faced with opposition, we can continue to thrive, even if we have to adjust and roll with the punches. |
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CoHousing Houston is featured in the
Houston Chronicle!
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"The article in the Chronicle generated a tremendous boost in traffic and engagement on all our social media platforms (for example, on Facebook one of the posts sharing the article on Sunday morning when it came out reached 750 people and resulted in 339 engagements ... that was "off the charts" for us!). Since October 1st we have oriented 6 new Explorer households and had as many serious enquiries that could turn into more Explorers by the end of the month. The energy level is high, the activity level is high. It's fall in Houston, which is like Spring in the north: the city is waking up and cohousing is bursting out of the long summer heat with vim and vigor".
-Lynn Morstead
CoHousing Houston Team
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One Kin Roof does the first Get it Built Workshop Hosted on Zoom with CoHousing Solutions!
One of our newest clients has recently just finished their Get it Built Workshop that was all hosted on zoom! With 30 participants, One Kin Roof goal is to build a cohousing community that is a “non-exclusive, totally inclusive community environment for our kids who are differently-abled...". We are so excited to jump into our first neurodiverse cohousing community project and proud to provide them with the expertise they need.
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What an incredible, and powerful opportunity it has been to work with both Katie and Desiree during the Get It Built Workshop! Their decades of research and experience in this field, bottled up and presented in an intimate fashion has been extremely beneficial. They broke down what is a huge and intricate venture into small bite size pieces, and even added in extra sessions to ensure we all understood. We will move forward now, largely in part to their teachings and wisdom. Cannot recommend this workshop enough!
-Angie Millar
One Kin Roof Team Member
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Congratulations
Danny Milman!
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Katie says “this brings things full circle for me as Danny worked in our office when we were working on the Bellingham, Pleasant Hill, and Cotati communities. It’s great to have her back working with cohousing groups, especially with the depth of experience she brings both in cohousing and construction. That she now lives less than a mile from me in Nevada City makes it even better.” |
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We proudly introduce our first 500 Communities member highlight, Shelly Parks!
Shelly’s ability to lead the marketing team for her community, Skagit Cohousing, has nearly gotten the community sold out, and with the members and financial investment they needed to tie down a construction loan with excellent terms. Partnering with CoHousing Solutions as development consultant, Tad Fairbank as developer, Fairbank Construction as builder, and Schemata Workshop as architects, Skagit Cohousing closes on the construction loan and is in the ground!!!!! As October comes to an end. Now Shelly is sharing what she has learned about marketing cohousing in these challenging times, on top of her decades of experience in senior housing sales, with forming cohousing groups across the country.
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"We found that these crazy times highlighted for people the need for connection. Knowing this, we focused our efforts on staying better connected with people in our data-base. We continued our online information meetings and made an effort to better our pre and post event communication. We also increased our efforts to connect with people over the phone and on Zoom. Our goal was to learn more about their interest in cohousing and explore whether Skagit Cohousing might be a good fit for what they envisioned for their better future. "
- Shelly Parks
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Our 500 Communities Program is for passionate entrepreneurs who want to devote themselves to the goal of building the next 500 cohousing communities while working collaboratively, supporting each other and making a living. |
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We provide development consulting services to help you create your sustainable neighborhood. Our team pioneered the development of cohousing in North America, and we have helped create dozens of successful communities. |
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CoHousing Solutions
(530) 478-1970
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