The Cohousing Company

Thanksgiving at Nevada City Cohousing

Congress Progress

Participatory Design in Affordable (Subsidized) Cohousing

As you may know, we're making a push with the U.S. Congress to allow future residents of subsidized housing to play a role in the design and management of their affordable housing project (more like a cohousing community and potentially, in fact, cohousing). All 5 of the congressional offices that I spoke to in person said that they will need a lot more support from congress people in addition to those five (Adam Schiff, Mark Amodei, Ami Bera, Jennifer Wexton, and Jim Costa). While the lame duck congress is not the place to push right now, the New Year is (they have pressing priorities until January 2023). So please start your letters in January and bcc me.

In fact, if we are to push this through, we need to do so this now before the next congress. That is before January 2025 (the 118th Congress).

Find Our Updated Sample Letter for Your Congress Person HERE

I'm happy to report that a few people have already started writing letters to their congress people based on the last newsletter. I've had great success in the past with making the ask, and getting specific projects built locally by changing a specific local law. Laws are there to serve the people and we can make needed adjustments if we lobby hard, argue the point and get a number of politicians on board. Local politics are just a microcosm of national politics. With that in mind, I’m approaching this as close to protocol as possible. The congressional attorneys will in fact write the revised law

This issue is very much a bipartisan issue. If future residents can participate, they can bring the costs of managing a project way down. If subsidized residents can participate in the design, then the design will work much better and people will take better care of everything. The head and assistant head of the D.C. Housing Authority told me that they need to enhance the community and a sense of belonging and accountability to dramatically decrease those costs. Each dwelling in the Housing Authority projects costs $10,000 per year to manage. They are clear about that number, and they are equally transparent that the number must come down to make subsidized housing sustainable. In a well-designed and high-functioning neighborhood, that number can go down to zero."

The services that people require in the absence of community are much more costly. Having a community where people know each other, and support each other, reduces the costly care of less-functional neighborhoods considerably. We did a project for single moms years ago and designed it to be a high-functioning community. Mercy Housing says that it is the easiest project they have to manage out of 10,000 housing units. They have one manager there one half-day a week. In other projects, we started with a full-time police presence—and took it down to zero through community organizing.

People often ask me, “Chuck, why not make this congressional effort a committee?” While I have lived in cohousing for the last 32 years, where committees and consensus are the basis of our organization and management, I believe that some things are best done by individuals. I know committees are great for most things—writing your congress person in mass will come later—but for now, please just write them.

The goal is to create a ground swell of obvious interest in this movement for functional neighborhoods. One thing that political consultants have been telling me is that it is okay, and actually preferred, if we send the same letter out to congress people in order to get the ball rolling. And congress consultants have told me to send letters to your congress person, and every other congress person that you can." 

Please see these five explicit revisions that I am proposing to Title 6 & Title 24 HERE that will allow for better participation in the future.

Other Updates in Cohousing: Table of Contents

December 2022

• Cohousing Village Works - Spokane, WA

• Antioch Continuing Education Classes in 2023 DATE CORRECTIONS

• Poland Update #8

Cohousing Village Works

Practical, Permanent, & Supportive Housing in Spokane, WA

Reducing homelessness in your town only requires three things—a vision that is doable, the will to pursue it, and a clear set of steps.

After the success of our public presentation on November 3rd and the amazing task force meeting on the following Saturday, the New Hope Resource Center came together and decide on the name Village Cohousing Works for the affordable yet high-functioning housing community they are planning for the unhoused population in northern Spokane.

The Getting-It-Built Workshop, or GIB for short, for this 40-unit supportive permanent housing is happening all weekend on January 7th & 8th, 2023. This is a citizen-initiated development with the explicit purpose of housing unhoused fellow citizens. Last year, 206 people died outside in Spokane, and 162 the year before that. In my opinion, one death is simply too many, and this is clearly an emergency. This is a community first approach to addressing homelessness—people thrive in community, and let's get them housing that feels like a village.

Watch the presentation by clicking  ► above or click this link HERE

For more information, contact: New Hope Housing & Homelessness Task Force, email [email protected]

Antioch Continuing Education Classes 2023

DATE CORRECTIONS

Now open for registration

Oakcreek Celebrates Milestone

Cohousing Community in Stillwater, OK celebrating their 10-year anniversary

Oakcreek Community in Stillwater, Oklahoma just celebrated its 10th year in existence this past Thursday. Guests were invited to an anniversary party, and many of those who helped the community throughout the years were in attendance.

The senior cohousing community had much to celebrate, and Pat Darlington and Kay Stewart were eager to talk about the years they’ve spent on the property.

"Cohousing is everything I believed in all of my life ... interdependence, good neighbors, intentional design fostering community, helping, learning, being challenged to grow ... and these are all true at Oakcreek"

-Pat Darlington

Read the rest of the article HERE

Poland Update #8

Basztowa Center Childcare Rehailitation

Have you been listening to NPR?

Clearly the Russians are attempting to eliminate the Ukrainians. Clearly, they just want the territory—they don’t care if there are any people there or not when they finish.

They are only waiting for the Ukrainians to leave due to cold, dark nights or to be killed off. So, for now, millions of Ukrainians continue to flow over the Poland border. The finishing touches on our final classroom in the Polish city of Przemyśl will be completed this month. This is a city close enough to the Ukrainian boarder to accommodate refugees walking out of the country, and at the same time close enough to hear the echoing of Russian bombs. Ninety percent of the refugees are women and children.

Our office has spent November designing and drawing places for young children to grow and be nurtured—in a setting that can only be otherwise described as chaos. As of today, too many children have died in Ukraine due to Russian bombs, artillery, tanks, and bullets. Moms and Dads are not going to let their children be a part of this genocide and are removing their children from these risks every day. These kids have already seen too much. While there, I saw that in their eyes.

After many conversations with Polish politicians, we introduced building childcare centers in Poland for the Ukrainian refugees last May. That is what politicians indicated as critical but not otherwise being provided. We have competent builders finishing this last classroom now, but our most significant volunteer, Ben Davies, returned to Poland last week for a couple of weeks to finish the furniture (lofts, platforms, bookshelves, cubbies, and art easels). More children will soon come over the border and many more childcare centers will need to be built.

While I’m not sure that I will go back after a month there—the need for architects there is vast, especially if you can get your hands dirty—like it will be in Ukraine when that whole disaster is over. And they will, as we did, be able to use volunteers of every sort. We have had 60 volunteers so far, and they were all essential. Your generous donations are what of course made all of this possible, and we are so grateful! 

So let your architect friends know that there is stuff to do in Poland—which will have a positive impact on these young, impressionable, and deserving lives.

The kids are ever present with our work in Poland. "Organizing, cleaning, hauling" and other fun stuff. They really love the new drawing above because now they know what their new environment is going to look like.

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) directly to get bulk discounts, and I find that successful projects get started when lots of folks do their homework. I usually need to give a dozen copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities and/or Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living 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. 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 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 because the book have sold more than 2,000 copies.

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

Finding A Site: Cohousing From the Ground Up

Growing Community: How to Find New Cohousing Members

The Cohousing Company Website