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To meet the rapidly expanding demand for suitable housing for seniors, CohoUS has formed a new Senior Cohousing Committee. The committee is the result of merging SAGE Senior Cohousing Advocates into CohoUS.
SAGE started 12 years ago as Chuck Durrett, author of The Senior Cohousing Handbook, was finishing week-long Study Group 1 “Aging Successfully” training. He and several SG1 participants met together to think about how to elevate the story of senior cohousing to a wider audience.
SAGE was established with the goal of helping seniors find and create cohousing. Of the many SAGE accomplishments, a few are:
- helped organize the 2016 national Aging in Community Cohousing Conference in Salt Lake City.
- organized a day-long senior cohousing intensive, “Roadmap to Starting a New Community,” at the 2017 national CohoUS conference in Nashville.
- Facilitated a very successful 2017 “Senior Cohousing How-To” weekend intensive workshop with QV members, and which also informed the State-of-the-Art publication.
- Helped produce the 2020 publication, “State of the Art Cohousing: lessons Learned from Quimper Village, co-authored by former SAGE board member Alexandria Levitt with Chuck Durrett and the residents of QV.
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co-led a 4-part workshop series, “Is Cohousing Right for You?” by Alexandria and fellow SAGE board member and executive director of Ontario-based Cohousing Options Canada, Kristopher Stevens.
Why the merger?
Throughout 2021-22 SAGE met collaboratively with CohoUS to look at how SAGE could contribute senior expertise, deep relationships established with seniors living in cohousing, and other valuable resources.
Together it was decided that SAGE Senior Cohousing Advocates corporation should merged their members and resources into a new CohoUS Senior Cohousing Committee.
What’s next:
We are currently looking at the unique content on SAGE’s website to see what should migrate to our CohoUS website. This includes a very important topic - “Why Senior Cohousing”, a directory of existing and developing senior cohousing projects, and tips for exploring senior cohousing.
Our new Committee needs volunteers like you! Come partner with us on upcoming projects that need writers, organizers, facilitators, and others passionate about creating community for and with seniors. Our projects will include our researching and sharing best practices and challenges of aging successfully in cohousing, online workshops and Q&A sessions about aging in community, as well as publishing articles and other resources to aid seniors on their community journeys.
We are excited that our committee is better able to support existing senior cohousing communities those in development, and seniors living in multigenerational cohousing. Combining our efforts will increase our impact and improve our outreach and education to inspire greater numbers of seniors to investigate and choose cohousing as their choice for aging successfully.
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