The Cohousing Company

Holiday Singing at Nevada City Cohousing

East Vancouver Public Presentation & GIB Workshop

February 9th, 11th–12th, 2023

"It is time to kickoff a public presentation for a new cohousing community in East Vancouver!"

Please spread the word to anyone you know (your email list) who might be interested in joining a new community in Vancouver, BC, or just wanting to know more about cohousing.

Location: Wise Hall

1882 Adanac St

Vancouver, BC V5L 2E2, Canada

Date & Time: February 9th, 2023 @ 7:00 PM

For more information, please email [email protected]

We look forward to seeing you there!

Ramona, CA Public Presentation

March 16th, 2023

"At Elliott Pond, you’ll see a lot of people. Our town square, with its restaurants and events, will be Ramona’s social center. It will also make Ramona a place to go to, not just go through."

Please spread the word to anyone you know (your email list) who might be interested in joining a new community in Ramona, CA, or just wanting to know more about cohousing.

Location: Ramona Senior Center

434 Aqua Ln

Ramona, CA 92065

Date & Time: March 16th, 2023 @ 6:00 PM

For more information, please email [email protected]

We look forward to seeing you there!

Other Updates in Cohousing: Table of Contents

January 2023

• Congress Update 02



• Cohousing Village Works - Spokane, WA

• Antioch Continuing Education Classes in 2023 DATE CORRECTIONS

• The State and Future of Cohousing

Congress Update 02

Participatory Design in Affordable (Subsidized) Cohousing

Folks are sending letters to their congress people (See our November & December newsletter) and that’s great. But this will be a long haul.

We got a 6th congress person Cathy Anne McMorris Rodgers of Washington state to endorse the reconsideration of Title 6 & 24 of the HUD guideline. I met with her staff in her district on the east side of Washington—which people say is the best way to get the endorsement. She said that she would support it after a meeting with her chief of staff.

I would list the letters to help avoid redundancy. But the suggestions I have received say that the more repetitive letters the better.

Congress is so distracted these days. I heard on NPR that they will probably only address 1/40 of the bills in front of them over the next 2 years. Very disturbing.

So, please see sample letters to your congress people. I’ll continue to collect endorsement until we have a critical math.

Find Our Updated Sample Letter for Your Congress Person HERE

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.

Village Cohousing Works is hard at work! Following the initial public presentation and task force meeting, they organized a Getting It Built Workshop with The Cohousing Company to lay out a clear set of steps that they need to pursue to get their affordable community built. This workshop took place over the weekend of January 7th & 8th, 2023, and we are happy to report that it was a big success!

With a great number of people showing up to show their support and enthusiasm for the project, we couldn't have been more thrilled. This event proves to everyone that there's a great groundswell of interest to get people off the street and solve this housing crisis.

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.

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

Antioch Continuing Education Classes 2023

DATE CORRECTIONS

Now open for registration

The State and the Future of Cohousing in America

New Educational Video Series

This is a new educational video series we are doing to demystify what cohousing is, how it got started, and where we want to see it in the future.

Have you been following our social media accounts? If so, you might notice that we have started a new educational video series, where Charles Durrett reflects on his 30 years experience designing cohousing and talks about The Current State and the Future of Cohousing in the United States and Beyond.

The video above is our first video of the series, where Chuck introduces what cohousing is, and what its benefits to the resident and their social and physical wellbeing.

You can find and follow the rest of the series by following all of our social media accounts below. This is also an amazing to stay in the loop of what's going in the cohousing and intentional community world.

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 their 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.

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