Cohousing Down Under

[caption id="attachment_976" align="aligncenter" width="413" caption="Earthsong Eco-Neighborhood"][/caption] Last summer I was contacted by Jeremy Rose of Radio New Zealand to do an interview for his radio program called Ideas.  At the time, I'd never done a phone interview for radio and I recall feeling like I was rambling on and on about cohousing...but he did a good job editing it down to a coherent interview and including other "experts" who are local to their island nation.  You can listen to the full interview here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ideas/20100829

Also featured on the program was Earthsong Eco-Neighborhood, a cohousing community based on principles of permaculture.  They were established in 1995.  Great to see people realizing their goals for social and environmental sustainability.

http://www.earthsong.org.nz/

Schemata Workshop is winner of AARP Livable Communities Award

[caption id="attachment_938" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Daybreak Cohousing"][/caption] Last Friday, Schemata Workshop was recognized by AARP and the National Association of Home Builders for thedesign of Daybreak Cohousing.  We received the Livable Communities Award in the Architect category and we are thrilled to receive this honor.

[caption id="attachment_941" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Daybreak Cohousing Private Home"][/caption]

Daybreak is an intergenerational cohousing development of 30 homes in Portland, OR.  Construction was completed in late in 2009.  The 1, 2, and 3-bedroom homes are fully independent, but they also share 7,000sf of common area (called the Common House) that includes a commercial kitchen, large dining room, childrens play room, library, laundry facilities, workshop, indoor bike parking for 90 bikes, 2 guest rooms, yoga studio, and craft room.  From the window of each kitchen residents have direct sight lines to this Common House.  All the homes are connected to one another via an exterior walkway that allows the life of the community to be seen and experienced daily.  The walkway also serves as sun shading for the south facing windows.

[caption id="attachment_939" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Daybreak Cohousing"][/caption]

A description of the project as well as photos and a video can be found at http://www.aarp.org/home-garden/livable-communities/info-12-2010/lca_portland_1.html

It is notable that 2 of the 5 awards were granted to cohousing projects.  I wonder if this is a tipping point for cohousing - will it truly inform a new paradigm for the American Dream?  One that is not defined by the single family house with 2-car garage and white picket fence, but instead a dream that is depicting seniors and kids working in community gardens, or unrelated adults preparing a community meal, or helping one another with errands in a physical setting that reinforces community interactions and shared resources...all the while enabling residents to maintain the privacy of their individual homes.  Now that's an American Dream that I could aspire to!  (And I know there are still a few homes available for sale if it appeals to you as well!)

Thanks to our design team (noted in previous blog post about Daybreak, but bears repeating)!  Swenson Say Faget Structural Engineers, Lando Associates Landscape Architects, MGH Civil Engineers, Urbsworks, Maria Cahill, Melissa Medeiros, and Liz Fekete!  And to our most excellent General Contractor - Gabe Genauer of B&G Builders.

related articles:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/boomerconsumer/archives/235746.asp?from=blog_last3

http://www.lakestevensjournal.com/county-state/article.exm/2011-01-19_cohousing__best_of_both_worlds_for_wa_boomers_

http://seniorhousingnews.com/2011/01/17/aarp-and-nahb-announce-2010-livable-communities-awards-winners/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SeniorHousingDaily+%28Senior+Housing+News%29#

http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/17945-1

http://www.kugn.com/newsstory.php?id=1617&type=localnews

(We know that an interview was aired on a number of Oregon and Washington radio stations, but if you find more links for news articles, please let us know!)

Affordable Cohousing

[caption id="attachment_675" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Petaluma Avenue Homes"][/caption] A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2010 Housing Washington Conference.  This is an annual conference for the 700-800 movers and shakers in Washington State's affordable housing industry.  The keynote speakers* all spoke about the need for a new paradigm in home ownership - that perhaps it's not possible/sustainable for everyone to aspire to that particular American Dream.   As a homeowner who was caught in the unfortunate bubble burst (trying to sell as the bottom of the housing market started to fall out 3 years ago), it's understandable why top financial forecasters might say this.  But for those who have not yet attained that American Dream so experience the trials/tribulations it can bring, it seems unfair for someone else to pull up the drawbridge before they can even step foot into their castle.

So I don't know if it was this new attitude, or the nation's desire to return to a new "normal" where community is at the heart of what matters...but our presentation on Affordable Cohousing garnered a lot of attention compared to last year when I presented the same topic at the 2009 Housing Washington conference in Spokane.

Mike gave an overview of cohousing and I shared about 6 examples of built communities that were able to incorporate affordable units into their projects using inclusionary zoning, incentive zoning, HUD HOME funds, and Community Land Trusts.  One featured project that received a significant amount of interested was an affordable rental community- Petaluma Avenue Homes, developed by Affordable Housing Associates in Sebastapol, CA.  This 45-unit community is rented to individuals of 30-60% AMI and was designed by McCamant & Durrett Architects - the pioneers of Cohousing who coined the term and adapted/introduced the concept to North America. 

[caption id="attachment_676" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Petaluma Ave Homes Common House"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_680" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Silver Sage Senior Cohousing, Boulder, CO"][/caption]

Other examples were:

Elderspirit - a senior cohousing project in Abingdon, VA with 16 affordable rental units and 13 home ownership units;

Pacifica in Carrboro, NC with 7 affordable units made possible through incentive zoning and purchased to low income families via a community land trust;

Frog Song in Cotati, CA made possible by inclusionary zoning; and

Silver Sage - a senior cohousing community in Boulder, CA that is part of a larger master planned redevelopment called Holiday Park.

Our presentation is available for download from the conference website.  http://www.wshfc.org/conf/presentations/T8CohousingGraceKimMikeMariano.pdf

We welcome your questions and comments on the presentation.  And if you know of additional examples, would love to hear about those as well.

*Keynote speakers were Nicolas Retsinas (Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University) and Bruce Katz (Brookings Institute).

What does affordable housing look like?

[caption id="attachment_541" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Petaluma Avenue Homes"][/caption] When I was in architecture school at Washington State University, architect Michael Pyatok came to do a lecture on affordable housing and mentioned that he had experienced comments in public hearings that his proposed project "didn't look like affordable housing" - and this was perceived as a bad thing by the commenter.  That's a poor reflection on our society - when design for poor people (the people who have the least means and face the most social inequity) should be inferior.  Luckily that was almost 20 years ago and a lot has changed in the arena of affordable housing.

I'm proud to be a participant in Washington State's affordable housing industry during a period of time when HUD is making significant structural changes through it's Sustainable Communities Initiative.  Finally, the silos of our federal government are being dismantled to recognize the synergies between housing, the environment, and transportation systems.  And the possibility for education and food (nutrition) to be added to that mix is even more revolutionary (for government, not reality).

Washington State is home/host to an amazing annual conference called Housing Washington.  It brings together 700-800 people that work to create and manage affordable housing in the state - bankers, developers, social service providers, housing authorities, attorneys, government entities, and of course a handful of architects. (I'm sure I missed someone in there).  http://www.wshfc.org/conf/

And cohousing can be a part of that solution.  As a board member for the Cohousing Association of the United States, I have been chairing the Affordable Cohousing Task Group.  We are developing/implementing an advocacy plan that will reach out to allied organizations and policy makers to share how cohousing can be a solution to creating healthy mixed-income neighborhoods that provide moderate income families with positive role models for achieving financial independence. 

The photo pictured above is a Petaluma Avenue Homes, a 45 unit cohousing-inspired community developed by Affordable Housing Associates in Sebastapol, CA.  The rental community was designed by McCamant & Durrett Architects - the architects who coined the term cohousing and introduced cohousing to North America after extensively researching it Denmark.  Petaluma Avenue Homes is a great example of how cohousing principles can inform the physical design to be an armature for building community.  It doesn't hurt that the architects convinced the developer to provide funding for a community facilitator to help develop community norms and structure during the first 2 years of occupancy. 

This will be one of many examples Mike and I will share during our presentation tomorrow at the 2010 Housing Washington Conference entitled Affordable Cohousing - Making it Work for Low Income Families.  Please come by and say hi!  To see what other sessions are being offered, visit http://www.wshfc.org/conf/HW2010.Glance.pdf.

Transparency, Curiosity, and Compassion

I live at Daybreak Cohousing (http://www.daybreakcohousing.org/). Daybreak is an intentional community of neighbors who want to know each other and interact with each other on a daily basis. See our website or the national cohousing website: if you want to know more about us or cohousing in general. As with most communities, we have adopted a process/guide to help us effectively communicate with one another. We have adopted the “Mutual Learning Model”.

Transparency, Curiosity, and Compassion are the three key elements in the “Mutual Learning Model”. I find them to be invaluable in having clear, useful and productive conversations. They are particularly useful when having difficult conversations, which all of us have in life – be it with your partner, your family, your neighbors, or your colleagues.

Tuesday night, Emily Newberry with Wizense, Inc. (http://www.wizense.com/Wizense/Welcome.html), came and talked to our community about these concepts. She helped to make this way of communication more present for us once again as it has been quite awhile since our community has focused on how we communicate. I found it to be a wonderful  reminder of how to be together and what is important to us.

These are the guiding principles underlying Roger Shwarz’ 9 ground rules (http://www.schwarzassociates.com/content/products/1708), which we have also adopted. Ground rules are ways of talking and communicating with each other that are mutually agreed upon. They help groups talk in a way that supports each other and furthers communication to get to joint decisions.

“Transparency is being fully who you are and being honest about what you know and believe and how you see things.”

“Curiosity is being genuinely interested in what others have to say and what they know.”

“Compassion is temporarily suspending the belief that you have the right answer and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to get what it is like to know what they know and reason the way they do.”

When you do all this, you can ‘play in the sandbox’ together. You begin by inviting the person/people you want to have a conversation to join you. This is much more effective than arm wrestling and being in the place of the “Unilateral Control Model”.

Thank you Emily and Daybreak for a great presentation and reminder! May we all continue to learn together!