14
Housing community has lots in common
Kathy Journeay
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
INTRODUCTION: Perhaps the most potent image conjured by the words "American Dream" is the single-family home, a self-contained building with a garage on a small plot of land, a castle for each American family. But that model's not for everyone.
Steve Chiotakis talks with Kathy Journeay, a health-care administrator near Boston, about her experiment with a different kind of suburban living called "cohousing."
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: Talk to me a little about cohousing. Why don't you give me a little sort of background information.
KATHY JOURNEAY: Well, cohousing has been going on in the United States since the 1970s. The idea behind it is that it's kind of an intentional neighborhood. It is a place where people can live, and they want to and expect to interact with their neighbors. The development is designed and built by the residents. You cluster the houses very close together. You reserve the cars to the edge of the community, so that the inside of the development is all pedestrian friendly.
CHIOTAKIS: It sounds a lot like an apartment complex, but nobody is attached.
JOURNEAY: It could be, but again, in an apartment complex most folks only know their neighbors in passing. Conceptually the idea behind it is you share the resources. Plus you also have the common house. The common house has a kitchen big enough to cook for the entire neighborhood, and we actually have common meals a couple of nights a week. There's a kids' room, indoor kids' room for playing, which has really awesome insulation, let me tell you. Sound insulation is fantastic. There's a TV room, a yoga studio, we have a sewing room, we have a gym downstairs. And we also have a pool out the back. So rather than the 34 residents building 34 pools or maybe 12 pools, there's only one pool. So you're not using as many resources. We don't have 34 lawnmowers. We're going to have two neighborhood riding lawnmowers, and that's all the lawnmowers we're going to have.
CHIOTAKIS: Any problems with sharing?
JOURNEAY: Well, we're newly moved in. The first residents just moved in in December. So there hasn't been any problems with sharing yet. If we do run into problems, we actually make decisions using a consensus model, rather than say, for example, voting. And that allows us to go in and talk about problems. One of the expectations when you move into cohousing is that you do talk to your neighbors. The first rule of cohousing is that you talk to each other if there's a problem. We don't have a lot of rules in the same way that a condo association has rules. In a condo association often the rules are to take the place of talking to each other. In cohousing we expect people to talk to each other as the first way to resolve conflicts and problems.
CHIOTAKIS: Do you ever see this concept catching on with mainstream America?
JOURNEAY: I think in this economy, I think that people are looking for ways to save money. And I think that this is one way that you could go ahead and do that. And I think that as people adapt and change to the new economy, I think it is possible that people could . . . that these ideas could catch on. I've heard of lollipop developments out in California, where it's, you know, the lollipop-shaped development with four or five houses on it. And those people are beginning to do things like, "Well, my lawnmower broke, let's all share this lawnmower so we don't have to go replace it at this point in time." I do think that you will see concepts like this begin to seep into middle America. Yes, I do.
CHIOTAKIS: Do you ever see moving away from Camelot?
JOURNEAY: Well, I just moved in, so the thought of moving again is absolutely petrifying. I don't know, I feel like I've been completely changed by this experience. It reminds me . . . it has taught me to not be so isolated. It has taught me to both help other people, and to allow other people to help me. It has taught me over and over again that I can rely on other people, that I don't need to do it alone.
CHIOTAKIS: Well, Kathy Journeay, good luck. And thanks for being with us this morning.
JOURNEAY: Thank you for having me.
About the author
Steve Chiotakis was the host of Marketplace Morning Report until January 2012.Pages
I'm a baby boomer, and a health care professional. I've been contemplating what housing in retirement for awhile...and I've spent some extra effort investigating the options available for a friend with a disability, as well as my own mother.
What amazes me is in all the places I've seen or researched online.... very few have truly universal design concepts built into their facilities.
Specifically, for example, the bathroom. Tubs or showers with a lip even a couple of inches high are barriers to those with disabilities or many aging adults. While I would like to think as an active aging boomer I will retain all my physical capabilities until the day I die, I know that's unrealistic for the majority of us. With the price of many of the retirement housing options still geared to the economy pre Fall 2008, one should at least be able to age in place without having to face such impediments or the additional expense and headaches of renovation.
Many of the original Cohousing communities in this country were "do-it-yourself" developments that required many years and hundreds of hours of volunteer time by the people who organized them. But now we have 20 years of experience and lots of cohousing professionals to draw upon. See Cohousing.org Professional classified ads or the ic.org directory for help in organizing this type of living situation for yourself and for your "old friends and new". Go visit one near you and find out how they made it happen for themselves!
Paros and others,
Check out cohousing.org to find cohousing vacancies. We live in cohousing in Peterborough, NH and we have vacancies. www.peterboroughcohousing.org
-Richard.
Nice report NPR. Cohousing is alive and well in many communities around the US, including here in Grass Valley, California....in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Foothills. Wolf Creek Commons, a family-friendly community is a cluster of 32 homes surrounding a 4,000 sq. ft. common house. We boast several hundred feet of creek frontage and we can walk to most services! The community has formed, the land has been purchased and we just need a few more families so we can begin construction. Interested? check out our web site at www.wolfcreekcommons.net
How good to hear about co housing on marketplace! I feel the time has come for this idea. We are involved in building a very special place for active adults in Grass Valley, CA. It's called Wolf Creek Lodge. 30 individual apartments to ensure full privacy, but also a large common house, kitchen, garden plots, a Jacuzzi and Petanque court. Energy efficient construction, walking distance to town and shops, and a large green area along a beautiful creek. We are appealing especially to "baby boomers" who want to spend their retirement among friends and have time to travel and pursue their hobbies without worrying about a big house and property to take care of. Check out our website: www.wolfcreeklodge.org
A slightly different version of cohousing is one which I live and enjoy. When my best friend and long-time housemate married, she and her husband and I all chose to live together in one house. We're one big happy family and expect to live this way for a long time. What has always puzzled (and annoyed) me is that almost all post-1950 houses are built with the traditional nuclear family in mind, which is no longer the statistical norm. There's the "master" bedroom and bath, plus two or three smaller rooms for the kids. I've seen very few houses, short of Victorian, in which several adults and kids can all live together. Families (now called extended families) lived together, helped and supported one another, all under one roof and likely in the family home that was paid for generations ago. Think of the Waltons - grandparents, parents, children and eventually grandchildren. In my case, with our own families either gone or living far away, my friends and I have built our own "family unit". Now if we just had the room to live easily in it.
I personally couldn't live in this arrangement, save for with family (even then it can be a stretch at times) but, the key is to also repeal laws targeted at immigrant and poor families which specifically prevent multifamily cohabitation. Frankly, more people can fit in the same space, but it "reduces property value." If people can deal with having neighbor or even cohabitating with other families, then they should be allowed to, even outside of these special communities. Of course, the problem when living in these situations (as I have.. and now choose to live far away from people and "neighborhoods" is that it is impossible to be fair to everyone. Someone will take advantage of the situation and there will be others who contribute in special ways that will never be recognized. Good luck to those who pursue this style of living, I think it can offer a lot to many.
I think in many places 50 or even 100 years ago the average household was much larger than it is now. Think of the family size for most of our grandparents and great grandparents... it wasn't uncommon to have 3-5 children; and often 3 generations living within the same house or very near each other. My grandfather was one of 6 children, and nearly the entire family lived on farms within a mile or two of each other.
As we gravitated towards smaller families living independently from their kin each family "unit" had to aquire items that previously were shared. (obviously they didn't have riding lawnmowers back then)
It seems we're realizing how inefficient it is for everyone to have everything; and that there's money to be saved in sharing durable capital goods. This new advent just brings these economies together outside of a family network.
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