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Have you heard of Cohousing?

by theminimalistmom |

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This is a guest post from Mackenzie Stonehocker, reader and Cohousing organizer. We’ve been exchanging emails about cohousing and I asked Mackenzie if she would guest post here on the blog. She kindly agreed. I love this concept. It seems ideal for a lot of people: less of the upkeep of being a sole home owner and all of the benefits of a small community. This is a much needed option for cities that are struggling with affordability.

When I tried to wipe a toddler’s bum while breastfeeding a newborn, it hit me like the alternating wails of two pint-sized humans in stereo: our lives had gotten much more complicated.  The regular tasks of managing a household filled each day, and when a fever or an overtime shift hit, my husband and I went into disaster-management mode.

While the newborn phase passes pretty quickly, I didn’t see many examples of families with older kids who looked calm, cool and collected…  In fact, most people seemed to be more isolated, overwhelmed and busier than they’d prefer.

And since we live in Vancouver, we’re forced to look outside the box when it comes to housing.  Single family homes are over a million dollars (unless you opt for a time- and soul-sucking commute), townhouses are surprisingly few and far between (and instigate bidding wars!), and condo towers sometimes seem designed to stifle community.

But we also saw the potential for a much richer life, and that’s what we wanted to show our children. We want them to learn from, and care for, a wider circle than just our family.  We don’t want them (or us) to be blinded by privilege, assuming a ‘proper’ family lives in a single family home regardless of the cost. We want to demonstrate that experiences and relationships will take us farther and support us better than possessions can.

When I learned about cohousing, it clicked.

Just like us, families in Denmark in the 1960s weren’t happy with choosing between a suburban single family home or a multi-storey apartment building.  Neither option provided the caring, social village atmosphere they sought, so cohousing was born.  It has spread across Europe and North America, but is still fairly rare in Canada; less than 20 communities have been built or are under construction.

Cohousing is housing designed for a greater sense of community and cooperation.  Some residents are good friends, while others are just friendly neighbours.  People have their own private units (like a townhouse or apartment), but they share in extensive common amenities (like a guest suite, workshop, kids’ play space, and a big kitchen and dining area).

While cohousing is designed to create community and foster connection between residents, it’s not a commune or a co-op.  In fact, behind the scenes, the legal framework is something we’re all familiar with: a strata corporation.  Just like a regular condo or strata townhouse, each household owns their unit as well as a share of the common amenities (and you can sell it if you need to move).

But the key difference is that instead of a developer choosing a feature or amenity based on their profit margin (we once rented a condo with a constantly broken bowling alley in the basement!), the cohousing group makes decisions based on what they’ll actually use (maybe that’s storage for kayaks, or maybe that’s a soundproof jam space).  Each cohousing community is organized, planned and designed by the future residents, so it reflects the actual people who live there.

Knowing that you can rely on practical, useful common amenities allows families to live in a slightly smaller, more affordable private unit:

– You don’t need a your own guest room – visitors can use the guest suite.

– You don’t need a dedicated playroom – kids have more fun playing in a group anyways.

– You don’t need a full set of tools – there’s some in the workshop (and there’s also bound to be someone excited to help with your project!).

To be brutally honest, I feel like there’s enough responsibility in my life; I don’t want to be responsible for more space, and more stuff to fill it, and more time to maintain it.  Yes, I want access to a yard and outdoor space, but my enjoyment of that yard would actually be increased if there were more kids to run around, more adults to share a bottle of wine, and more people to rake leaves together on a sunny evening.

And that’s the beauty of cohousing.  We can connect yardwork to our social circle, cement our support networks with Friday night pasta, and through this process, our neighbours become a true community.

Our group is called Driftwood Village Cohousing.  So far, we are 16 households, and we’re planning to build our community in North Vancouver.

If the idea of cohousing appeals to you, check out our website at www.driftwoodvillagecohousing.com or look for a cohousing community near you in Canada (www.cohousing.ca) or the US (www.cohousing.org).

Thank you Mackenzie! Has anyone heard of cohousing before? I can really see the appeal in a city like Vancouver.

  • Hello! We are about to start a small urban cohousing venture of our own. The established communities in our area (twin cities, MN, US) didn’t seem a good fit, but after years of more casual talks with different friends, we kind of came out at a loss. We had decided to stay in St Paul, but the options for relocating multiple families at once within the city seemed a bit logistically impossible. Over the summer, some of our oldest friends (and longest-time co-housing co-dreamers) moved here from NC and bought a house about a mile from where they were renting. Magically, while we were greeting their moving truck, we discovered the house next door had just recently been purchased by a flipper. We closed o the house next door a few weeks ago and are moving in now. Our 2-family (4 grown up and 4 kid but growing) community is a small one. We’ve fenced the adjacent back yards together, will be sharing toys, bikes, garbage pick up, internet service, have combined our tools and are sharing many meals/week. The block we are on is fairly tightly packed with smaller homes and friendly neighbors-we are expecting that over the years as other folks on the block move on we will purchase the homes and add to our community. I had expected our co-housing journey to look different…to either start fresh with 3-4 families in the country or join an existing community, but so far this is amazing. Our village is small, but it’s a village! Also we are total extroverts and they are total introverts-but for both families equally establishing the comfort and trust to be open about when we need down time, alone time, single family time has been really important.

  • I am intrigued by this concept. My only hesitation is “stranger danger”- meaning, how do you manage dealing with obtrusive or difficult neighbors if you’re all sharing the same spaces? I have shared a yard with someone before and never used it because they constantly took the space over. I would hope that anyone who decides to live in a co-housing environment would understand the “co” part of it.

    • Yes, I’m an introvert so wonder how I would deal with finding outdoor quiet and alone time if the people doing the same were well known to me.
      I think it’s a good question. I’m sure cohousing attracts people that want a lot of interaction with their neighbours.

      • Hi Elizabeth and MinimalistMom,
        This is a commonly asked ?/concern, so I’ll weigh in briefly! Feel free to follow up with me if you have further questions. Cohousing is typically self-selective – as in, someone who choose to engage in what is a long-term and deliberate process with their neighbors is usually quite invested in making it successful, and a team player in the community.

        Also, the Introverts vs. Extroverts living in community is an important point, and the balance is one which surprised me, at first, when I began work in the world of cohousing. It turns out, that in studies conducted on a broad scale across a myriad of cohousing communities nationwide, there are actually MORE identified introverts than extroverts in cohousing. The US population split identifies as 75% extrovert and 25% introvert whereas in cohousing its right about 50/50 (48% E & 52% I).

        Why is that? The structure allows for a beautiful balance of privacy and community – introverts can choose when they want community at their doorstep (sit out on the front porch with a cup of coffee as neighbors pass by on their way to the parking area, visit the common house for common dinner) or their privacy, just like you would have in a typical, albeit more anonymous neighborhood. And we certainly all love having choices!

        Minimalist Mom, thanks again for writing this article!

        Jenny
        CoHousing Solutions

  • I love this idea! I first heard about cohousing from a documentary called “Happy.” It’s a great film and the woman from Denmark profiled lived in a cohousing situation. Sounds like it was a wonderful option for everyone. That sense of community is so appealing – wish we had this concept here in the USA. Thanks for the posting.

  • I know some folks who live in a cohousing situation here in Finland, and it seems to work well for them. Coming from America, most of the housing here seems to lean toward cohousing principles. There are more apartment blocks than individual houses, people own their apartments and share building maintenance costs, use common rooms for gatherings, share park-like yards and children’s play areas, and work community gardens.

    What I wonder is what distinguishes cohousing from a kibbutz or commune, other than avoiding scary words like “collective” and “socialism”?

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