Coming Home to Cohousing

Printed in the Family Post: Holiday Issue 2006

By Dyann Castro-Wehr

My family’s journey to Cohousing began about five years ago. My husband Frank and I with our two children, Dominic, 12 and Joy, 9 moved to rural Nevada City from the Bay Area, excited about the living in this beautiful foothills community. We thought a bigger house, some land, a beautiful natural setting, what could be more perfect for us? As I reflect on how it is that we’ve ended up giving up that home and are now living in Nevada City Cohousing, I look at this journey through three lenses: what we’re learning, what we’re loving, and where we are going.

WHAT WE’RE LEARNING

What we discovered was that the sense of community we experienced from living near family and in our previous neighborhood in Oakland was more a part of us and more essential to us then we knew. And we didn’t discover that until we didn’t have it. While we made wonderful friends here, connecting with them almost always involved pre-planning and driving (I’m more the spontaneous type and don’t enjoy driving). We thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of our land and felt compelled to share it. We considered many ways to create community there through subdividing the space and remodeling our house. We even shared our home with friends for a period of time. Ultimately, those options didn’t work and what we learned was that even with the most wonderful neighbors, the space between our homes in our rural neighborhood did not allow for the daily, casual interaction with neighbors that was so important to us. Some people thrive in the quiet and privacy offered by this environment. For us, it helped to clarify a greater need.

Soon things became clearer for us. The very first book I checked out from the Nevada County Library was Kathryn McCamant’s and Charles Durrett’s book, “Cohousing: A Contempory Approach to Housing Ourselves.” My son and I read this book together, were inspired by the photos and stories, and were drawn to the collaborative lifestyle. As a family, we knew this was in our future and affirmed that this would happen for us. A year later, our family attended the Group Formation Gathering for Nevada City Cohousing. Here, we learned that there was a system and an approach to community living that was at work intuitively within us. We just hadn’t discovered it formally until the workshop. We jumped right in and the coming home feeling began.

For three years we worked with our neighbors and architects to create our community. We began by clarifying our values and our shared vision and then materialized them through the choices we made in designing our neighborhood. Core values such as sustainability, pedestrianfriendly and collaboration are reflected in the type of building materials we chose, where our garages are placed on the site, and how we conduct our meetings. There was much new learning for us about both housing and community development.

Now that we are living in cohousing, we continue to realize that the learning and expanding in community life is ongoing and rich. As a family, we’re figuring out many things as we adjust to life in cohousing. For example, finding the right balance between family and social time, how soon to start dinner when you’re cooking for fifty people, and how to be inclusive in decision-making.

WHAT WE’RE LOVING

In the near-year that I’ve lived in Cohousing, I can say that, on a daily basis, new visions of hope for the future are fed or my heart is nurtured in a simple way. I catch a view of an adult reading to the children, a small group of girls building fairy houses outside my front door, teens through pre-schoolers playing hide-n-seek together or ten people turning out to plant seeds for a winter garden.

The social benefits of cohousing are many. My kids are extremely happy. They thoroughly enjoy playing with children of all ages and there is no shortage of play. They’re able to take off on their scooters and I can call back, “come back for dinner” much the same way my mother would do when I was a child. With the many watchful eyes in our village, I’m comfortable allowing them the freedom and independence they so enjoy. We live in a community with several other families, single people, elders, and couples without young children. I’m grateful that many members of our community have become like extended family. My children have the daily opportunity to befriend an elder as well as await with excitement the newborn on her way. The intergenerational connections are beautiful to witness. One of my fondest memories was at our community’s recent Harvest Festival. We square danced and celebrated together, with the youngest in our community, surrounded by teens, elders and everyone in-between. We even had a chili cook-off and apple pie baking contest. Days like that are what we’ve dreamed of and make all the meetings and planning worthwhile.

The practical benefits to cohousing abound as well. We purchase bulk items together, watch each other’s kids, share rides, shop and cook for each other. I am so grateful for coming home from soccer practice at 6:45pm to a wholesome common meal prepared by a community member. Often, kids will even provide after-meal entertainment with dancing, skits, singing or joke-telling.

Living in community also affords us access to resources by way of our neighbors. I feel so grateful to live with an incredibly gifted group of folks with a wide range of talents and expertise. My neighbors are nurses, chiropractors, computer wizards, master gardeners, teachers, engineers, dancers, musicians. I could go on and on…All have been generous in sharing their time, talents and experience with the community.

Not only do I love my neighbors, but I love my home as well. It feels like us. I’m not overwhelmed by the size. It feels great to live in a home that was built with sustainably harvested wood and low toxic materials that gets its energy from the sun. On a daily basis, we consciously choose to live a sustainable lifestyle and are supported and inspired by others doing the same.

WHERE WE’RE GOING

Life in cohousing is rich. My family can choose any number of activities on any given day from yoga, committee meetings, book club, landscaping parties, tea or Scrabble with a neighbor or basketball with a whole gaggle of friends. All this without having to step in a car. I can also choose to sit in my own private yard, alone, and just take it all in.

I’m not exactly sure where we’ll be ten years from now, but seeds are being sown. We have many hopes for the future including an orchard, a bartering system, handwork circles, a dog run and a soon to be completed computerized meal system. I’m realizing now that I’m more confident and willing to attempt some things that I’ve always dreamed about because I have people I care about to work with.

There is one thing I am sure of for myself and for my family. By choosing to live in cohousing, we have chosen a path that seeks to be in relationship with others and live cooperatively and by this choice, our lives have been greatly enriched. My hope is that by living in cohousing, we all learn the lesson of how to listen to others, take their views into consideration, and treat people with respect and kindness. In our cohousing neighborhood, we can model this wish for the world.

WHAT IS COHOUSING?

Cohousing is a type of collaborative neighborhood in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their community, striving for environmental and social sustainability.

Cohousing residents enjoy a convivial lifestyle. Private homes contain all the features of conventional homes, but residents also have access to common facilities such as open space, courtyards, playgrounds and a common house.

The homes are usually attached and clustered around a pedestrian path or courtyard. The common house is the social center of the community where optional group meals are available at least two to three times a week. Common house amenities frequently will include a children’s playroom, laundry facility, workshop, guest rooms, and a large kitchen and dining area.

In many respects, the cohousing model is not new. Many of us remember places where people knew their neighbors. Cohousing communities offer a contemporary model for recreating neighborhoods with that sense of place, and the security and sense of belonging that accompanies it.

WHAT COHOUSING COMMUNITIES OFFER

• A balance of privacy and community
• A safe and supportive environment for children
• A practical and spontaneous lifestyle
• Inter-generational neighborhoods
• Environmentally-sensitive design emphasizing pedestrian access and open space

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

• Participatory Process: Residents participate in the planning and design of the development so that it directly responds to their needs.
• Neighborhood Design: The physical design encourages a sense of community.
• Extensive Common Facilities: The common house is designed for daily use, to supplement private living areas. Common facilities often extend beyond the common house to include children’s play areas, vegetable gardens, and the like.
• Complete Resident Management: Residents take complete responsibility for on-going management of the community, organizing cooperatively to meet their changing needs.
• Non-hierarchical Structure: While there are leadership roles, responsibility for the decisions is shared by the community’s adults.
• Separate Income Sources: There is no shared community economy.

Cohousing communities also provide societal benefits such as greater resource efficiency, both materials and energy, and enhanced security for the community and the surrounding neighborhood. Furthermore, by clustering dwellings, land is used more efficiently, reducing transportation requirements and suburban sprawl.

As American households continue to shrink in size and as we become ever more mobile, cohousing promises to recreate the connections that were once take for granted in traditional neighborhoods. With more than ninety communities built in the US and another fifty in the planning stages, the cohousing concept is reestablishing many of the advantages of traditional villages within the context of life in the 21st century.

UPCOMING EVENTS

AN INTRODUCTION TO COHOUSING SLIDESHOW

Join us on January 25, 2007 at the Holbrooke Hotel, 6:30pm. Awardwinning architect and cohousing developer Kathryn McCamant will present a view of cohousing from various communities. Please contact Cohousing Partners at 478- 1970 to reserve your space.

INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT WOLF CREEK COMMONS COHOUSING COMMUNITY, GRASS VALLEY?

The Wolf Creek Community offers free monthly orientations for prospective members. Join us for a meeting or social event. Please contact Fred Skeen at 559-5411 for more information.