Communal Living & Cohousing – Types & Benefits of …

For most Americans, housing is the single biggest expense in their personal budget. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average household spends more than 30% of its after-tax income on housing expenses, including rent or mortgage payments, utilities, maintenance, and furnishing.For single people, the figure climbs to more than40% of after-tax income.

One way to reduce this cost is to share housing expenses with others. Doing this is one reason married couples tend to have lower expenses per person than single people. However, theres another way to share housing expenses thats open to both single and married people: cohousing.

Cohousing is an arrangement in which manypeople live together in a community, with small homes for each person or family and larger areas that are shared by all. People who live in cohousing arrangements can save money, share chores, enjoy group activities, and form lasting friendships.

Cohousing is a type of intentional community, in which people make a conscious choice to live together as a group.However, its notthe same thing as a commune, in which a group of families jointly own a plot of land and share all their income andother resources. Instead, cohousing ismore like a cross between individual and communal living.

The people in a cohousing community have their own jobs, their own private lives, and their own individual living space. However, they also share space such as a garden, a laundry room, and sometimes a kitchen with their neighbors. They also share the work of maintaining these shared areas and keeping the community running smoothly.

The cohousing concept originated in Denmark and made its way to the United States in the late 1980s.According to the Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US), there are now more than 170cohousing communities in 36 states.

There are many different types of cohousing communities, from urban to rural. However, nearly all cohousing arrangements havecertain features in common:

According to the Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US), cohousing communities can have anywhere from 7 to 67 individual units, but most have between 20 and 40. A singlecommunity can house a wide range of households, includingsingle people, childless couples, parents with young children, and retirees.

Specific types of cohousing include:

Being part of acohousing community offers many benefits. It makes it possible to enjoy a home with more amenities than you could afford on your own; it helps youprotect the environment by sharingresources with the group; and, most importantly, it gives you a chance to be part of a caring community where neighbors look out for each other.

When you look just at the upfront cost of homesin acohousing community, this housing optiondoesnt actually lookany cheaper than buying a housesomewhere else. In fact, aFAQ on cohousing published by Cohousing Solutions, a consulting service for developers of cohousing communities, admits thatcohousing homes typically cost more than other new townhouses or condos of similar size.

However, you have to remember that when you buy intoa cohousing community, you arent just getting a home of your own youre alsogettingaccess to all the facilities in the common house and the shared grounds. For just a little bit more than youd pay for a small home somewhere else, you get the kind of space and amenities thatnormally come with a much larger and more luxurious home, such as a big family room, a pool, a huge yard, a workshop, and a playroom for kids. So overall, cohousing gives you more bang for your housing buck.

Living in cohousing can save you money in other ways, too. For instance, you can save on the following:

When you put all these savings together, theycanoffset the added cost of buying a cohousing home and then some. According to the FIC,asurvey of 200 cohousing residents found that living in cohousing saved them at least $200 per month on their entire budget. For some residents, the monthly savings came to more than $2,000.

Sharing resourcesis an inherently eco-friendly idea. For instance, when people in cohousing share a laundry room, they eliminate the need for each of them to have a separate washer and dryer. In turn, this cuts down on the natural resources and energy that it would take to build all those machines. The same goes for all the other resources that cohousing communities share, from garden spaceto power tools.

Cohousingcan also benefit the environment in more specific ways, such as:

One of the biggest perks of living in cohousing is the chance to be part of a community where peoplelook out for each other.Its easy to find a babysitter or someone to water your plants while youre away on vacation. Seniors who have trouble shoveling snow or moving furniture can find a younger person to help them out.And, in a close-knit community, you have a better chance of knowingsomeone who can advise you on a job that requires special skills, such as replacing a faucetorupdating your computer.

Along with giving each other practical help, people in cohousing often get togetherjust for fun. In addition to havinggroup meals, they play music together, watch movies, put on plays, and share celebrations such as weddings and birthdays.

Although living in cohousing promotes closeness, itcan also provide more privacy for families. For instance,if the commonhouse has a sharedplayroom, kids can take their noisy or messy activitiesin there, where they wont disturb parents who are trying to work or relax at home. And when families have visitors, they can put them up in the common houses guest rooms,so they dont haveto shuffle people around or have a crowd in the bathroom every morning.

When you live in cohousing, you shareownership of the common house and grounds with all the other residents. To make this arrangement legal, the owners can form a homeowners association (HOA), a condo association, or a housing cooperative. All the owners aremembers of this group andshare the responsibility for maintaining the common areas.

Cohousing communities have different ways of dividing up this work. One way is toset up work teams that are assigned to handle specific jobs, such as preparing meals, cleaning the common house, caring for plants, and making repairs.In some cases,each person works at each of these jobs in turn;in others, specific people sign upto do the jobs they prefer. Cohousing communities can also holdwork days throughout the year when everyone pitches in to tackle a specific job, such as raking and bagging leaves in the fall.

Members of a cohousing community also have to share the decisions about maintenance, upgrades, and community activities. Manycommunities do this througha process calledconsensus decision-making, in whichpeople just keep talking and refining their viewsuntil they reach a solution everyone can agree on. This takes longer than having a simple majority vote on each issue, but it does a better job ofreaching decisions that all the residents are satisfied with.

All in all, joining acohousing community is a big responsibility. You have to share in the work, attend regular meetings, and be prepared to work through disagreements with others. But if living in cohousing is more work, its also more play. You get to share meals, parties, games,clubs, and other activities with all the other residents a perk youre unlikely to findin a basic housing development.

If youre interested in joining a cohousing development, the easiest way to find one is through the Cohousing Directory on the Coho/US website. It lists all the cohousing communities in the country, sorted by state, including those that are just getting started. Each listing has some basic information about the community, a link to its website, and contact information.

You can also browse the sites classified ads. They list homes for sale in existing cohousing communities throughout the country, as well as new cohousing communities that are seeking members. You can also find professional services for people interested in building a new cohousing community.

If you dont live in the United States, you can try searching the listings ofthe FIC Directory. It lists cohousing communities in the United States and around the world, from Venezuela to Australia. You can also find listings forother types of intentional communities, such as communes, eco-villages, and Christian religious communities.

Finally, if you cant find any cohousing communitiesin your area, Coho/US offers information on how to start a new one. In an article called Getting Started, cohousing expert Rob Sandelin lists the initialsteps you need to take when starting a cohousing community from scratch:

Once youve taken care of these basics, you canget down to the nitty-gritty business of buying land, building homes, and dealing with all the legal formalities, such as setting up an HOA. There are many resources on the Coho/US website that can help with this process: lists of recommendedbooks, articles, names of cohousing professionals (such as architects and developers), and useful documents dealing with a huge range of topics, from financing to community gardens. And, if you have a problem these documents cant answer, you can join the Coho/USdiscussion list and pose your question to all the groups members.

Living in cohousing isnt for everyone. For some people, the amount ofwork involved in going to meetings and taking care of common areas is a deal-breaker. Others just dont want to be so closely involved in their neighbors lives. Its one thing to chat across the fence or exchange occasional favors, but its another thing entirely to share land and have dinner togetherevery week.

However, for those who crave the kind of close-knitcommunity that used to be a more common part of American life, cohousing can be a way to find it. It offers a chance to know your neighbors as friends, enjoying each others company in good times and helping each other with challengeslike a job loss or a new baby.Having this kind ofstrong support network makes it easier to get through troubled times and live a happier, healthier life.

Would you like to live in a cohousing community, or do you think its not for you?

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Communal Living & Cohousing - Types & Benefits of ...