Also see: Part 2 - Elder Cohousing
Cecily O’Connor
RedwoodAge.com
About three nights a week, Phil Ferrante-Roseberry and his family eat dinner with 19 neighbors, the youngest of which is six months old.
They break bread in the community room at Swan's Market, a "cohousing" complex situated between Ninth and Tenth streets in Oakland, Calif., that emphasizes collaboration, social interaction and a sense of community.
Cohousing is like being part of an extended family in a close-knit neighborhood. Residents own their own homes, but benefit from shared land, community gardens, workshop areas and a community room for eating meals. Cohousing neighborhoods - which can be formed from a new group of condos or a existing collection of single-family homes - encourage social interaction through common gardens, pathways and sitting areas. Residents manage the neighborhood through a homeowners' association, and community members have leadership roles. They also split maintenance and gardening chores, and look after each others' kids when needed.
"Before cohousing, I was living in apartments in San Francisco," Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry said as he sipped a martini and served frozen peas to his 17-month-old son during an evening interview from his 1,100 square-foot home. "I like (cohousing) best. I have 19 neighbors, all of whom I trust implicitly."
Shared meals are just one of the "huge conveniences" families enjoy in cohousing communities, said Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry, a 44-year-old co-chief executive officer at CompuMentor, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco. "We pack a lot of living into a small space."
Swan's Market is part of a transitional neighborhood in Oakland constructed in the late '90s from a vacant commercial brick building that used to house a department store and food mart. While grey gates protect the outside of the downtown community, the inside is vibrant and inviting. Two rows of funky condos are open to the sky, offering lots of light for residents to plant gardens and grow flowers outside their red front doors.
Residents can be found near the garden on warm nights using the community barbeque, enjoying Ethiopian food in the community room, or inside the workshop pursuing hobbies like coffee roasting. The community also has held onto its commercial roots, and is home to some restaurants, stores and office space. The Museum of Children's Art, located steps from the entrance of Swan's Market, offers kids in the community another place to play.
"My kids can paint their walls, not mine," Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry said.
Cohousing, which was originally a Danish idea, has been reshaping neighborhoods outside urban areas, too. Overall, there are about 90 cohousing neighborhoods in the U.S., including college-town suburbs like Davis, Calif.
The Village
A strong, collaborative social
system is a chief reason cohousing communities are popular. Baby boomers - a
group that's increasingly interested in this type of neighborhood - are
discovering cohousing is comfortable territory, with communal dining, constant
company and opportunities for spiritual development. In
some ways, cohousing is like a college dorm, said Zev Paiss, a consultant at Abraham
Paiss & Associates, a Boulder, Colo. group that educates and trains
individuals about cohousing.
"It's the idea of recreating the positive aspects of that experience, with a close-knit group of people to play with and help out," he said. "The idea of having an intentional neighborhood is not unfamiliar."
Baby boomers have cohousing options. The most common are multigenerational communities like Swan's Market. About one-third of all people living in multigenerational cohousing communities are boomers. There are also elder communities that are being built for individuals in their 50s and up, according to Abraham Paiss (see Elder Cohousing).
Going forward, there's likely to be a greater mix of the two, with multigenerational and elder communities residing side by side. For example, the Silver Sage elder community in Boulder, Colo., slated to open this fall, is adjacent to a larger, multigenerational cohousing development called Wild Sage.
"Elder cohousing is still so new," Mr. Paiss noted. "So almost all (baby boomers) are in multigenerational cohousing and love it."
Kevin Wolf, a 50-year-old resident of N Street Cohousing in Davis, Calif. said he doesn't expect to leave his home for an elder community when he's older because he likes being part of a diverse community that houses people of all ages. N Street is a "retrofit" community that was created from two houses in 1986, rather than building a new development from the ground up. The community has expanded to 18 houses, by acquiring homes as they become available. Fences have been taken down between houses over time, a garage was converted to a community room, and landscaping has been integrated between the homes.
"I believe what I want to be part of is a village... young people, babies, families all the stuff that goes with that," Mr. Wolf said.
Homeowners' Association
Residents work together to make
collaborative decisions about issues in their community. And manage their
neighborhood through a homeowners' association after they move in. That means
they pay dues, although performing maintenance themselves can help offset costs.
They also stand to benefit financially from the economies of scale that come
with sharing community resources like utilities and washers and dryers, and
broadband Internet access.
"We do a lot of the community work ourselves, rather than hire it out," Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry said. "Not only does that save money, but it can be a good community-building activity. When we wanted to paint our common house last year, we rented scaffolding and did the work ourselves, saving some thousands of dollars."
The common house is like the central nerve system for a given community. About 29 residents gather in the Swan's Market common house three times a week to enjoy meals, including a recent Ethiopian dinner. Costs for common meals are between $3 and $6 a plate.
Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry said he and his family enjoy cohousing so much, they are looking into similar options in Boulder, Colo. His wife Lydia just accepted a new pastor position at a church in the area, and the family plans to move from Swan's Market this summer. Overall, the emphasis on communal living means finding a potential buyer for his home accepts Swan's Market social contract and fits well in the community is important, Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry said. Most communities have a "goodness of fit" checklist or questionnaire that helps potential members determine is cohousing is right for them.
"I'll invite prospective buyers to come to a common meal and/or homeowners' association meeting, and then I'll invite members of the community to tell me if they have a particularly good or bad feel for someone," he said. "If I had to, I'd trade a little capital appreciation for the communities' appreciation for having sold to someone who is a good match."
Cost is a reflection of the value in a given area. For example, Mr. Ferrante-Roseberry said he expects his Oakland home will list in the mid-to-upper $500s. It has two bathrooms, and two bedrooms, in addition to an upstairs loft that has been converted to an open-air, make-shift master suite.
Similar condos in downtown Oakland are being listed anywhere from $499,000 to $600,000, based on a scan of real estate listings on Craigslist.org. Generally speaking, cohousing residents can expect to pay the “market rate” that's going for other single-family homes or condos in the area, said Kate deLaGrange, a senior associate at Abraham Paiss.
At N Street Cohousing, residents have been paying as much as $10,000 over the market price as homes become available. Mr. Wolf explains why: "Demand is high to live here."
Also see: Part 2 - Elder Cohousing
