Reinventing Community : Stories from the Neighborhoods of Cohousing 9781555918149, 9781555915018

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The folks ... in Reinventing Community are ... learning today, often by painful and sometimes humorous trial and error, what it takes to go beyond the solitary and aliented survival tactics of modern urban life to the full flowering of the human spirit of tomorrow. —Eric Utne, founder of Utne magazine and editor of Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac

Cohousing communities offer an alternative American Dream where residents work collaboratively to create strong, vibrant neighborhoods that use fewer resources and provide more-supportive environments. David Wann’s book ... shows us both the mundane and extraordinary aspects of creating and living in community in contemporary America. —Kathryn M. McCamant, cohousing architect, developer, and coauthor of Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves

At last, a delightfully honest look inside the pearly gates of cohousing that describes the many benefits as well as some of the downsides of this vibrant new alternative to “life” in a cookie-cutter home in cookie-cutter suburbia. —Dan Chiras, author of The Solar House, The New Ecological Home, and EcoKids: Raising Children Who Care for the Earth

David Wann brings together a rich tapestry of voices and insights from modern pioneers who are creating human-scale villages that are friendly to people and to the sustainability of life on this planet. —Duane Elgin, author of Voluntary Simplicity and Promise Ahead

Wann’s ... smorgasbord of lively, engaging first-person tales helps us understand why small cooperative neighborhoods like these have such vital appeal—and why cohousing is now the fastest-growing kind of intentional community in North America today. —Diana Leafe Christian, editor of Communities magazine and author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF EVANGELINE WELCH

Reinventing Community

STORIES FROM THE WALKWAYS OF COHOUSING

EDITED BY

DAV I D WA N N

Fulcrum Publishing Golden, Colorado

Text and photographs copyright © 2005 David Wann, unless otherwise noted All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wann, David. Reinventing community : stories from the walkways of cohousing / by David Wann. p. cm. ISBN 1-55591-501-9 (pbk.) 1. Housing, Cooperative—United States. I.Title. HD7287.72.U6W36 2005 307.3’362—dc22 2005023582 ISBN-10: 1-55591-501-9 ISBN-13: 978-1-55591-501-8 Printed in the United States of America 0987654321 Editorial: Katie Raymond, Haley Groce Cover image: Linda Worswick, a founding member of Harmony Village. Photograph courtesy of Jack Lenzo Design: Ann W. Douden Fulcrum Publishing 16100 Table Mountain Parkway, Suite 300 Golden, Colorado 80403 (800) 992-2908 • (303) 277-1623 www.fulcrumbooks.com

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LINDA REED

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi CHAPTER ONE

NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE....1 Laboratories of Social Change or “Yuppie Communes?” David Wann, Harmony Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 “Bofaellesskaber?”An Interview with the Pioneer Couple of American Cohousing David Wann, Harmony Village . . . . . . 13 Guiding a Community Home Matt Worswick, Harmony Village . . 24 CHAPTER TWO

P U T T I N G T H E “ N E I G H B O R” B AC K INTO “NEIGHBORHOODS”....31 Ten Great Reasons to Live in Cohousing Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Sharingwood Stories Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 How Sixty-Seven Tons of Brick Connected a Community Saoirse Charis-Graves, Harmony Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

What I Learned from Children about Giving and Receiving Charles B. Maclean, Ph.D.,Trillium Hollow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Looking Back—But Only for an Instant Steve Einstein,Two Acre Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 CHAPTER THREE

C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S . . . . 4 3 A Recipe for Saving the World, One Bagel at a Time David Wann, Harmony Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 How Does Cohousing Create Sustainability? Graham Meltzer, Ph.D., Cohousing Scholar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 If Not Us, Who? PattyMara Gourley,Tierra Nueva . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Preserving Open Space—and My Sense of Humor Edee Gail, Harmony Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Money, Homes, and Trust: Economic Diversity at Wild Sage Ellen Orleans,Wild Sage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Have Conscience, Will Build: A Developer Reflects on Cohousing Jim Leach,Wonderland Hill Development Company . . . . . . . . . 82 The Journey to 90 Percent Recycling at Quayside Village Brian Burke, Quayside Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 The Landscape of Cohousing and Other Reflections Grant McCormick, Sonora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 CHAPTER FOUR

VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES....103 Greyrock Commons Cohousing Growing Pains, Trials, and Triumphs Katharine Gregory . . . . . 105 Reflections of a Cohousing Elder Renate G. Justin . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Learning from the Land Deborah Warshaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 New View Cohousing With a Little Help from My Friends Dana Snyder-Grant . . . . . . . 124 Heroes, Villains, and Hopeless Hams: Kid Theater at New View Cohousing Franny Osman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Divorce Unites a Community Jane Saks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Duwamish Cohousing My Less-Than-Perfect Community Virginia Lore

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Swan’s Market Cohousing Bringing Life Back to an Urban Neighborhood Stella Tarnay, Former Editor of Cohousing Magazine

. . . . . . . .144

Temescal Creek Cohousing A Different Kind of Fixer-Upper: Retrofit Cohousing Karen Hester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154 CHAPTER FIVE

G E T T I N G S TA RT E D : HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY IN O N E S H O RT D E C A D E O R L E S S . . . . 1 5 9 Building Community—in More Ways Than One Bryan Bowen,Wild Sage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Sage-ing, Not Aging, at Silver Sage: The Birth of an Elder Community Silvine Marbury Farnell, Silver Sage Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Reaching beyond Ourselves: Foster Parenting in Cohousing Laura Fitch, Pioneer Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The Sewing Lessons Julie Rodwell, Former Resident of Winslow . 173 John’s Offer Jane Saks, New View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Burning Souls, Founders, and Maintainers: The Evolution of Muir Commons Rick Mockler, Muir Commons . . . . . . . . . . 176 CHAPTER SIX

M OV I N G I N A N D M OV I N G O N . . . . 1 8 7 Through the Looking Glass PattyMara Gourley,Tierra Nueva . . . 189 How Can We Forget Move-in? Sharon Villines,Takoma Village . . 201 Stairway Common Meals, Cohousing-Style Julie Rodwell, Former Resident of Winslow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 Fearless John Mackey’s Last Days David Wann, Harmony . . . . . 206 CHAPTER SEVEN

DA I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G . . . . 2 0 7 Half-Man, a Styrofoam Mannequin, Disappears at the Harmony Village Garage Sale Su Niedringhaus, Harmony Village . . . . 209 CONTENTS

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Cooking for Fifty: Crisis or Opportunity? Elizabeth Stevenson, Southside Cohousing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Art at Rosewind: Joy and Ruckus Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Growing a Garden, Growing a Community Jenise Aminoff, Cambridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 How the Work Gets Done Sharon Villines,Takoma Village . . . . . 234 Let Cohousing Put You in the Driver’s Seat Mary Kraus, Pioneer Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 It Takes a Village to Raise a Mother Elaine Marshall Fawcett, Former Member of Cascadia Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 CHAPTER EIGHT

C R E AT I N G A N E I G H B O R H O O D C U LT U R E . . . . 2 4 7 The Annual Retreat Is Here! Laura Fitch, Pioneer Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 Celebrating a Wedding at Greyrock Commons Renate G. Justin, Greyrock Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Winter Solstice:Warm and Cold Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood; Sandy Thompson, Heartwood; and Saoirse Charis-Graves, Harmony Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Dancing Our Story PattyMara Gourley, Tierra Nueva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to the many contributors in this book who wrote and rewrote their stories and put up with my endless requests for more pictures, and to the staff at Fulcrum Publishing who saw the need for a book about how cohousing is working and had a strong commitment to making it the very best book it could be. And thanks to my good friends and neighbors in Harmony Village Cohousing. We’ve been through so much together—and we’re still talking! —David Wann

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NOAH BRYANT

INTRODUCTION

A DV E N T U R E S I N C O H O U S I N G

The idea for this book was born in typical cohousing fashion: with one cohousing resident helping another. Diane de Simone, a lively soul from Sonora Cohousing in Tucson, knew I was interested in writing a book about cohousing and suggested it be an anthology. She’s a writer and thought about doing such a project herself, but unselfishly offered the idea to me instead. It made perfect sense: a gallery of stories and photographs contributed by the folks who live in cohousing. In keeping with the aims of cohousing, it would contain many different viewpoints, rather than just my own.Together, we would present a colorful impression of daily life in this new way of neighboring—we would “dance our story,” as contributor PattyMara Gourley phrases it. I personally know several hundred cohousers, including the sixty or so in my own neighborhood, and I was confident that finding writers and photographers would be a snap. Residents of cohousing, many of whom helped design the neighborhoods they live in, are very creative people. I talked with the editors at Fulcrum Publishing, who published another one of my books, The Zen of Gardening.They were interested enough to sign a contract and I put the word out on Cohousing-L, a national e-mail discussion group, that I was looking for lively stories and

essays as well as clear, storytelling photographs. My aim was to compile material that brings to life some of the sparkle, good intentions, and impressive results of cohousing. Immediately, I began hearing from writers across the country who proposed pieces on topics as diverse as working with kids in gardening and theater; living with multiple sclerosis in cohousing; and, through environmental activism, permanently shutting down a pesticide-happy farmer on an adjacent property.Then others joined the project with stories about one neighbor offering a kidney transplant to another neighbor; about a cohousing architect who liked the group so well he became a member; and about how a neighborhood used sweat equity to lay a 55,000-brick walkway, connecting both buildings and people. I wanted to show potential residents what it’s like to live in cohousing because I’m hopeful that the idea, and variants of it, will become an energetic grassroots movement. Despite being acknowledged champions of stress, dedicated television watchers, and dutiful consumers, we human beings of the American variety share fundamental characteristics with all other humans: we long for something meaningful to do, someone remarkable to love, and something magical to hope for. In this pivotal era, I think it’s fair to say that violence, on both the national and neighborhood scale, is making many of us tired.We want to stop the bleeding and prevent it from happening again. I believe the minimovement of cohousing is partly a response to a perceived loss of trust and individual control that’s becoming pervasive in our world. People gravitate toward do-it-ourselves communities because they sense they can be better heard and understood in a place that strives for cooperation and support.They can be neighbors with others who want to help put the pieces back together.When I first joined the group that would become Harmony Village, my old Subaru sported the bumper sticker “Cohousing: Changing the World, One Neighborhood at a Time,” and I’m still convinced that the reinvention of community can bring individual empowerment as well as cooperative action.The world is sorely in need of focused, nonpartisan cooperation right now.Why not deliberately create neighborhoods that are safer, friendlier, and healthier? Is there a downside to this? Naturally, I’m hoping my cohousing peers will enjoy these stories of cohousing heroes and nerds, empathizing with and celebrating lifestyles that are remarkably similar to their own. Maybe it’s the common design REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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themes and ways of making decisions that make cohousing a distinct species, but there’s also a common sense of adventure and a shared belief that we can improve the world if we work together. I can imagine this book being useful when a confused parent or friend asks,“What’s this cohousing thing you’re always talking about?” Cohousing residents or wannabes can hand their inquisitors this book. Even if they just look at the pictures, they are likely to be pleasantly surprised: these are real houses with real roofs (not tepees and tents) and happy, healthy kids.

Harmony common green, a place of infinite possibilities

Of course, from a marketing standpoint, the cohousing goal of reducing unnecessary consumption may inhibit book sales, because knowing cohousing residents, they’ll probably share this book rather than buy it, suggesting that prospective members borrow it from the library. So much for a year’s worth of collecting, compiling, and editing—and scaled-back spending while the work was being done. … Still, I’ve had a lot of fun working with dozens of energetic writers, designers, and photographers from more than thirty North American cohousing communities and I hope this book helps spread the word about this energetic, idealistic experiment in living. Some things we do out of conviction. In an e-mail on Cohousing-L, Liza Cobb quoted Anatole France:“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” Liza was looking for other people to join her in creating a community and ended her note about the virtues and values of cohousing with the enthusiastic phrase,“Let the adventure begin!” INTRODUCTION

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Clearly, it already has.With more than eighty cohousing communities already built in America and Canada, and more than that in the planning or design phase, it’s obvious the spark of what I call neighborhoods on purpose has ignited a small, unwavering flame. The first designers and inhabitants of cohousing are sometimes called the burning souls, whose pioneering efforts in the early 1990s resulted in communities such as Winslow, Nyland, and Muir Commons. (See Rick Mockler’s story,“Burning Souls, Founders, and Maintainers:The Evolution of Muir Commons,” on page 176.) Some of the stories in this collection offer evidence that cohousing, similar to a smart and somtimes-boisterous student, is starting to be noticed by the rest of the crowd. Says cohousing architect Kathryn McCamant,“No book or seminar on American housing would be complete without mentioning it.”

Puget Ridge courtyard, a space for everyone to share PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GRAHAM MELTZER

The reason cohousing fuels my own burning soul is that many of its experiments are extremely valuable to a society so distracted by materialism and so shell-shocked by the frantic American lifestyle.What kind of experiments am I talking about? Consensus decision-making; participatory design; alternative sources of energy; alternative sources of information; shared resources and designs that reduce each person’s ecological footprint; aging gracefully and vigorously; neighborhood activism in surrounding towns and communities; and collaborative management of neighborhood resources, to name just a few. In general, residents of cohousing are living actively rather than passively. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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The underlying intent of cohousing might be seen as the deliberate substitution of real experiences for canned ones. Cohousing at its best provides a structure for learning to trust other people and for learning to be unselfish, at least in theory. But you know what? Cohousing isn’t Utopia, as you’ll see in some of the stories included here. For example, the process of codesigning a neighborhood involves many, many meetings, some of them very emotional. Children begin to role-play going to meetings as a way of life and outside friends of cohousing participants begin to suspect insanity. But the dividends begin to accrue as future members start to know and rely on each other, learning how to create and maintain a mutually beneficial neighborhood. By the time houses begin to rise up from construction sites, cohousers are ripe and ready for life in cohousing. And then other challenges—lots of them—pop up like jack-in-thebox puppets.What happens if the community won’t let your free-range cat roam the neighborhood? What if one of the neighbors is “difficult,” a carrier of stress? What if nobody wants to do the work required for the maintenance of commonly held property?

A casual chat on the Harmony walkway PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MATT WORSWICK

That’s where the curtain of this book opens: on the walkways, common greens, and in common house meeting rooms, where people are joking, debating, borrowing tools, setting policy, and trying new recipes; where the neighborhood is alive and interconnected. In these stories, the reader lives vicariously in construction sites; meets the furry and feathery creatures that also occupy the land; and goes through the gee-whiz phase of moving and into the coldsweat phase of dissension and beyond. INTRODUCTION

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Please note several things: this book presents cohousing in North America, but by extension represents examples of cohousing throughout the world. It is not my intention to exclude the many thriving communities in Australia,Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium,Austria, and other locations, especially Denmark, the birthplace of cohousing. My call for stories seemed to reach mostly Americans, however, and the book self-assembled that way. In the future, I want to tour cohousing worldwide, as many already have, and maybe then there can be another anthology. Second, this is not a how-to book that describes the process of finding a site, getting financing, designing and building the neighborhood, or mediating conflict.There are already several other excellent books on these topics (see Resources on page 261). Instead, these short stories jump right into the middle of daily life in cohousing, showing what it feels like, looks like, and sounds like. I asked potential contributors what they wanted to write about and they responded with themes from all compass points of human experience: celebration, birth, death, finances, art, drama, sustainability, conflict, and, yes, meetings. Is all the work worth it? Read on, and I’ll let you decide.

This 1924 Edwardian mansion, rescued by Monterey Cohousing, provides 6,000 square feet of community space at Monterey, including a living room, library, two guest rooms, a three-season enclosed porch, dining room, kitchen, office, playroom, laundry room, workshop, and entertainment room. In addition to the eight residences in the mansion, seven other residences are connected to “the big house” by an underground tunnel that helps residents survive Minnesota winters. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF RICK GRAVROK

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CHAPTER ONE

NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE What makes cohousing unique is that residents take an active role in determining what kind of a place they’ll live in, like many people did before the age of mass-produced housing. Cohousing is “reinventing community” in the sense that it replaces social values and architectural concepts that were once very common and adds new approaches that are proving useful in cohousing as well as the mainstream market. For example, neighborhood developers such as the Cottage Company, based in Seattle, Washington, adapt such cohousing features as common houses, community greens, remote parking, and smaller-than-average houses with great results. Says Jim Soules of the Cottage Company, “We’ve seen a high level of satisfaction among the people who occupy our neighborhoods. For example, not a single resident has complained about the parking, which is typically more than 100 feet from a house. They like what they get for the minor inconvenience—a quiet, car-free courtyard and the sense of an outdoor room.” Members of newly constructed cohousing communities play key roles in designing the physical arrangement of the buildings. They learn how the placement of the buildings can affect the functionality and “feel” of playgrounds, gardens, and community spaces; where the common house should be located so that all the

houses in the neighborhood will have good access to it; whether the homes should be townhouses or single units, multistory or elder-friendly ranch-style homes, and so on. The first members of a given community also have a say in what the homes themselves should look like; how big they should be; what materials should be used in them; and how resources such as energy and water can be conserved by using good design and management. They really have an opportunity to be architects and planners of their own neighborhoods. They are also social architects, designing systems of governance and processes for maintaining shared property, as well as strategies for optimizing relationships and trust building among neighbors. Obviously, this approach to home selection is very different than the conventional way of doing it. When a typical homebuyer is looking for a house, he or she simply chooses from a menu of houses or apartments that are already built—often by a developer who hasn’t put much thought into the concept of “neighborhood.” The homebuyer typically selects a house that offers the most square feet of living space for the least amount of money. The implicit understanding is that the house will offer a lot of privacy and convenience. On the other hand, the designers of cohousing communities tend to think “outside the box” of their houses to create synergistic, lively communities in which a primary goal is to provide both adequate privacy and lively community. However, cohousing is not just about designing new communities. Those moving into existing neighborhoods are also designers, because in cohousing, an implicit goal is continuous improvement—even though there are sometimes delays, disappointments, and inevitable “steps backwards.” In my neighborhood, for example, we always have many physical and social improvements on the drawing board, such as a grape arbor for the community garden, a new bathroom for the common house, a new, mutually agreeable system for getting the neighborhood work accomplished, and so on. After twelve years of working with each other, we’ve seen one improvement after another come to fruition—and we now realize that patience really is a virtue! This book presents many different shades and flavors of cohousing. I suppose a person who doesn’t live in a “neighborhood REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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on purpose” could read the chapters “Daily Life in Cohousing” and “Visiting Five Cohousing Communities” and get a pretty fair idea of what living in cohousing is like; however, I recommend that newcomers to the concept of cohousing carefully read chapter one, which will equip you with the basic principles and practices. Throughout the rest of the book, the people who already live in cohousing will introduce themselves through their stories as they describe in their own words the successes and failures they celebrate and endure. I really hope you enjoy getting to know them! —D. W.

Laboratories of Social Change or “Yuppie Communes”? David Wann, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado

“We need something bigger than we are to be awed by and to commit ourselves to.” —Abraham Maslow It’s a crisp, autumn Sunday outside: bright-blue sky, leaves turning, the sound of the high school band playing at the football game across town. A few of us wish we could escape to watch the television for just a few minutes to see how the Broncos are doing against their archrivals, the Raiders. But instead, we sit in our familiar circle of chairs with twenty-five or thirty other neighbors, hashing out a system to ensure the community work gets done.A proposal has just been presented that will reclassify some of our individual work as nonessential.Things that some of us do routinely, such as gardening, newsletter editing, and external communications, have been deemed by an ad hoc team as important for community building but not important for fiscal stability. Only those things we’d pay to have done are officially designated as essential. I look at my neighbors’ faces and it’s clear this proposal has knocked some of us off center: we are wondering if money is an appropriate way to evaluate community. Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen, this NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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could be a turbulent ride. By comparison, it might be less stressful to spend the afternoon balancing the checkbook, carrying heavy boxes, or having a root canal. Why do we do it? Why do we swim upstream like 10,000 salmon when hitching a ride down the mainstream currents of suburban or apartment life might require so much less exertion? Why are we working so hard to invent a new, improved American Dream?

A neighborhood for people, not cars— Sunward Cohousing COURTESY OF ROBERT MARANS

This is not an easy question to answer, but certainly it has something to do with wanting it to feel right; with wanting our lives to feel secure, stimulating, and productive.We want to feel good about getting out of bed in the morning. It’s that simple—and that complex. We’ve built and maintained do-it-ourselves communities because we believe there’s much more to a neighborhood than redundant rows of houses and hallways without any other humans in sight.As a selfselecting band of social and environmental activists, we decided that if the market wouldn’t supply “neighborhoods on purpose,” we’d do it ourselves.We enlisted the expertise of designers and developers who understand that there’s more to building a home than increasing its average size.The bottom line is, we aspire to build neighborhoods for people—not just for cars, lawns, and fences. In some cases, we spent up to ten years designing and building communities because we were tired of feeling like strangers on our own REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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streets.We wanted to come home to something more significant than “reality” television.We literally wanted to think outside the boxes of our homes to create neighborhood networks that bring clarity and purpose to our lives, along with uncomplicated fun.This may sound too good to be true, but, to a certain extent, cohousing communities are working, and this collection of stories offers ample evidence.

“Sort of Like Being in College” As any resident of cohousing can tell you, there’s no lack of curiosity and discussion about our compact, living neighborhoods. For some reason, people are not only curious, but sometimes feel uncomfortable about groups of people who want to know and support each other, as if it’s somehow un-American. On a nationally aired edition of Dateline, NBC did a pretty good job of explaining the benefits and challenges of living in my neighborhood, Harmony Village, but they couldn’t resist digging into their archives to include footage of 1960s-style communes, in which face-painted clusters of counterculture dropouts were skinnydipping and passing joints. Fueled by media stereotypes, the American imagination automatically defaults to the idea of a commune whenever households or groups of people are intentionally living and working together. But the field is far broader than communes. What’s currently happening in cohousing, new urbanism, ecovillages, intentional communities, and transit-oriented developments is simply the mainstream rerouting itself, giving itself more options.Try thinking of the word “collaborative” if the word “cooperative” bothers you.When people collaborate, they are often business partners—as are cohousing residents, in a sense. Cohousing residents own their own houses (or rent in private houses), but they also own shares of open space, buildings, and other property that belongs to the community at large.The advantage is that each resident actively participates in the neighborhood.To manage these common interests, cohousing residents collaborate with each other, building bonds of trust in the process. Still, in my eleven years of experience, cohousing neighborhoods are not dramatically different than conventional neighborhoods—certainly not different enough to be intimidating.They’re simply friendly, sustainable neighborhoods-by-design. Says Judy Baxter of Monterey Cohousing, near NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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Minneapolis,“I tell people it’s like a condo complex—though it may be single-family homes, townhomes, apartments, whatever—with a lot more common facilities and the intention to be involved with your neighbors.” Whenever I show college students my slide show about cohousing, they comment,“It’s sort of like being in college.” In a way, it is, with the open spaces, certain shared facilities, lifelong learning, and lots of activities going on (except that in college, there’s probably more beer consumed per capita and less organic produce). In cohousing, you know who lives six houses down because you eat common meals with them once or more a week, decide how to allocate homeowners’ dues, and gratefully accept a ride from them when your car’s in the shop.As the years go by, you come to trust them because you’ve seen them move through life’s ups and downs.You trust them enough to let them take care of your four-year-old or to lend them a thousand bucks for a month or two.You listen to what they have to say, even if you don’t agree with them at first, because you’ve learned (the truth hurts) that you’re not always right, especially regarding the greatest good for the whole group. Because people have different skills and aptitudes, some of your neighbors will be better at carpentry, cooking, or speaking a foreign language than you are—this all makes for great learning opportunities, rather than cause for feeling insecure.Any given neighborhood also includes various personality types: extroverts and introverts; rational thinkers and intuitive thinkers; neatness nuts and those whose priorities are elsewhere. I believe it was our ability to tap into these many styles and skills that made Harmony Village a reality.We had the full mix of personalities, and, step-by-step, we grew from a vacant parcel of land into a vibrant, colorful, living neighborhood. Along the way, I learned that a person doesn’t have to be wildly social to live in cohousing. In my presentations about cohousing and sustainable neighborhoods, I usually get questions about the loss of privacy and individuality. I believe that privacy remains at the level a person chooses, and that individuality actually increases because the support of a group enhances personal growth. In my neighborhood, when I’m not feeling especially sociable, I just keep walking past a lingering group of chatters with a wave and a smile, often into the community garden. But on the other hand, a person is typically welcome to join most casual conversations in common areas, a REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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luxury and comfort not available in many fenced-off neighborhoods. Often, the front side of a cohousing home faces a common courtyard or green, while the back is more private, with a sitting area or small garden.At the Tierra Nueva community in central California, some residents use reversible signs that say “Welcome” on one side and “Go Away” on the other. Everyone there gets the humor and the intent of those signs.

Is Cohousing for Me? For some people, cohousing seems like too much work.The meetings, socializing, and shared-work responsibilities seem like extras that can never fit into lifestyles already jam-packed with appointments, overtime, shopping, and commuting. But for other people, jam-packed lives are the very reason that cohousing is valuable: it offers an alternative. Sociologist and author Paul Ray, a veteran poll taker and trend watcher, estimates that at least 50 million Americans are “cultural creatives.” Says Ray,“If you hunger for a deep change in your life that moves you in the direction of less stress, more health, lower consumption, more spirituality, more respect for the Earth and the diversity of species, you are a cultural creative.” In a 1999 survey conducted for the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, Ray and his colleagues documented that 77 percent of Americans want a more ecologically sustainable world, which would include things such as healthy food, less driving, energy-efficient homes, and lifestyles that don’t pollute the environment.Two-thirds of Americans specify a small town or village as the ideal place to live and “at least half of the U.S. population would take a serious look at cohousing, with its clustered housing, common greens, and sense of neighborliness,” concludes Ray. Charles B. Maclean, Ph.D., an eight-year resident of Trillium Hollow Cohousing in Portland, Oregon, has compiled a self-assessment tool to help a person decide if cohousing is right for him or her. (See page 266 in the Contributors section for Maclean’s contact information.) Some of the factors considered positive for cohousing are a desire to learn and grow together; an affinity for intergenerational contact (“It takes children to raise a village,” believes Maclean); respect for individual differences; an ability to remain civil and focused on solutions, even in disagreement; NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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and a belief that people are out to do each other good. In general, people who live in cohousing desire a more harmonious world; however, there have been some conflicts in cohousing so troublesome that people moved out. “It is my experience that both the joys and the frustrations of life are multiplied in cohousing,” says Maclean.Yet, given the very low turnover rate in cohousing, it appears that the joys seem to be winning. “Whatever growing up I didn’t do in my family of origin is accelerated by living in cohousing,” he continues.“Cohousing isn’t for those wanting to keep the status quo; not for the reclusive or no-growth person. It is for the adventuresome who want to live a juicy life in community.” (See Maclean’s story,“What I Learned from Children about Giving and Receiving,” on page 41.)

The Miracle of Consensus “How many cohousing residents does it take to clean the bathroom rug in the common house?” asks Sandy Thompson of Heartwood Cohousing in a Listserv e-mail. “Let’s see. … Four to decide what needs to be done before it is considered clean.The whole community to decide who should do it (Should we hire someone? Ask for volunteers? Or just assign the job?). Another two or three to make sure the cleaning supplies are on hand. One more to make a chart or check-off sheet to record that it was done. And one to do it!” Joining the dialog, Diane Margolis of Cambridge Cohousing, in Massachusetts, calculates a slightly larger effort, adding,“A dozen to discuss whether it’s dirty enough to need cleaning. One to put a notice on the white board to set up a meeting. Fifty to reach consensus on how the rug got dirty and ways to keep it from getting dirty again.” Diane mentions the “C” word in her note, dredging up a topic— consensus—that is sometimes roughly synonymous with fried brain cells. In order to reach consensus—in which decisions have the support (or at least lack of opposition) of the whole group—cohousing residents have learned to think pluralistically under the awesome guidance of facilitators whose abilities often seem superhuman. Among the prerequisites for successful use of consensus are that people be willing to express what they think and feel without fear of REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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reprisal and that participants agree that the good of the group is the most important factor. Not exactly a slam dunk, yet these bionic discussion leaders somehow download, defuse, analyze, and verbally summarize the essential content of each viewpoint and how it interconnects with others.They also suggest ways to sail beyond the choppy waters of A and B to arrive peacefully on the shores of C, a solution that everyone in the group can live with. The process of reaching consensus is a miracle to me, and I sometimes walk out of meetings as if I’ve just received communion.Wasn’t it cool the way we came up with a new way of doing it?

More than just a challenging idea, consensus is a good way to ensure that everyone is satisfied. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

Just to set the record straight on the number of people needed to clean the bathroom rug, I’d have to add at least one more: a neighborhood consultant on environmentally friendly products, because surely the group wouldn’t want to use anything toxic. Not only do cohousers typically choose green-building materials in their homes, even the tools they use in meetings are often carefully evaluated.“White boards don’t use up paper, but most of the wipe-off markers give off really bad vapors,” writes RoseWind resident Lynn Nadeau. “We tried wipe-off markers that were less fume-y, but enough of us are sensitive to what we breathe that white boards just haven’t been an option.We use butcher-paper flip charts, though they are fairly expensive and consume paper—not ideal either.” Eugene Cohousing’s Tree Bressen, one of the superhero facilitators mentioned above, responds,“Weyerhauser paper company, less than five miles from my house, sells ends of rolls for a mere $3 per roll, because NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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it’s a waste product from their production. Sometimes they are too wide, so we cut them in half using a circular saw.” I find that, in general, facilitators’ enthusiasm about the excellence of meeting tools (and other details) is roughly proportional to a group’s chances of creating a bloodless community culture.

Harmony residents survive a (productive) three-hour meeting.

The Cohousing Template If there’s an official shorthand description of cohousing, it might be a list of six elements compiled by the American pioneers of cohousing, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, who imported the concept from Denmark in the late 1980s. 1. The participatory process. Residents-to-be participate in the planning and design of the community so it directly responds to their needs. 2. Neighborhood design. The physical design encourages a sense of community as well as maintaining the option for privacy. 3. Private homes supplemented by common facilities. Common facilities are designed for daily use; they are an integral part of the community and typically include a dining area, sitting area, children’s playroom, and guest room, as well as garden and other amenities. Each household owns a private residence—complete with kitchen—but also shares extensive common facilities with the larger group. 4. Resident management. After move-in, residents particiREINVENTING COMMUNITY

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pate in decision making about common facilities, social activities, and financial expenditures related to commonly held property. 5. Nonhierarchical structure and decision making. There are leadership roles, but not leaders.The community is not dependent on any one person, even though there is often a “burning soul” that gets the community off the ground, and another that pulls together the financing, still another that makes sure the group has babysitters for meetings, and another who … 6. The community is not a primary income source for residents. There is no shared community economy. If the community provides residents with their primary income, this is a significant change to the dynamic between neighbors and defines another level of community beyond the scope of cohousing. Certain features are typically found in a cohousing neighborhood, such as parking at the edges of the neighborhood so the interior remains as living space—an “outdoor room” where neighbors can meet each other casually.The average number of homes is between twentyfive and thirty, because studies have demonstrated that at this scale, neighbors can get to know one another and can share common facilities without conflict.The fact that community members need to take care of common property literally gives them something in common—something to talk about and work together on.

Sunward bike patrol PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

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If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Why Can’t We Put a Million People in Cohousing? It’s easy enough to find out what the goals of cohousing are. Just go to www.cohousing.org and look up some of the mission statements posted on community home pages.At Sunward Cohousing, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the big-picture goal is to create a place “where lives are simplified, the Earth is respected, diversity is welcomed, children play together in safety, and living in community with neighbors comes naturally.”At Winslow Cohousing, near Seattle,Washington, the aim is to have “a minimal impact on the Earth and create a place in which all residents are equally valued as part of the community.” It’s hard to contest goals such as these, isn’t it? Motherhood and apple pie. But the mission statements actually work because they remind us that each person is both “me” and “we,” and that we’ve agreed and recorded an expressed purpose. But cohousing residents don’t assume that achieving these lofty goals will be automatic.They actively create their lives rather than let them be created by media, advertising, and power politics. Cohousing residents aspire to “be the change they wish to see in the world” by designing and governing their neighborhoods mindfully, with mission statements and other agreements as guidelines.As some of the stories in this book demonstrate, cohousing is a natural training ground for citizenship, both in the neighborhood itself and the world at large. It can also be a model of ecological stewardship.Vashon Cohousing, which is also near Seattle, blends sustainability with enlightened selfinterest:“We see the need to coordinate resources and services as a means of reducing expenses, lessening our collective toll on the land, and having greater control of our consumer intake.” The mission statement of Songaia Cohousing, in Bothell,Washington, spells out key social goals: We create ways and appropriate spaces for people to give clear communication without fear of rejection. We seek to create an atmosphere of cooperation and willingness to help, especially in times of need. Everyone in the community, from infant to elder, is a lifelong learner as well as a teacher. We all have experiences, ideas, and REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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insights that are worthy of sharing with each other. Each of us brings particular skills, whether in gardening, cooking, computer, construction, or interpersonal skills, that are essential to making community happen as we work together. Can you imagine how many hours it took to draft all these mission statements? First, compiling lists; then, wordsmithing, polishing, and presenting a draft to the group; adding and deleting phrases; presenting it to the group again … Cohouser David Heimann compares efforts such as these to the labors of the American founders.“As I see it,” he writes, “the Declaration of Independence had to be a cohousing moment.After all, it took about a year to decide on it; the draft was written by committee; and it was adopted by consensus after virtually an infinite number of meetings and discussions. Sometimes you put many hours into a certain product or decision and it still comes out misshapen and ugly, like the first bowl or mug in a pottery class. Moments such as these require a shift in focus. Rather than dwell on the imperfections of group process and the limitations of the human mind, think about laundry: you left a load of clean socks and towels in the common house dryer, and when you came back for them the next day, they were neatly folded and stacked.An anonymous neighbor went the extra mile.

“Bofaellesskaber?” An Interview with the Pioneer Couple of American Cohousing David Wann, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado I interviewed Charles (Chuck) Durrett and Kathryn (Katie) McCamant at a recent national cohousing conference in Boulder, Colorado. These two architects, who imported the Danish idea of bofaellesskaber, or living together, have launched a minimovement among Americans, Canadians, and others who want to help create healthier, friendlier, and more beautiful neighborhoods. Here’s what Chuck and Kate had to say about the movement’s origins, benefits, and potentials.

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David Wann: What were your earliest in-person impressions of cohousing as practiced in Denmark since 1972? Chuck Durrett: In 1980, when Kate and I went to architectural school in Denmark for a year, the cohousing neighborhoods we visited were part of our overall study of that country’s architecture. But across the board, whenever we walked into one of Denmark’s several hundred cohousing communities, there was such a life there—unlike most suburban or multifamily developments—such a joy and sense of interaction, that we began to comment,“This is unique.This is working.” It made other housing seem more like warehousing.The original Danish term for cohousing, bofaellesskaber, means “living together” or “living community.” In other words, you have living communities, and then you have, what, dead communities? That is the way it seemed.

Chuck Durrett at the Sonora Cohousing construction site PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WONDERLAND HILL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

When we came back to the United States, got married, and began to think about how to raise a family, we kept asking ourselves,“Why wouldn’t we want to live in a place that feels more like a small town, more like a community? Where neighbors know each other and agree, to some extent, when they move in to cooperate with each other, or at least to give cooperation the benefit of the doubt?” It just made sense. Wann: What, specifically, were the Danish residents in living communities doing that seemed unique? REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Durett: I lived near a cohousing community in Denmark, right next to a living community.As I walked by every day to catch the train, I noticed that people were standing between the buildings talking to each other, you know, holding a basket of laundry, and what we would normally think would be a quick salutation often grew into a fifteen-minute conversation:“What are you doing this afternoon? I’m thinking about going to the ballgame,” or “I’m thinking about going to an orchard to pick fruit, do you want to come?” There were picnic tables between the houses where neighbors sat. Some would stand and chat for a minute; others would be there for longer, talking, laughing, sometimes eating, engaged. People were coming and going. What struck me in particular was how these households related to each other in what seemed to be a healthy fashion.And then, of course, there was this common building that didn’t look like anybody lived in, but people spent a lot of time there.The lights were on late at night and you could look through the windows and see people talking over a cup of coffee, or playing music together, or sewing together. I could see that these people were doing things in the common building that made sense for them to do in common—things that are more fun, more entertaining, often more economical, more practical to do together. Then, of course, they also had their own houses, which we also saw people sitting in, reading the newspaper or whatever—it felt like when you walked into a cohousing community, people had a choice between as much community as they wanted or as much privacy as they wanted. And in other housing projects, you could see that people had as much privacy as they wanted, or as much privacy as they wanted—in other words, no choice.And that’s one of the things that has made cohousing translate well into this country.Americans like to have lots of choices. Kathryn McCamant: It was very evident how advanced the Danes are in the art of housing themselves, with lots of clustered housing based on sociological research about what people need.What we saw there seemed very applicable to the American lifestyle, especially the idea of balance between privacy and community. Privacy is very important, but in America, we’ve come to an extreme point on it, losing community along the way. Sure, you can get in a car and drive to find community, but that gets really old after awhile.The idea of spontaneously finding community just walking out your door, running into neighbors, and NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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being able to go to a movie with them, or sitting down with them and talking about what a tough day you had at work, that’s hard to find these days. People interested in cohousing are trying to find a balance between privacy and community again.Without losing their sense of autonomy, they want to come home to something bigger than an empty house.

Drivhuset walkway, Randers, Denmark PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GRACE KIM

Wann: What are some of the other dysfunctional elements of American culture that cohousing can help fix? Durrett: Just like in Denmark, the demographics in America changed drastically after World War II, especially in the early 1960s, when women started working outside the home. More frequently, families were having fewer children, working longer hours.There’s quite an array of demographic changes that began to alienate people, or at least isolate them. A great number of people in the United States consume to feel satisfied, at some basic level:“Maybe if I just get another sports car … ” or “Maybe if I just go on another vacation or buy something else, I’ll be happy.” Cohousing reduces the need to consume, both physically and psychologically. Physically, we don’t need a lawnmower for each house when much of our lawn is a common lawn. Each household doesn’t REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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need its own washer and dryer when there’s a laundry room in the common house. Houses can be slightly smaller, and therefore have less stuff in them, when a guest room is available in the common house for everyone’s use.After all, guests don’t all arrive at the same time.At Doyle Street Cohousing, we’ve shared many of the things Americans would typically spend a lot of money on, from cars to magazines to gourmet kitchen equipment. In cohousing, it begins to become clear that there’s nothing quite like relationships to satisfy basic human needs for identity, belonging, and even accountability. In this regard, cohousing can be psychologically grounding.You feel like,“Now I’m part of a society that makes sense.” If you look at the typical choices, you’re an individual in a 2.3-person household and you are part of a national culture that spends years of its life watching television.You wonder,“What am I really a part of?”You may join clubs and interest groups to help feel a sense of identity, but those people aren’t necessarily there for you day in and day out like cohousing neighbors are. In a world where the extended family tends to be spread all over the country, there’s nothing like having neighbors that you can ask about children’s earaches and other daily dilemmas that you would traditionally look to your family for. Wann: What were your greatest motivations for getting cohousing started? Durrett: When we came back from our first trip to Denmark, we were very interested in the values this kind of housing could offer, for ourselves as well as others. I grew up in a small town—so small that I couldn’t get Kate interested in moving back there. So I had to figure out how to get small-town relationships in an urban environment.We always intended to write a book about our observations, and when we became serious about creating a village we would live in, we got busy and wrote it [Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves], partly to see if there were others as interested in it as we were. McCamant: After our second self-funded thirteen-month trip to Denmark in 1984–85, we visited about 185 cohousing projects and studied forty-six cohousing projects in depth.We really believed,“Okay, now we know how to go about this.”We came back with 5,000 slides and we were ready to write our cohousing book. Durrett: We originally meant to stay six months, but it turned out to be a much more complex issue than it looked like on the surface, so we NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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stayed and learned as much as we could, especially about cooperation and the balance between privacy and community.We wanted to bring the idea back in its widest context and let people make conscious choices about how to implement it.After thirteen months, we said to ourselves,“Okay, we have this figured out, from the design to the development, to the financial scenarios, to the group process.” In our book, we discuss how the physical aspects of a neighborhood enhance and reinforce the social aspects. If you believe, like I do, that our second priority as a species (after procreation, which we seem to have mastered) is to build a viable, healthy society, then we have to consciously format a world that allows that to happen.Along the way, maybe we will figure out how to make it as much fun as fulfilling our first responsibilities. Wann: How, specifically, do well-designed physical features help create community?

Kate McCamant at Hearthstone Design Workshop PHOTO COURTESY OF WONDERLAND HILL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

McCamant: The relationship between community building and community buildings is a subject a person could devote a whole lifetime of study to.We strongly believe in the participatory-design process, in which members of a community decide together what their priorities are and what sort of space they’ll live in. It’s important that residents feel a sense of ownership in the design of their neighborhood and it’s also important that certain principles are carefully considered, because after the honeymoon of building and moving in is over, good design is what will sustain a neighborhood’s sense of community. If you look around at existing neighborhoods that are not cohousREINVENTING COMMUNITY

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ing, you see that we’ve actually designed community right out of our lives.There are very specific reasons why people don’t run into each other and therefore don’t relate.There are no large porches; instead, you have large barriers in the form of garage doors.And there’s no place in the typical neighborhood where people can gather and get to know each other. Cohousing, on the other hand, is designed to make it easy for busy people to transition from the privacy of their own homes into the common areas, where they can interact with their neighbors.The kitchen is typically in the front of the home—you can look out and see your kids in the play area; you can see who’s coming and going to pick up their mail or recycle their glass containers; you can holler at a passing neighbor who has a recipe you want. The area right in front of the house is still your private realm, but it’s directly adjacent to the common area, so it’s a semiprivate space, which the Danes refer to as the soft edge. In many ways, it’s analogous to the old-fashioned front porch. By sitting in this space instead of in the back of your house or on a private balcony, you indicate that you’re open to visit. People will stop and join you for coffee or just chat there in front of the house. Another link from the private realm to the community realm is what we refer to as gathering nodes. Often as simple as a picnic table that five to eight houses share, it might be next to the children’s sandbox. From there, you can look up the walkway or street to the common terrace directly in front of the common house, where it’s typical to see people lingering with glasses of wine on a late afternoon before they go up for dinner. On Saturday mornings, somebody brings out coffee and somebody else brings over something from the bakery. By having transition spaces, you create choices.The idea is to make it easy to flow from your kitchen to the common kitchen without giving it a lot of thought. Durrett: The fundamental responsibility of the architecture is to keep people relating to each other.There’s nothing like a common house as a place to meet in neutral territory and discuss issues of the day, like the school district, the city council or national politics, or child rearing.You can have the kind of great discussions in the common house that are sometimes difficult to have in someone’s private house. It’s hard to tell somebody you think they’re full of it at their house, and you’d be a pretty bad host to do it in your house, so in the common house, you NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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have incredibly genuine conversations that are much deeper, partially because you have this physical venue that is so unique. In our common house, we explore the subtleties of any issue at the ecological level, at the gender level, at the political level, the social-justice level. It makes for a very rich experience, much less of a sound-bite or a bumper-sticker level in which a person says,“I’ve got my opinion and that’s all there is to it.” In cohousing, significant strains of conversations go on for years. McCamant: But a common house has to feel comfortable and inviting, or people won’t use it. Durrett: That’s right.Take the common house kitchen, for example. I would say the key factor in the overall success of a kitchen design is its social success. If you’re working in a back room somewhere, helping with a common meal, you end up feeling like the slave for the day. But if the kitchen is designed to be open, you can see people come and go. They see you too, and you’re the center of attention, you’re the hero for the day. People come in and say,“How’s it going? Hey, this smells great.” It’s a subtle thing, but it makes you look forward to cooking dinner. We’ve observed that how you design the spaces between buildings is also a key factor in creating community. In cohousing, which is typically clustered housing, the distance between front doors is typically twenty-five to thirty feet, while the average American house is running about 100 to 110 feet—no wonder Americans feel so estranged at a basic level.When people join the cohousing process, they are used to the 110-feet distance, but after they start to know and get more comfortable with each other, they start to believe that there’s something in it for them.The trust level begins to build and the closer distances feel right. When you come out of your house on a Monday morning, you can relate to the mood of your neighbor, and you can ask your neighbor if he got the report done that’s due today, or if his mother is feeling better after chemotherapy.That is how you stitch a society together. The design of private spaces is also very important, because if cohousing residents really, really like their homes, they will also be more comfortable outside their homes, interacting with their neighbors.We help groups become communities, and our customers always want their houses to be as energy efficient as possible, with natural lighting, good sound insulation, an open, spacious feeling.The fact they’ve had a say in their homes’ design makes them feel integrated with their physical surroundings, which in turn helps them feel comfortable socially. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Wann: Is it easier for people in cohousing to get know each other because they are working on things together, things that they have in common? Durrett: The process of designing and operating a cohousing community does give neighbors lots to talk about. Rather than being a stranger to your next-door neighbor, you’re the person who planted a tree with them last weekend and worked on the budget with them last month at the annual budget meeting.

Kilen indoor walkway, Denmark PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GRACE KIM

When people ask me what my community has in common as an organizing principle, I can’t tell them it’s spiritual, because we have people of various beliefs. It’s not political, because we have Democrats, Republicans, and others.We have Asians in the community, Caucasians, African Americans, so it is not really cultural. But the great thing is, when you have diversity, you learn about others.When you begin to see a face with these points of view, you begin to respect these people as people. What our common denominator comes down to is cooperation.We believe that to the extent that it makes each life better—easier, more fun, more economical—we’ll always give cooperation the benefit of the doubt first.You begin to hear everyone’s point of view, and that’s the first step in building a healthy society. NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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Wann: Does cohousing teach people to be better citizens in the larger community? Durrett: Without a doubt. In the process of putting a cohousing community together, you learn how local decisions are made. Out there in the big, bad world, developers, bankers, and bureaucrats are deciding,“We’ll make the boulevard this wide, we’ll put another 200 houses where the oak grove is now.”What impresses me about cohousers is that after their cohousing projects are built, they often become active in their city council and school districts.A couple residents in our community ran for school board, got elected, and are making a big difference for our kids. Cohousers are not intimidated by decision making.They’re used to working with people, they’re used to ferreting out the issues, and they’re typically much more aware of the issues, because they sit around the common house and ask things like,“What about that new bridge that’s going in? Doesn’t it block a driver’s panoramic view of the city?” Cohousers often have very positive, creative solutions because they’re used to forging consensus. Instead of shouting about what they don’t want, they come up with great suggestions about what they do want—suggestions that are in everybody’s best interest. So, nationwide, cohousers are becoming city council representatives and planning commissioners, and making very positive changes. Wann: What about kids? Does cohousing make them better students and better citizens? McCamant:We hear stories all the time about teachers seeing a difference between cohousing students and their peers. For one thing, whenever a dispute comes up, the cohousing kids are always on the front line of problem solvers because they’ve been exposed to it.They know how to get along with other kids of all ages because that’s what they do in their own neighborhoods. One of my favorite stories is that when we moved into cohousing, our daughter, Jessie, was one, and there was a twelve-year old in the community who treated Jessie like a younger sister. Now, years later, what Michele gave to Jessie as a child, Jessie passes on to the two-yearolds in our community.That’s a really powerful thing to see. Durrett: Jessie is a good example of another benefit of cohousing. She’s an only child, but in effect, she has eight cousins because the kids in the neighborhood are so close. Instead of feeling like we had to have a second child to keep Jessie company—a typical reason to have more REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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than one child—we knew that she’d find all the companionship she needed right in the community. Wann: Can you speculate on the future of cohousing? McCamant: The future of cohousing seems very bright, because it meets many of the needs that are not currently being met.The first cohousing residents were real pioneers, people who’d never even seen a cohousing community.They set off on a journey believing in an idea without ever sitting in a common house. Now, increasing numbers of people can visit a friend in cohousing and see firsthand how it works. For every resident of cohousing, there are hundreds more who are interested and intrigued.We’ve observed that every time a cohousing community is built in an area, it tends to spawn other communities nearby.The truth is, cohousing is now an American housing option—no book or seminar on American housing would be complete without mentioning it. We’re actively working with other professionals to refine a streamlined model for developing communities.The exchange of ideas on what’s worked and what hasn’t, on how to make the development process smoother next time, is tremendously exciting.There’s a level of refinement we couldn’t have dreamt of a decade ago. In areas like sustainable building practices, creative use of existing buildings, and resident participation in location selection and design, cohousing will continue to be a model, and we’re excited to be part of this growing movement. Durrett: The key challenge for Americans will be to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.We Americans are hell-bent on making things efficient to the point of gutting the original intention; spaghetti sauce from a jar will never compete with homemade. But with the streamlined approach, we are figuring out how to keep the good and move past the stuff that just takes more time and more money with very little value added. (And when it comes to unnecessary acrimony, even value lost.) The communities today are taking a quarter of the people-hours to create as the early projects did, with better value, more sustainable design, and with more time for just being friends.

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Guiding a Community Home Matt Worswick, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado, and Synergy Design When I began to look into joining a cohousing community, I went to several groups’ meetings and was especially impressed by the approach and good energy of the group that would become Harmony Village. The original members, Matt Worswick and his wife, Linda, seemed to have the right stuff to make the dream a reality. Walking through the process of designing our own community was an exciting, challenging experience I can never forget, going from a blurry idea to a custom-fit place to live in seventy-five meetings or less! —D. W.

As the long-awaited workshop begins, I think about the many roles I’ll play today. First, I slip on my striped referee shirt and hang the whistle around my neck, just in case.Then comes the tweed jacket and bow tie. Next, I dust off my cowboy hat and pull on my boots and spurs. Finally, I pick up my pom-poms and I am ready to go. It is time for another homedesign workshop with an eager and anxious cohousing group. My metaphorical outfit represents some of the many roles I may need to play. Similar to a college professor teaching design and construction 101, I’ll need to dispense a tremendous amount of information to an audience with very diverse backgrounds, most of whom have never designed or built a home before. Occasionally, I’ll need to referee disputes between competing factions. Often, my role will be to stand on the sidelines, more like a cheerleader, as the group makes major decisions and choices that will define their community and make it unique.And throughout the whole enterprise, I’ll need to sit high in the saddle, along with my community-process facilitators, acting like a process cowpoke herding those (highly intelligent and independent-minded) cats, trying to keep any strays from sidetracking the progress of the main group. The room is abuzz with energy and anticipation. Many in the group have been moving toward this moment for years. Some joined more recently, just to be sure they could experience the participatory-design process that is a hallmark of cohousing.Their faces already reflect a REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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myriad of ideas, questions, and concerns that will need to be addressed. They are about to take another huge step from the dream into the reality of what their new home will be.And with it will come a roller coaster of emotions, from fear and frustration to joy and satisfaction. As a professional guide for this process, I’ve tried to clearly identify the objectives and expected outcomes. On paper, as I review the workshop agenda, it seems orderly and well-defined. Developers may refer to it as “refining the pro forma by finalizing the unit mix and schematic plans,” but for these future homeowners, it will be so much more than that: it will finally give physical shape and texture to their hopes and dreams; it will define the materials and spaces that they will call home for many years to come; and it will complete the picture they have collectively been painting of their future neighborhood. We’ve applied the wisdom gained by other cohousing professionals over the years, saving individual home designs for last.To help nurture the bonds of commonality, the preceding design workshops have already defined the site and site plan and the common house that the group will share. By visualizing and planning those common elements, each individual has had a chance to imagine and savor the benefits of their collective facilities.They are already looking forward to harvesting from the common garden and building things in the shop; to kids frolicking on the playground or playing adventure games in the natural open space; to gatherings in the common house, from boisterous dinners to intimate book groups or rejuvenating yoga classes. Similar to the initial romance of a relationship, the group has been getting high on the possibilities of community living. But as I’ve learned from experience, the next phase of emerging individuality, or jockeying for power, will almost always add extra tension and excitement during the design of the dwellings. The transition from dream to reality can be a difficult one. Hard choices will have to be made to balance the many and sometimesconflicting goals of the group. Some things that members had hoped for won’t make the cut. Even though I have been in this position numerous times before, it is hard to feel fully prepared.The group has hired me based on my twenty years of experience in energy-efficient and sustainable residential design. Having toured several examples of my community designs, they know that I can create efficient, attractive, and unique homes.What they don’t know is how challenging it can be to combine the values, NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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passions, and ideas of dozens of individuals into some sort of optimally designed buildings. I can feel my heart pounding and the adrenaline rising as I prepare to begin. It will be a wild ride and take some unexpected turns, but that’s why I’ve brought so many hats! Hardened from many a cat herding, I’ve learned that it’ll save a lot of saddle blisters if we first get the group to agree on where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. So I start off with a detailed description of the design process we are going to use to get to the final designs. The process defines the players and their roles (community, design team, unit subgroups, designer, developer, and builder); the steps along the way and who gets to make which decisions; how communication will be handled between all parties; and so forth. Some of the wise old cats nod knowingly (good process is critical in such a large undertaking). Many others sit with glazed eyes, wishing they could catch a catnap. Others fidget and scratch, wondering when the design fun is gonna start.Then they realize I’m not letting them out of the corral until they reach consensus on this here design process. Itching to hit the design trail, they make a few pertinent refinements and agree to our design trail.Yee-haw! I swing the corral gates open wide with a slide presentation of images from other communities.The rush of possibilities fills the room. “Oh yeah, I love that porch design,”“Can we have floors like that?”“Wow, look at the natural daylight in those rooms.” Laughter and jokes fly: “Looks great, when do we move in?”To prepare ourselves for a challenging afternoon, we all break for a hearty potluck lunch. After lunch, I’m back, with pom-poms in hand, ready to cheer on the team as they focus on the serious enterprise of prioritizing design standards that will guide the development of their homes.These are the bigpicture guidelines that determine which elements are most important to the group.Will the units be single-family, duplex, or multiplex? Which ranks higher: affordability or quality materials and low-maintenance finishes? Trying to prioritize these strongly held values brings passions to the surface. “We need to be an example to the world of how to live more sustainably,” says one future resident. “That sounds good,” says another,“But I can’t afford the additional costs for your proposed alternative-building materials.” I reach for my whistle as I step into the fray. I try to calm the passions by explaining that this isn’t a black-and-white decision.This will REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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be a guideline that will help us balance our choices as we continue to design the project.The group then continues through a facilitated process by using an exercise of comparing and prioritizing pairs of design criteria.After an intense hour and a half, the group has carefully sorted which issues are most important. Now I stride to the lectern, adjust my bow tie, and begin to address the class.An expectant air has taken hold of the students.They know that the information bestowed by the next speaker could potentially determine their futures as cohousing residents. I begin,“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to introduce to you the dean of cohousing development, Mr. Jim Leach.” Respectful applause as Jim steps forward, followed by a hushed silence.This is serious stuff.This is high finance.After some qualifying remarks about the accuracy of initial home pricing, Jim passes out a detailed spreadsheet and walks the group through line after line of pricing particulars.

Matt Worswick, designer of Casa Verde and many other cohousing communities

There are different scenarios depending on the total number of units, unit sizes, and configurations. Each individual is now able to see the implications on their own home price depending on certain design choices.The more units they can fit on the site, the better they can keep costs down.“But we don’t want it to feel too crowded.” Attaching multiple units would also save space and money.“But I really like the daylight from an end unit better than an internal one.” NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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We all listen carefully to each individual’s needs and preferences, then take straw polls to determine which unit size and configuration will work best for each household. Jim runs some new scenarios on his laptop computer and presents a recommendation.The group works toward a consensus, sorting the numerous issues and concerns. Finally, a decision emerges: for this group, it will be a total of thirtyfour homes, with four different models in duplex and quadplex configurations.The scale of the decision leaves the group in a mixture of relief, awe, giddiness, and hesitancy.“Wow, this is it! I hope we made the right decision.” Now it’s time for the most rigorous part of today’s session. For the next three hours, I expound upon a myriad of design and construction parameters. First, there are all the elements that affect the building form, from the number of stories and roof pitches to porches and private patios; issues of style, building codes, solar access, costs, and construction materials are covered.Then, it’s time for a detailed look at the interior spaces, such as the zoning of rooms, spatial relationships, traffic patterns, visual connections, and public versus private areas. Each room in the house is covered and many decisions are made about basic components.As the class wraps up for the day, the students’ heads are spinning with new information. But they’re back again in the morning, excited about their roles as codesigners.The most challenging stretch of the trail is just ahead: agreeing on the designs for each individual home model.As a hardened wrangler, I’ve come to the opinion that consensus is best used for the big-picture issues and decisions, but using it for approving every idea or detail can add months to an already lengthy process, as well as set a poor example for future community decision making. I recommend that most of the details be left to the professionals. Meanwhile, the specifications will be refined over the next several months with the developer and a hardy handful of members known as the design team. As I work with the subgroups for each model to refine their basic plan arrangements, members add many good ideas for me to work with. As always, a few conflicts arise between individuals.The model-D folks are hung up on the master-bath arrangement and the political correctness of a soaking tub. Conversely, the model-C group wants the option to eliminate bathrooms and convert them to closets.A few members are lobbying for a laundry chute. One says she’ll drop out if she can’t be REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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assured radiant heat in her unit.The model-A group has only two members, but they are having a heck of a time deciding whether they should go with the master bedroom on the main floor or the upper … My striped shirt is pretty wrinkled by now and my bow tie has long since been pocketed. I’ve lost one of my pom-poms and I’m getting pretty saddle sore. But the designs are coming together. Peoples’ issues are out in the open. Of course, not everyone is getting everything they want, but these homeowners have had their say and their home designs will reflect their own specific needs better than anything out of a plan book or engineered subdivision.

After school at Hearthstone PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF EVANGELINE WELCH

One Year Later … I’m kicking up the dust on the trail again and this time it’s not imaginative dust, but real dust.As I walk the construction site, I can see the outcome of all the design work.The first units are complete and look beautiful. It seems like ages ago now that the design process began. It’s been a whirlwind of activity for me, including drawing and detailing all the plans, refining the specifications with the design team, working with the group to create a list of options and upgrades, and coordinating with the developer, builder, and code officials. The group has dealt with a tremendous amount as well.The pace of meetings and decisions has continued to be intense. Construction cost NEIGHBORHOODS ON PURPOSE

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estimates have increased. Some members have switched to smaller units in order to stay within their budgets. Several more have left the group entirely, but new members have joined, bringing much-needed energy and enthusiasm. Some design features remain from departing members that aren’t a great fit for new members, but most of the design features still reflect the priorities and needs of the community. It has been a long trail together. Everyone is a bit tuckered out—the group, the builder, and the developer. But as we approach final completion, despite the weariness, there is a tremendous sense of accomplishment.Together, we have done something amazing. I know that despite the fact that the group feels like this is the end of the trail, it is really just the beginning.They have so many more joys and challenges ahead. I feel like that professor again, proudly watching his students graduate and move on with their lives.And even though I won’t be physically there with them, I’ll be there in spirit. In my office is a favorite memento, a collage with photographs and appreciative notes from many of the households, all surrounding six wonderful words:“Thanks Matt! We love our homes!”

Open house for Harmony’s completion PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WONDERLAND HILL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

CHAPTER TWO

P U T T I N G T H E “ N E I G H B O R” B AC K I N T O “ N E I G H B O R H O O D S ” Everyone has favorite things about cohousing neighborhoods, and, from time to time, lists are compiled that summarize the benefits. Rob Sandelin’s list may have been first, but many others followed. Terri Hupfer of Pleasant Hill Cohousing likes the support and friendship of neighbors. “You get to relax and read a book for an hour while your neighbor takes all the boys on a long bike ride,” she lists. “Your neighbor not only comes over to help you clean and cook the fresh trout your son has brought home, but he helps pull out the bones and sits down to eat it with you.” Joani Blank of Swan’s Market Cohousing asks, “Where else could I get someone to take a splinter out of my finger at 7:30 in the morning?” Joani also writes, “No more special trips all the way home for five minutes just to feed the dog!” —D. W.

Ten Great Reasons to Live in Cohousing Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood, Snohomish County, Washington Living in a community offers security.You can rely on your neighbors to help you, even when you don’t ask.This is huge for me, that my family is in a safe and supportive place. My grandmother died recently. My neighbors knew all about it and sent cards and sympathy and support to my family. Her neighbors didn’t even know she was sick. Most of them didn’t even know her name. How many of them could she ask for help if she needed it? 1. Community offers social opportunities. I can have wonderful and meaningful interactions with people I like—my neighbors—just by sitting out on my porch. I really enjoy hanging out and talking with folks about everything—politics, the news, kids. Sharing our histories and ourselves grows a wonderful bond among us—I suppose much like encounter groups do. I know more about my neighbors’ histories and lives and why they do things the way they do than I know about some of my family members.

Party time at River Rock—now we’re having fun! PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MARGARET GRAHAM

2. Cohousing is a supportive place for kids to grow up. Cohousing is safe and there are lots of friends—both other kids and adults. Kids can play and I know any adult in the neighborhood will be there for them in case of need. It’s also a fun place to be an adult.There are lots of opportunities to play with the kids and other adults. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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3. Cohousing is a great place to collaborate with people who share similar interests. Small groups form that revolve around shared common interests such as beer making, sewing, gardening, music, and so on. I don’t have to “go” anywhere to enjoy a beer-making club; my neighbors and I can do that. The common house iat for ths great.

Harmony catnip makes mintflavored honey.

4. There is a sense of togetherness and belonging. I am part of something that is really wonderful: it is a model for a better way to live, and together we are doing it. I can’t explain this in words very well, but there is a strong feeling of happiness in me that comes from working toward a common good. I used to get this feeling as a teacher and environmentalist and now I get it as I work with my neighbors on a variety of projects. 5. There is a great restaurant in the middle of my neighborhood—called the common house—where I can go have dinner and great conversation with friends. 6. Cohousing is a great place to learn new things. I always wanted to try making beer. Having a couple of neighbors share that interest got me into home brewing.We learn and try new stuff all the time. 7. Cohousing is a great place to share ownership of things that I couldn’t really afford by myself, such as a workshop, play structures, tools, a library, and so on. 8. Many personal resources are available. Want to know PUTTING THE “NEIGHBOR” BACK INTO “NEIGHBORHOODS”

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about beekeeping? I ask Mel and get all kinds of information. Having problems with my car? Mary knows a lot about such things.Want to build a shed? Bob can give me advice and help me scrounge for materials. A neighborhood like mine is a collection of twenty-six lifetimes’ worth of experience in all manner of things.What a treasure trove! 9. Privacy. I get all the great benefits of cooperative living and also get privacy whenever I want just by going home and closing the door or going into the twenty-five acres of woods that surround my house that everybody shares ownership of. 10. To me, the monetary value of all these things would be in the million-dollar range. My house cost me less than market value to build and is worth much more than I paid for it should I ever move to another community—notice that I said move to another community. It is inconceivable for me to ever move back to a “normal” neighborhood, where everyone is a stranger and I have to be afraid every time my kid goes out the door.

Sharingwood Stories Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood, Snohomish, Washington I was hunkered down underneath my car doing something oily and I could see that down the street, one of my neighbors, Michelle, was trying to set out some metal light fixtures to spray paint. Every time she lined them up, her toddler would carry one off or otherwise disrupt the process. I was sort of tied up working on the car, so I couldn’t help her—but I didn’t need to. Rosemary, another neighbor, walked up to the toddler with a couple of little baskets and took her hand and diverted her into picking berries, while the mom gratefully arranged the lights and painted them without further interruption. The thing that I did not realize until later reflection is that Michelle never had to ask for help. Her neighbors saw her needs and helped her in the sort of quiet, unspoken way that communities work. Another day, one of the older kids was walking down the road with an adult I did not recognize. She was clearly showing the place off to someone. I thought it might have been a tourist (we get a lot of those) who had REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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asked her for a tour. I thought I would check. It turns out he was her teacher from school. He was so impressed with her conflict skills, group skills, and maturity in working with adults that he had come see this place in which she lived. He later joined another cohousing group. I remember a few years ago, our neighbors were in a tizzy because the in-laws were coming to visit for the first time and the house was a mess and they had very little time to work on it. I took their two boys off on a long expedition in the greenbelt to look for frogs, bugs, birds, and the like. I kept an ear cocked for the arrival of the in-laws and delivered the boys right as Grandpa and Grandma arrived.The house was spotless, and I never mentioned the field trip. However, after the in-laws left, I came home to find a six-pack of very good beer on my front step with a simple card that just said,“Community works!” I noticed one summer evening that my daughter had a new bandage on her elbow. She had been playing on the other side of the community and had fallen down.A neighbor heard her crying, comforted her, brought her in and cleaned her up, bandaged the small scrape, fed her some cookies and juice, and sent her off, good as new. I never even knew about it until I saw the bandage—my neighbor did exactly what I would have done.

At Shelda Taylor’s 97th-birthday bash, it took three cakes to fit all the candles, and a hair dryer to blow them out. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

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How Sixty-Seven Tons of Brick Connected a Community Saoirse Charis-Graves, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado

John Mackey does specialty cuts for the Harmony walkway. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MATT WORSWICK

Joe picks up the top brick from the pile on his left and adjusts it into position on the sliding tray of the tile saw. He braces the brick with one hand while he flips a switch with the other. Zzz! The brick eases forward into the diamond saw blade and soon becomes a custom-fit brick paver. He wears safety glasses, earplugs, and rubber gloves to protect him from the intense noise, tiny chips of brick, and cold water spraying from the whirling blade.The saw stands near the center of a grove of young aspen trees that commemorate the arrival of four babies in the first year of our village.The leaves of the aspens and the pea gravel under the trees are covered with a fine, red film: water mixed with pulverized brick dust. Tonight, Joe will wash red dust out of his ears and nose and hair and eyebrows and every inch of every layer of clothing.The saw has been running ten hours a day for the past ten weekends—up to 200 hours so far—and will continue running for another 100 hours to complete all the cuts, recuts (“It doesn’t fit!”), and fancy cuts before our brick walkway is finished. We worked through the scorching summer of 2001—a drought year in Colorado—to lay down 55,000 half-thick bricks over the ten-foot-wide REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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gray concrete pathway stretching the length of our community. For five years, we had tripped over raised manhole covers and concrete step-ups that were designed to accommodate the height of our future walkway. We fretted over the amount of work involved in the project and debated the fears of some residents: • “The surface will be too rough for the children to play on.” • “The bricks will be too hot to walk on with bare feet.” • “The designs will be too hard and look too busy.’” • “It will take us forever and we’ll burn ourselves out.” • “We could use this money for something else.” Macon, one of our elders (eighty-four years young), moves a push broom back and forth across the top of a completed section of bricks. He wears a straw hat, to protect him from the high summer sun, and work gloves, the soft swish of his broom the only sound in a moment of respite from the saw’s intermittent whine. Macon sweeps fine grains of sand into the cracks between the bricks to stabilize them in place and complains,“It’s a thankless job scraping this sand around.” Of course, we know he’s just kidding and that he wishes he were young enough to be doing “real” work.A couple of kids zoom past him on their scooters. In the background, bricks clink against each other.A work crew 100 feet down the ten-foot-wide walkway rolls out a black carpet: tar paper laid down as the first layer. Several emerging masters reach for bricks from small stacks on the grass next to the work in progress. They wear sunglasses and sun hats and loose summer clothing for weather conditions that often feel like a superdry sauna. Hands protected by heavy-duty rubber gloves, some duct taped to cover holes worn by the bricks’ sharp edges, move in a rhythm, laying bricks one by one on top of the cushion provided by the paper.A new four-color pattern is emerging in the red swath and the workers stop for a moment to check their accuracy and admire their work, as if they were painting a huge mural on the ground. From the work crew comes a sudden flurry of laughter.The patterns in the walkway confer a tangible sense of productivity, but just as satisfying are the patterns being laid among people. In five years of living together, we had discovered how the work gets done. Projects large or small rest on the back burner until a champion decides to take them on.The $10,000 set aside for the walkway PUTTING THE “NEIGHBOR” BACK INTO “NEIGHBORHOODS”

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from our initial budget accrued interest while we recovered from the physical trauma of move-in, working through punch lists of things to be fixed, and developing trust in our decision-making process; the first required a few months, the latter several years.The decision committing us to the walkway project occurred before we moved in; to reopen that decision for discussion required assent by a majority of households at a full community meeting.Therefore, the walkway was on until we actively decided otherwise. But we had lessons to live before we were ready to tackle a project this large.

Linda Worswick at the center of the universe, an hour away from a community parade on the finished walkway. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JACK LENZO

First, we learned that not everybody has to do everything. Some people watch children while others push and pull and lift. Some people fix lunch and carry water to thirsty workers while others saw, carry bricks, and pound nails. Some people buy supplies and clean up the mess at the end of the day while others calculate lineal feet and materials wastage and draw out designs on graph paper.Whatever project we tackle takes all of us, but in very different capacities. Over time, we learned to trust that work would be found that is appropriate to each one’s abilities and desire. Each one could contribute, albeit in different ways. Second, we learned to delegate responsibility and let go of control. Some of our residents consistently demonstrate an outstanding talent for taking complex tasks and breaking them into manageable chunks.We’ve REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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learned to trust these individuals, to rely on their insight and their judgment. Instead of getting involved in the details, we allow them to do what they do best.We offer support and ask clarifying questions, but we don’t do too much second-guessing. Mostly, we’re grateful they’re willing to take on the organizational challenge of such projects.And when asked for help, we show up. I am leaning over a puzzle in pavers, bricks at all angles winding their way around a double curve along the outside of the walkway.With bad knees and a stiff lower back, I don’t kneel anymore; I sit and scoot along the grass or brick surface.The corner of each courtyard is a special challenge, forcing rectangular bricks into sinuous angles. Each corner requires more than 150 individual cuts; each cut requires a set of special tools: eighteen-inch metal rulers, permanent markers, a stash of discarded brick pieces to fill in odd-shaped gaps. I pull a brick from one stack, position and reposition, mark the cutting line, draw an X to indicate which side to toss away, and write a number on the back of the brick and on the concrete below so each piece will match up after the saw has done its work. I mark as many as I can carry, then walk to the saw, trim my stack, and carry them back to my work area. One corner takes me all day to complete, sunup to sundown.At the end, I am racing the sun to finish the cuts and clean up the saw before darkness falls. I joined with Matt, Harmony’s designer, to move the walkway project forward as cochampions.We formed an ad hoc team of community members to help us examine our options, project material costs, organize our workforce, and finalize color selections, material lists, and so forth.We’d paved the patio of our common house five years before, and from that experience estimated the walkway would require an average of eight people per day for eight to twelve weekends.The ad hoc team met several times over several months, considered all the concerns and ramifications, and prepared a detailed plan for the community.The plan was clearly ambitious, and we hoped everyone would participate to some degree. But the work was all volunteer. Some thought we’d be lucky to finish before the snow flew in October; some thought we’d be laying bricks into the next summer. We didn’t really know how long it would take, or even if we’d have enough bricks.We didn’t know exactly how we would handle the sunken pans on the edges (for drainage), or what the designs would look like.We didn’t know how we would manage to move 135,000 pounds of PUTTING THE “NEIGHBOR” BACK INTO “NEIGHBORHOODS”

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bricks.Would our backs hold up, and our spirits? Would our community survive? I developed what I thought was a reasoned response to such doubts: we’ll figure it out.We’re anticipating what we can and we’ll solve whatever problems arise as we go.

John and Allie use the Harmony walkway a few years after its completion. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JULIA RAINER

In the end, all twenty-seven households contributed. Some people worked nearly every weekend, some only a few hours. Some individuals came out of guilt, while others enjoyed the camaraderie of working together and even came to love it. Some of the kids worked alongside their parents, presenting us with the challenge of finding adequate work gloves for such small hands. (Several of the kids were especially excited about the “hockey rink” pattern we designed and placed right in front of their house.) To accomplish our goal, we ruined gloves, clothing, and shoes.We developed deep tans and toned muscles.We put in more hours than some people wanted to count—an estimated 800 hours—but, as Matt said,“When you love it, you don’t count.” We produced something of beauty with our own hands, something tangible for all to see, a physical symbol joining us together in this final way.The red bricks match the red tile on our porch roofs and sweep down the length of our community, carrying the eye through the stucco arch at our western edge and right up into the blue-green foothills that dominate our western sky.A neighbor who is a pilot reports that the walkway is stunning from the air.As Joe, the brick cutter, summarized, “Nobody did this but us.” REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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What I Learned from Children about Giving and Receiving Charles B. Maclean, Ph.D., Trillium Hollow, Portland, Oregon Giving neighborly support has often been easier for me than receiving it.A near-death car accident a few years ago followed by extensive shoulder surgery changed my perspective in a heartbeat. For the first time since childhood, I couldn’t put on my socks, scratch my nose, or use my right hand to eat. I mentioned to my young neighbors, Lily and Emanuel, that I couldn’t even shampoo my hair. Spontaneously, they shouted,“Don’t worry, Charles, we’ll shampoo your hair for you!” Their unrestrained enthusiasm quickly replaced my skepticism. I soon found myself kneeling outside the tub, arm in sling, with my head and neck extended into the tub, totally dependent on their care. Giggling wildly, the dynamic duo sprayed me down with the shower hose and lathered my head with gobs of shampoo. Suddenly, Lily stopped, and in a whispered voice said,“Charles, do you know that you have a bald spot on the back of your head?” I erupted into laughter so pervasive that my shoulder pain dissolved. In that moment, my relationship with Lily and Emanuel shifted dramatically for me—and, I suspect, for them.They had opened me up to receiving support in a way I’d never experienced. As a nonparent, I previously related to kids primarily as beings to give to and hadn’t thought much about what they could give in return. With Lily and Emanuel, I experienced fully for the first time the rapture of receiving from children.They became my teachers about natural giving, helping me discover a piece of me I had missed during my own childhood. I now view giving and receiving as flip sides of the same coin called community.Whenever I give my time, attention, love, or money, the relationship between me and the recipient shifts.As with a child’s teetertotter, our giving-and-receiving relationship must be balanced over time in order for each of us to experience wholeness.To participate fully in community and feel a sense of personal gratification, the receiver— whether he or she is a child or adult—needs to give back to the giver or give forward to someone else. Likewise, someone who tends to be a PUTTING THE “NEIGHBOR” BACK INTO “NEIGHBORHOODS”

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giver has much to learn from simply receiving. When Lily and Emanuel stop by now to ask if they can lift something for me or pick up my mail, I delight and revel in the feeling of nostrings-attached receiving.We now look at each other through deeper eyes of love because we both give and receive with open arms and hearts.This, for me, is one of the true gifts of living in cohousing.

Looking Back—But Only for an Instant Steve Einstein, Two Acre Wood, Sebastopol, California The other night, I went with the kids to visit some old friends.Their small house was a fixer-upper that they’d spent a good amount of time remodeling, and their finished product is absolutely adorable.And my God, the backyard was massive and stunning. I recognized the wave of envy that was invading me.A small, tasteful house with lots of character, a backyard to die for, and neighbors you know and like. ... It looked so perfect. I’m feeling a bit sad as I pop the kids into the car and we drive off, leaving all that privacy and massive backyard and character behind.A minute later, we pull into our place. Just as we come in, Mary pulls into her spot. She bounces out of her car, greeting us energetically. She’s been to drumming class and is, literally, more upbeat than usual.A moment later,Tom lopes along with big ol’ Dailah. He asks about Malka, who has an injured leg, and then he jokes with the kids about this or that. Holly waves from her kitchen sink, Koby hollers,“Goodnight, Leo!” in the direction of Leo’s house, though he is nowhere to be seen, and then Michael J. appears with a friend. We make a date for early-morning tennis. Excellent.There’s cackling coming from Louise’s house again. Marty spills out with Louise right behind. I tell them how nice it is to hear laughter again from Louise’s. We all agreed. We weren’t home two minutes and we’d seen six friends and neighbors and hollered goodnight to another.All that sweetness and quiet privacy of my friends’ house on Neva Street is eons away. I didn’t really care how pathetic a backyard we have. It is fun coming home.

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CHAPTER THREE

C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S Forgive me if I sometimes seem to equate the pioneers of cohousing with the pioneers who resettled America. I know it seems like a gross exaggeration, but you have to admit there are similarities. In both cases, pioneers work within given conditions—sometimes harsh—to try to create a safe, equitable, livable world. In our times, the given conditions include things such as traffic congestion, overconsumption, and global warming—as harsh as they come. However, I believe that the best measure of a successful civilization —or community—is how well it can absorb disruption and keep going. A sustainable community produces less stress and more support for its inhabitants and puts less stress on the environment by conserving resources such as energy, water, and soil. Most cohousing residents are keenly aware of the environmental and social challenges we face, and I’m hopeful that, by example, cohousing will help steer a tarnished American Dream in a more sustainable direction. The choices made in cohousing communities help create a model for a new lifestyle in which each person leaves a smaller “footprint” on the Earth—choices such as reducing consumption and car dependence, eating higher-quality food, and living in well-designed, clustered homes preserve land and energy.

In communities such as Quayside, in British Columbia, recycling becomes a sport in which the goal is to keep 90 percent of the neighborhood’s waste out of the landfill. In other communities, such as Wild Sage, in Boulder, Colorado, scavenging for used solar panels on a Saturday morning is more fun than going to the mall. Some of us have become so interconnected with the neighborhood garden that we can’t find time to take a summer vacation, which at least keeps us out of airplanes and off of highways. For us, filling huge bowls of salad with fresh greens for community meals is far more pleasant than eating a Happy Meal or watching Survivor XXII on television. Being able to borrow the community pickup truck is more valuable (and even, in a way, prestigious) to us than owning and maintaining one. In communities such as EcoVillage, in Ithaca, New York; Pioneer Valley, in Amherst, Massachusetts; Harmony Village, in Golden, Colorado; and Sonora, in Tucson, Arizona, green-building methods are standard. These include techniques such as straw-bale construction; using insulation made from recycled newspaper; using passive and active solar heating and electricity; having on-site storm-water retention; and using highly efficient appliances and nontoxic materials, such as paints, that don’t give off harmful fumes.

Bike sheds are a standard feature in Danish cohousing. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GRACE KIM

At Cob Hill, in Hartland, Vermont, all twenty-three units have compost toilets. “There are no flush toilets anywhere in the twenty-three units,” says Cob Hill resident Susan Sweitzer. “Our REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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current documented water use per day per person is twenty-three gallons, less than a fourth of the national average.” The community heats all the units with a central wood-burning boiler using wood harvested sustainably from the Cob Hill forest. “All members sign up for feeding the fire,” Sweitzer adds. “Many of the units now have solar panels for household hot water in order to use the central boiler less in the summer. When fuel-cell technology matures, we plan to substitute that highly efficient fuel source for our very efficient wood-burning boiler. The fuel cell would generate both electricity and heat for the village.” Most cohousing communities are far greener than conventional neighborhoods, but they also have to stay on budget, so many of the features members would like to see in the community fall off the table after a few passionate discussions. There are always a handful of environmentalists and social adventurers who are willing to pay a premium for solar-powered electricity; water-conserving plumbing fixtures, such as the dual-flush toilet or front-loading washer; or a greenhouse. I was on the design team that met during the planning phase of Harmony Village. My own dream list included a Living Machine to treat the village’s wastewater. Living Machines mimic the way nature decomposes wastes by employing microbes, snails, fish, cattails, and other aquatic species in various mini-ecosystems within a greenhouse. I admit that for the average person, a Living Machine is about as compelling as a bowl of Brussels sprouts and quite a bit more costly, but I wanted our community to be a model of sustainability. Also, if we were going to build houses that looked like adobe, I wondered why we didn’t construct them out of adobe instead of stucco wood framing. We could build forms and create our own adobe blocks made partly from the clay soil that could be mined across the street, where there was a clay mine … For each futuristic suggestion I championed, architect and future resident Matt Worswick would patiently explain that we didn’t have a line item in the budget for Living Machines and that building with adobe would take more time and money than the construction schedule and budget would permit. Without his pragmatism, we’d probably still be dreaming about the community C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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rather than living in it. Still, we futurists and sustainability nuts die hard, and the quest for a smaller village footprint has continued with literature about neighborhood electric vehicles and schemes to install solar-electric panels on our roofs. Like many other cohousing communities, we’ve looked at a formal car-share operation, in which members can rent cars, vans, or trucks by the hour. Doing so might allow the second car in a household to be put out to pasture—or, in some cases, even eliminate the primary car if alternatives are available. The Eugene Downtown Cohousing community already participates in Eugene BioCarShare, a bio-diesel-car car-sharing cooperative. Says member Tree Bressen, “We have nine drivers and one car, which we run on bio-diesel. We formed a cooperative corporation to hold the title and we have insurance through a regular company. Each of us pays a $400 buy-in, $20 per month for insurance, and $0.30 per mile plus fuel. Since we are scattered across town, we sign the car out using our Web site” (www.biocarshare.org). Another element of sustainability in cohousing is a measurable reduction in the flow of stuff. For starters, cohousing homes tend to be smaller and there’s typically less space than in the average American castle to store and display stuff. Imagine this: I have zero storage (other than closets and a crawl space under the basement stairs). I rent my finished basement apartment and have no garage or carport. This is a great incentive not to acquire stuff. As George Carlin phrased it, the typical house is a pile of stuff with a lid on it. But not my house, which includes an office-sized stack of paper from various writing projects and a makeshift living room/greenhouse filled with the dirty flats of garden seedlings. (I have it made!) Then there’s all the unseen stuff. As affordable-house architect John Wolff points out, “Building thirty units per acre is the most sustainable way to conserve land, water, and energy, compared to the typical suburban density of three units per acre that requires ten times as much land and ten times as much infrastructure for water, sewer, utilities, and roads.” In cohousing, smaller homes and yards are acceptable without any sense of sacrifice because there’s usually a guest room in the common house; there’s a large commonly owned lawn; and there’s often a workshop, utility room, office, and other features that can be used by members (if REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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they remember to sign up for them on the calendar). According to recent surveys by Abraham, Paiss and Associates and others, those who live in cohousing drive 30 percent less, pay 50 percent less in utility bills, and use 40 percent less water than the average American. Still, according to architect Kim Grace, who toured twenty-two cohousing communities in Denmark in 2004, North American cohousing is not nearly as green as European cohousing, where the bicycle is a major source of transportation, houses are often 1,000 square feet, food is grown locally, and consumer goods are designed to last. “Danish cohousers pay more attention to things like light fixtures, which enhance quality of life by being attractive and by putting light right where it’s needed. In a common house, for example, a well-designed light fixture suspended over a table can make dining a much more intimate experience,” she told me.

Highly efficient front-loading washing machines are common in cohousing. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GRACE KIM

We had direct feedback from other Europeans when a Harmony family exchanged houses, jobs, cars, and friends for a year. A very lively Swiss family lived next door to me for a year, and once Guido Müller, a schoolteacher, got to know me a bit, he shared some of his observations about our neighborhood. He was especially curious about why our neighborhood didn’t have a community clothesline, especially in such a dry region. “I can’t understand why people in Denver have tumblers [dryers],” he said. “At home, we don’t have lawn sprinklers because we always get lots of rain, so why water the lawn? You get lots of dry air, so why C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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tumble the clothes?” We have 320 days of sun a year, so why didn’t every house have solar panels? In a very polite yet honest way, Guido commented that our neighborhood wanted to be green, but was really only “light green.” I should have told him that our sustainability group has a recipe for saving the world. For starters, we try to keep informed so that when a given issue or need arises, we can respond. If a telecommunications company wants to put a high-voltage television tower on the adjacent mountain, we can send at least a handful of activists to the public hearing. We know how to mobilize petitioners, attendees at city meetings, researchers, and writers because we built a neighborhood together. (It was our familiarity with working together that resulted in a neighborhood park landscaped with native vegetation.) If a drought looms over our region, we can respond by sharing suggestions such as, “Save the gallon and a half of cold water that runs down the drain before the hot water comes into the bathtub or showerhead. Water the tree in your front yard with it.” —D. W.

MAP COURTESY OF RAINES COHEN

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A Recipe for Saving the World, One Bagel at a Time David Wann, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado Start with a group of ten culturally creative cohousers interested in social change and sustainable lifestyles.Throw in a hunger for spirited discussion.Toss lightly in a neighbor’s living room and dice up bright, unsettling ideas from books such as State of the World, When Corporations Rule the World, The Cultural Creatives, Believing Cassandra, Affluenza, and Natural Capitalism. Combine with ingredients of day-to-day life: the relentless loss of local open space; the construction of a golf course on adjoining property; the election of politically incompetent candidates to state government; the desire to incorporate nature-compatible technologies into our community; and federal policies in which sustainability is not even on the radar screen. Stir-fry with a sense of mission. What do you get? A spicy, colorful, healthy dish called the Sunday Morning Sustainability Group at Harmony Village.We’ve been meeting on the fourth Sunday of the month at Macon and Ginny Cowles’ house for four years now. Over bagels, juice, fresh fruit, and tea and coffee, we discuss both global and local issues and learn from each other—always with a spirit of creating environmentally friendly, socially sustainable alternatives.The meal is simple, maybe in keeping with our shared conviction that our lives need to be simpler. No need to ring the bell on these mornings; just walk in, greet your neighbors, and grab a cup of your favorite beverage. Ginny has the coffee ready and the juice glasses out and someone will show up with a dozen or so freshly baked bagels.The atmosphere is comfortable and familiar.The place and faces remain much the same—it’s the issues that are constantly changing. You could call us a support group.At the end of each gathering, the intellectual and social support we’ve given each other lifts the fog just a bit from challenges that often seem to blanket us. But we’re also an action group. If Worldwatch literature reminds us that carbon dioxide levels have quadrupled in recent years, we assign a delegate to become a compact fluorescent bulb guru, promoting their installation in all outdoor community fixtures. If we learn from David Korten’s books that national corporations’ mission statements specify shareholder profits as C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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their sole responsibility, we look for ways to support local businesses, such as the hardware store, or to support local organic farmers.This summer, we got excited about a succinct twenty-five-word “do-no-harm” clause we found on the Internet that can be added to corporate charters to broaden their missions, and we explored ways to publicize it.

The group that saved the world, Harmony Village

Sunday Morning Sustainability Group members come from varying backgrounds, if similar concerns. For example,Virginia is a consultant on socially/environmentally conscious investing. John’s a retired psychotherapist and volunteers his time with homeless people.Wendy works with outdoor education at the Division of Wildlife. I’m a writer and video producer on sustainability. Harmony Village cofounders and our group’s hosts, Macon and Ginny, have brought a century of social activism to our discussions. Macon marched with Martin Luther King in Selma and Ginny won the American Friends Service’s Peace Award for her work at Rocky Flats, a nuclear weapons plant. Last spring, Macon passed away (at the exact moment the community was gathering for a candlelight vigil in front of his house), but his energy and his resolve continue to resonate with us on Sunday mornings.We find ourselves referring to articles he wrote for the community newsletter in which he championed active participation in composting, political activism, and energy efficiency. He had a tenacious, curmudgeonly skepticism for easy answers.We once caught him on his front porch measuring the speed of his electrical meter after installing dimmers on some of his lights.Though he’d REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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been told that dimmers didn’t save energy, he wasn’t convinced. He sought out second and third opinions, discovered that they do save energy, installed the dimmers, and advised us in the newsletter to “Dim it, dammit.” He would also routinely remind vacationers and business travelers that their flights were burning fuel at the rate of twelve gallons a minute just to give them a healthy dose of guilt. (When he and Ginny went on annual vacations to California, they drove.) Our small Sunday group has affected Harmony Village as well as the city of Golden in various ways. Most meetings, we bring letters we’ve written to politicians and editors and have spearheaded evenings with local politicians in our common house.When developers had their eyes on prime open space, we helped defend it. Knowing that Colorado is an ideal location for solar energy, we’ve explored ideas for financing solar panels out of long-term maintenance reserves, paying ourselves back with energy savings. (We’re excited about Muir Commons’ recent solar installation!) We’ve already got a community pickup truck, thanks to the generosity of one of our group members, Bob, but we’re always open to the idea of a car-sharing cooperative that might include noncohousing neighbors. Maybe some would progress to being one-car households. Someone said that the fork may be the greatest weapon of mass destruction, given the environmental destruction and nutritional deprivation that conventional agriculture causes.We hope to help reduce that impact with a highly productive organic garden, now eight years in the making.A few years ago, with our sustainability group as a catalyst, Harmony formed a private corporation of shareholders in an agricultural ditch that flows right past our garden.We own a share of Clear Creek in perpetuity and have installed a solar-powered pump to access the water. A few meetings ago, we accepted responsibility for saving the world, since somebody has to do it.We each showed up with platforms of five short-term and five long-range suggestions for improving the world.This month’s meeting will continue a discussion in which we began to apply first-aid to the most pressing problems, such as military aggression, child abuse and neglect, and other forms of violence.We concurred that only when our world is out of the crisis mode can we gain the flexibility and sense of empowerment to support the inevitable transition to a more equitable, secure, and permanently renewable economy. What specific rehabilitating actions will be proposed for the long C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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term? We’ll find out this Sunday, and maybe we’ll follow through on an idea I once brought to the discussion, that I called the power of ten. What if our group of ten sustainability nuts comes up with ten priority actions that are fairly easy to understand and very endorsable? What if we then e-mail these priorities to our sixty-odd cohousing peer groups and they e-mail them to family and friends throughout the world? Our group of ten feisty change agents would have launched an exponentially influential document, read and endorsed by millions.Will we save the world? Probably just in the nick of time.

How Does Cohousing Create Sustainability? Graham Meltzer, Ph.D., Cohousing Scholar This piece answers the question “Why is cohousing sustainable?” very thoroughly. For more of Graham Meltzer’s observations about cohousing, read Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model. —D. W.

In the fall of 1996, I undertook a grand tour of North American cohousing by visiting all of the established cohousing communities in New England, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and California. I spent three to five days in each of eighteen communities and made short visits to four or five more.The primary purpose of the trip was to research the ecological advantages of community life.The fieldwork included a ninety-question survey of 350 households, extensive interviews, and an evaluation of site planning and architecture. I looked at the real and potential benefits of cohousing with respect to land-use efficiency, alternative green construction, resource usage, conservation practices, and environmental quality. In addition, I set out to test a hunch: that communal living per se holistically integrates practical and social dimensions of daily life in a manner that reduces consumption, raises environmental consciousness, and realigns personal values. I sought evidence for what Don Lindemann expressed so poignantly in his inspiring Cohousing Magazine article “Coming Home”: “Cohousing is attractive to me precisely because it meets an immediate REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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practical need for a rich social environment close to home, while also satisfying a deeper need to be a global citizen, to somehow reconcile the awareness of ecological and social deterioration with the actions of my everyday life.”

At Cob Hill, the food is organic and fresh. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SUSAN SCHWEITZER

The Physical Elements The physical attributes of cohousing—its location, site planning, and architecture—are its most immutable.Their careful consideration is critical for fledgling groups in the site-selection and development stages, when future needs and opportunities are defined. Location is perhaps the single most important choice for many groups.Whether it is urban, rural, or something in between, location fixes proximity to schools, employment, shops, and services.This largely determines travel needs—though, clearly, homeschooling, telecommuting, and home businesses can mitigate vehicle dependence. Urban projects, such as Cardiff Place, Doyle Street, Southside Park, and Berkeley Cohousing, are impressive laboratories for the testing of green strategies for building reuse and sensitive in-fill development of existing neighborhoods (building in vacant areas). Such groups often sacrifice affordability, private space, and amenity in order to remain fully embedded within C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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mainstream society.They demonstrate a civilized, sociable urban lifestyle, and, in my opinion, they provide the greatest impetus to broad social change toward a more sustainable society. In contrast, less dense, more travel-dependent rural projects, such as Sharingwood and Nyland, enjoy peaceful, healthy, and safe surroundings in close proximity to nature.These communities have been instrumental in protecting the natural heritage of their locality and lobbying for improved services and public transportation.

Solar-assisted house at Nyland

Most cohousing groups, however, have adopted the compromise position of a suburban or small-town location where relatively affordable sites offer easy access to services, facilities, and recreational open space. Such sites are often large enough to accommodate modest employment, leisure, and cultural facilities that can then be made available to the wider community.The range of development options made possible in such locations offers great potential for sustainable strategies, such as the application of alternative green-construction methods and materials. Groups are generally active in local affairs and their efforts are visible to the wider community.A suburban or small-town location is likely to be most appealing to the mainstream; therefore, it’s important, if cohousing is to be a model of sustainability, that new projects demonstrate a potential for low-impact building, technology, and lifestyle. Apart from the inner-city projects mentioned, those that I found REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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most impressive in terms of how the land is used were Highline Crossing, with its uncompromising yet evocative urban aesthetic; Muir Commons, with its exemplary landscaping, orchard, and vegetable garden; Puget Ridge, with its dense yet human-scaled architecture beautifully integrated with landscaping;Windsong, with its high-density and radical architecture configured to protect the habitat of threatened salmon species; and Winslow, with its deceptively dense dwellings nestled amongst lush permaculture gardens and surrounding woods. Despite the generally compact housing form and explicit commitment to sharing, little centralization of services and infrastructure has been attempted in American cohousing.An obvious exception is the EcoVillage, in Ithaca, New York, where a centralized plant distributes energy to six or eight units at a time. Pine Street and Cambridge Cohousing have installed geothermal heat pumps that deliver air at belowground temperatures to the majority of dwellings; however, these are exceptional examples.The conventional architecture of most cohousing projects poorly represents the unconventional social settings they foster. Perhaps in the years to come, as cohousing gains acceptance and certain aspects of project development become streamlined, greater thought may be applied to developing a genuinely representative architecture of community—one that more confidently expresses shared aspiration through its site planning and in its built form.

The Social Elements My research survey, though mostly quantitative, concluded with the open-ended question “How has living in cohousing affected, if at all, your household’s ecological practices?” Responses suggested that among other factors, four distinctly different kinds of social interaction impact the degree of proenvironmental behavior: influence, exchange, cooperation, and support.

Influence Influence occurs where knowledge and skills are imparted from one person to another.The data confirm that cohousers are remarkably well qualified, with 50 percent of the adult population having a master’s or higher-level degree and another 30 percent having undergraduate qualifications. Many members are highly experienced in a range of life skills C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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and practices. In conventional society, specialists (whether they are doctors, plumbers, or pastry cooks) tend to guard their expertise and protect the status and financial reward their position incurs. In cohousing, knowledge and skills are more readily shared.They become diffused throughout the community and contribute to the welfare and personal development of all.This appears to be particularly true of environmental consciousness and practice.Those who have considered the issues and adapted their lifestyles accordingly readily influence members without much knowledge or commitment.This is well illustrated in the Berkeley Cohousing project, an exemplary model of environmentally benign urban redevelopment that combines refurbishment of existing housing stock with in-fill development. Much of the credit for the community’s innovative design goes to one enthusiastic member who researched alternative building methods and ecologically benign materials. He influenced not only the residents, but also the architects and the contractor. Indeed, his work may well inform and inspire cohousing groups to follow.

Groundbreaking ceremony at Wild Sage PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WONDERLAND HILL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

Exchange Apart from the influence of individuals, there occurs between members a more reciprocal and indirect process of exchange.This involves the mutual sharing of ideas and experiences and is therefore dependent upon the quality of social relationships within the group.The greater the respect and receptivity, the more information is exchanged.Through daily contact REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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with neighbors, new learning is constantly reinforced—a condition that residents reported was conducive to lasting improvement in proenvironmental practices. Respondents to the survey reported significantly increased levels of composting, recycling, and resource conservation as a result of personal interaction with others who are more experienced.

Cooperation Cooperation, like exchange, builds social relationships and is also dependent upon them.The degree to which residents are willing to cooperate is a function of the trust and goodwill they’ve established. In cohousing, the common house is the most tangible expression of member cooperation. Shared facilities both within the common house and elsewhere take considerable coordinated effort to operate and maintain. However, extensive shared facilities do not necessarily generate high levels of resident cooperation. In fact, somewhat ironically, my data suggest that communities with the highest ratio of common-to-private space had the most underutilized common houses, and those with relatively little shared space per household generally had higher rates of cooperative activity and participation. Cohousing lore suggests that members own in common or readily share consumer items, such as gardening equipment, carpentry tools, and household goods. Indeed, survey respondents reported owning 25 percent fewer freezers, washers, and dryers and 75 percent fewer mowers as a result of moving into cohousing. Informal sharing of smaller household items also occurs, but only one community,The Commons on the Alameda, appears to have optimized the process by circulating an extensive list of building, gardening, camping, cooking, and other equipment that each household owns and is willing to share. Cooperation to reduce driving via carpooling and the coordination of trips is also thought to be widespread in cohousing. But, in fact, little formalized carpooling exists in the communities visited, although the coordinated running of errands is common. Another apparently untapped potential of cohousing is the economy of scale available for food procurement. Some communities, Muir Commons, Nyland, Pine Street, and Pioneer Valley in particular, have extensive vegetable gardens coordinated by small committees on behalf of all the members. But most leave this activity to households to manage in private garden plots or those shared by a small number of houseC R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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holds. Few groups, with the notable exception of Muir Commons, have yet to enjoy significant harvests of fruit, although many have planted orchards.

Support Allied to cooperation but operating at a more personal level, support is readily offered and accepted in cohousing. Practical support occurs in a multitude of circumstances.There is willingness to care for their garden or feed their cat when neighbors are on vacation.Advice is offered and time readily spent in helping friends fix a leaky faucet, install new software, or move heavy furniture.This kind of mutual aid can save money, alleviate stress, and give substance to relationships. It is an essential ingredient of the social glue of most cohousing communities. Some groups nurture practical and emotional support by establishing a committee to tend the personal needs of members. Radically changed circumstances and emergency situations are often catalysts for such support. Unexpected loss of employment may necessitate a loan from an emergency fund; accommodations within the community may be found for one member of a splitting couple; a cooking roster may be devised to provide meals for a family in need. One member of Pioneer Valley, for example, reported not having to cook for two months following the birth of her child. How does this relate to sustainability? Well, I believe that a deep sense of connectedness to others can lead to a radical realignment of personal priorities. In conventional society, a focus on individual wellbeing is fused with a materialist conception of the world to become the American Dream. In cohousing, the focus becomes more altruistic and outwardly directed. Caring for the well-being of others becomes part of daily life. In my tour of cohousing, I observed personal fulfillment within a context of nurturing, supportive social relationships; self-knowledge and efficacy balanced with a commitment to others. For example, my arrival at New View Cohousing coincided with a fortieth birthday being celebrated in an open parking lot festooned with balloons, a live band, and a buzzing camaraderie.At Nyland, I felt privileged to be present when Halloween and Day of the Dead traditions were conjoined at a campfire gathering. I felt a sense of deep personal meaning and strong group cohesion.And at Southside Park, a moving Chanukah service was led by REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Jewish children in the presence of the whole community in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding. This is the stuff from which lasting bonds are formed and a sense of community is built. I like to believe they herald a grassroots-driven paradigm shift toward a sustainable society underpinned by strong community values.We shall see!

If Not Us, Who? PattyMara Gourley, Tierra Nueva, Oceano, California When we citizens feel like we’re up against a brick wall in the form of bureaucracy or corporate domination, we sometimes lose our sense of empowerment. Not so at Tierra Nueva, whose members drilled an exit hole in the brick wall and marched full speed ahead. —D. W.

Tierra Nueva Cohousing holds the distinction of being one of the first cohousing groups in the nation. Our founding members formed our group in San Luis Obispo County, California, in 1988.As pioneers in the new cohousing movement, we were faced with high-risk financial challenges, land-title complications, and the task of convincing our county planners and fearful neighbors that cohousing was the wave of the future. But we didn’t know in those early years that our biggest challenge still lay ahead of us. While other early groups moved more quickly through their development, design, and construction phases, we plodded along, meeting each new barrier or “project breaker” with dogged determination, honing our skills of communication, collaboration, and consensus.The early families leaned on one another for encouragement through those dark days and shared the plain stubborn notion of “We’ve made it this far; we can’t stop now!” In the summer of 1998, a full ten years after the group formed, the first families of our twenty-seven households began moving into our homes.We built our passive solar homes in the heart of a five-acre organic avocado orchard near the small town of Oceano on the central California coast.We settled into our new lives with relief and delight. I C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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remember thinking at the time “Surely, the difficult work is done. Now comes the easy part!” Then strange things began to happen. The same month my family moved into our new home, my “other mother,” Marya, a beloved elder of our community, died suddenly from an asthma attack while she was walking through the orchard to visit her home site.We gathered in shock around the tree where she took her last labored breath and grieved her passing with a candlelight memorial service.We did not know then that her death was only the first of many mysterious illnesses and deaths that would haunt Tierra Nueva Cohousing community. In the bittersweet haze of our grief and our joy, we cooked nourishing meals for one another, planted gardens, threw parties, and tended our organic orchard.Through trial and error, tears and laughter, we became more closely connected with each other and with the universe we all inhabit. More than half of our community residents had moved from other cities and states.Adjusting to the new climate took some time.Those with seasonal allergies experienced the effect of unfamiliar pollen, but felt no relief when the seasons changed. Our meetings and meals began to be punctuated by odd, dry, persistent coughing. Chronic headaches and flu symptoms became common complaints. After months of puzzling allergies and digestive discomfort, Carol, another community resident, was diagnosed with stage-four cancer, which had spread from an unknown source in her body.Within three months, she was gone. Even then, we did not make the connection that many more of us were being poisoned by an unknown source.After all, we were living in the midst of an organic orchard, eating homegrown, nourishing foods, living healthy lifestyles in the community of our dreams. And then Leah Rose, a sturdy seven-year-old, started coughing that same dry cough that wouldn’t go away. During a night of wheezing, she told her mom and dad,“I have a ball in my throat!” as she struggled to breathe.After weeks of frightening symptoms, she was diagnosed with asthma. By the autumn months of 2001, it was finally becoming disturbingly clear to us that something was dreadfully amiss. A prime suspect in the mystery surrounding our illnesses was the picturesque strawberry farm that Leah Rose could see from her upstairs window.This thirty-acre farm that borders our land was being fumigated and sprayed with a cocktail mix of toxic pesticides and herbicides. One of REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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them, the infamous methyl bromide, was determined by the Montreal Protocol International Agreement to be damaging the ozone layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and was slated for an eventual worldwide ban. But meanwhile, down on the ground, Leah Rose had a ball in her throat and an alarming number of us were suffering from increasing respiratory illnesses, skin rashes, headaches, flu-like symptoms, and mental disorientation.

Appearances can be deceiving—Leah looks out over a toxic strawberry field. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BRUCE GOURLEY

We were getting and staying sick, and we weren’t the only ones.We learned that other neighbors from surrounding residential areas had been complaining for more than a decade of symptoms associated with pesticide-drift poisoning.A small, dedicated group of these neighbors had successfully convinced the county Public Health Commission to sponsor a public meeting about the strawberry field’s affect on the neighborhoods.When Karl Kempton, our neighborhood poet-activist, contacted us about the meeting, we readily agreed to participate. More than 100 people attended the meeting, which the county health commissioner opened by giving extensive time to the Agricultural Commission and the local growers and brokers.At long last, when the microphone was finally opened to the public, Michael Kaplan spoke eloquently about his daughter, Leah Rose, experiencing her first asthma attack and the frightening weeks of symptoms before diagnosis and treatment. Others described their illnesses that followed each spraying and fumigation of the field. Nurses from the area reported growing statistics of respiratory diseases. Long-time residents, including Karl, spoke of the same symptoms they had been complaining about for nearly fifteen years with little response from governmental officials. The next day, we read a newspaper article about the meeting, and then silence fell.The Health Commission had formed a Pesticide Task Force to investigate the complaints, but how much would that help C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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Leah’s hacking and wheezing in the middle of the night? At our next business meeting, Michael announced his intention to write a letter of complaint to the owners of the strawberry farm, a theosophical community named Halcyon. In true cohousing style, discussion arose from the group and Michael was challenged to form a committee first, with the gentle suggestion that we couldn’t complain about the problem without also offering to help create a solution. We formed Neighbors at Risk (NAR) as a coalition of neighborhoods that surround the strawberry farm. In our first flyer, we described ourselves as “ordinary citizens wondering why we were getting sick.” Our prior environmental work consisted more in writing donation checks to groups such as Greenpeace than in direct action. But all that changed when we started getting sick, and the county agencies that we thought were looking out for our health seemed to be more attentive to the big business of agriculture. What began as a simple wish to write a letter of complaint grew over the next year into a wildly successful grassroots citizen coalition that broke new ground in our county and in the state.As ordinary citizens new to the complexities of pesticide drift politics and science, we sought and received help from a state organization, named Pesticide Watch, as well as our local environmental council, the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo County (ECOSLO).They helped us focus our efforts into a cohesive campaign with clear goals.We decided to launch a two-pronged campaign involving public outreach to the surrounding neighborhoods and a more private interaction with the owners of the field. We NAR members perceived our mission in very basic terms: we hoped to unite the extended neighborhoods by sharing information about pesticide drift, mastering the complicated complaint process required by county and state agricultural regulations, and devising an early-alert network for neighbors before each new spraying or fumigation.We believed that if we all paid attention to how we and our families were feeling in the days following each pesticide application, then carefully logged and accurately reported all the illnesses, we would become impossible to ignore. The skills we had practiced over the long years of development, design, and construction of our cohousing community served us well in our new role as activists.We incorporated our meeting structure and facilitation style into the NAR committee meetings and made sure that REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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everyone felt heard and acknowledged for their previous efforts, particularly those neighbors who had lived here long before our cohousing community was built. Our years of practice with consensus gave us the organizational tools to build a coalition of diverse interests, and our years of marketing Tierra Nueva—presenting informational slide shows, creating brochures and press releases to attract new members—also served us well in our campaign. Our next step would be to canvass the surrounding four neighborhoods that bordered the field and invite them to a community gathering in our common house.Amy Leach had spent time in college canvassing for a statewide environmental organization, and based on that experience, she wrote a summary statement for the canvass teams that enabled us to conduct an informal health survey. Every day of canvassing revealed a growing list of diseases, whole cul-de-sacs of cancers as well as alarming incidents of miscarriages and birth defects. Everyone we spoke with had a story of illness or death. In light of this sobering information, we decided that our first gift to the neighborhood would be to simply listen to everyone’s story. Candia Varni, a new neighbor who had purchased Carol’s home after her death, had begun to experience reoccurring skin rashes. Candia agreed to take on the gigantic task of “doing the science” of pesticide drift. She researched and described the symptoms of exposure for each of the chemicals being used on the strawberry farm and compiled numerous fact sheets to help inform the neighborhood about the realities of pesticide drift. One of these papers described the procedure our doctors would have to follow to report suspected exposures, which she had learned firsthand after her agonizing skin outbreaks. She had to educate her doctor on how to fill out the form in a way that would fulfill the requirements of state pesticide regulators.We planned to make Candia’s information available to all our neighbors. In the days preceding that first April gathering in our common house, tensions were building.The big business of agriculture wields powerful influences in our county. How could a ragtag group of neighbors make enough changes to keep our children and ourselves safe? One day, I sat in our meditation garden that overlooks the strawberry fields, struggling with the paradox that this farm’s sacred soil could become so menacing a danger. I knew we needed help of a different nature. I began to think of all my neighbors reporting their illnesses and C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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imagined a line of light flowing through each one’s heart, encircling the field. No longer menacing, the sacred soil of the land became my ally, energizing my efforts and sustaining my vision. Every day after that one, I silently linked hearts with my neighbors and the soil and its guardian spirits. On the evening of our gathering, thirty people showed up. I opened the meeting by suggesting that we acknowledge the suffering we all had experienced by listening to one another tell our stories. I began by describing Marya’s asthma attack that ended her life under one of our avocado trees. Michael spoke of Leah Rose’s ball in her throat.The stories continued to flow around the circle.Two adult sisters spoke of their parents’ deaths from different cancers, of sick and dying neighbors up and down their block.Another woman spoke of her life-threatening struggle with pulmonary fibrosis, her son’s asthma, and her husband’s allergies. She hadn’t connected the dots until that night. She wondered out loud if the pesticide drift might be a factor in all their diseases. Others reported of having to sell their homes and move away in order to regain their health. We listened, recorded each story, and handed out piles of Candia’s fact sheets.We passed around the e-mail-and-telephone early-notification list, promising everyone we would keep in touch.Then we served platters of organic strawberries, a symbolic gesture, to emphasize the nourishing possibilities of growing wholesome food on a farm without harm. By the end of the evening, we no longer felt isolated and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tasks ahead. By listening to and acknowledging each person’s story, we forged a mighty coalition of heart connection with one another. In the next eight months, we worked on strategies, wrote press releases, and created a Web site. Following our intention to work cooperatively rather than with confrontation, we invited the agricultural commissioner and the field inspectors to our common house to present their perspective and answer our questions.They agreed to work with the farmer to give us a twenty-four-hour prior notice for all sprayings and fumigations, which averaged once or twice a month during the growing season. Before each application, we contacted all the neighbors by e-mail or telephone to remind them to close their windows, keep pets indoors, and be aware of any change in their health.When I made the calls, I REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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became especially fond of one of the elderly neighbors who lived directly adjacent to the field. During our third conversation, she revealed that her husband had recently died of cancer and she had just begun to make the connection that perhaps the pesticides were the cause.We shared a sad moment of silence together. My last phone call to her was answered with a recorded message that she had left the area. The agricultural department agreed to conduct an expensive scientific sampling to test if drift was occurring.Though the test results were positive, their official response was less than encouraging.They determined the positive results to be “insignificant.”The agricultural department ignored the fact that all drift is illegal and chose to advocate for the farm owners rather than the farmworkers and the neighbors who breathe the deadly drift clouds.We also learned from them that the official complaints we were submitting would take years to be analyzed by the state’s pesticide regulatory bureaucracy. Based on the gruesome results of our early canvassing, ECOSLO was awarded a grant for an official public health survey through researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles.Tierra Nueva’s common house was used to stage the canvass teams and NAR volunteers walked the streets knocking on doors and asking survey questions. Preliminary hospital statistics revealed elevated birth anomalies in the town of Oceano, which is home to many farmworkers. In addition, the county epidemiologist studied local hospital records that revealed significantly higher levels of asthma, pneumonia, pleurisy, and male urinary tract cancers. Concurrent with our public outreach, NAR made plans for a more private interaction with the owners of the field, the Halcyon Temple.We worked on creating a new vision for sustainable farming practices as an alternative to monocrop factory farming.We informally named our vision “farm without harm” and set about developing a relationship of communication and trust with the Halcyon community’s Temple officers, including the Temple’s guardian and chief, Eleanor Shumway.We compiled packets of information to present to her, describing alternatives to conventional agricultural practices.We also gave her Michael Ableman’s excellent book On Good Land, which describes Fairview Farm, in Goleta, about ninety miles south of Tierra Nueva.This successful urban farm, completely surrounded by suburban development, grows nourishing organic produce without the use of pesticides and other chemicals. C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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In ongoing meetings with Shumway, we gradually earned her trust and cooperation. Her deep loyalties to the local farmer who had leased the fields for many years was tempered with her increasing dedication to our vision of a farm without harm. It resonated deeply with the Temple teachings of stewardship of the land. Nearly a year after NAR’s formation, the Temple officially announced its intention to sustainably farm the thirty-acre field with “sensitivity to the farmworkers, neighbors, and the land itself.” In March of 2003, the Temple announced their selection of a local farmer, Jerry Rutiz, as the new farmer whose methods would be sustainable.All the neighborhoods surrounding the field breathed sighs of relief and shouted jubilation. But just when we thought we were no longer neighbors at risk, we were directly exposed to pesticides in broad daylight. Sprayings and fumigations normally take place in the middle of the night, when no wind is present and most people are asleep. But on a clear, windy afternoon in March, twelve Tierra Nueva children and six adults were rehearsing our spring equinox play in the meditation garden that overlooks the strawberry field.We were startled by the growl of a large tractor spray rig rumbling toward us, driven by a man in a full chemical-protection suit. Immediately, we smelled a sharp chemical odor and tasted an acrid bitterness in our throats. One of the parents of the children who was standing at the fence yelled,“They are spraying now!” I directed all of the children to run up the path away from the field and into their homes. My many urgent phone calls finally resulted in the dispatching of an agricultural inspector, who called me from the field after he interviewed the spray rig driver.The inspector listened to my report of the direct exposure of our twelve children and six adults, heard the terror in my voice, and acknowledged the unusual circumstances of the daylight spray with windy conditions.Then he dropped a bombshell. The farmer insisted that only water was being sprayed when the tractor was driving by our garden.They were only testing the rig. I realized then that the field inspector was choosing to believe the farmer, not us. I begged him to do a drift test, and he agreed to try to get permission from his supervisor. Permission was denied to run the tests. When we reported that a neighbor had taken photographs of the tractor rig spraying close to our land, the officials finally agreed to test for drift, but when the weeks piled up with no official response, I was REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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reminded of the mantra we repeated in the early days of building our dream of cohousing:“We’ve made it this far, we can’t stop now!” I believe it was our training in the community politics of cohousing that empowered us to work effectively with various state and county offices to create better methods of reporting pesticide exposures and receiving immediate assistance from county public health agencies. It wasn’t enough to be heading out of the shadow of pesticides ourselves; we wanted to help reduce the risks for all others who also lived near farms.

Tierra Nueva’s successful activists celebrate with an organic feast! PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BRUCE GOURLEY

In May of 2003,Tierra Nueva hosted a huge organic potluck feast, inviting all the neighborhoods to come celebrate the new farm without harm and meet farmer Jerry and his family.We feasted on wild Alaskan salmon, fresh vegetables from Jerry’s current farm, and a staggering variety of organic casseroles, salads, breads, desserts, and free-trade organic coffee. More than 100 guests stuffed themselves into the common house, dancing and singing together to live music provided by Halcyon troubadours. Jerry spoke to us about his plans for replenishing the sterilized soil with compost, growing a variety of food crops and flowers without toxic chemicals, and working toward building a Community Supported Agriculture operation.We lingered long that night, moving from group to group in a daze, enjoying the distinct feeling that this was just the beginning of something marvelous. The juiciest fruit harvested from NAR’s year of activism was the C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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promise of the new farm. Encouraged by the new farmer’s vision, I am imagining a fruit-and-vegetable stand at the edge of the field with a colorful cafe serving organic coffees and fresh-baked lemon-walnut scones.As an educational demonstration farm for the community, tours will gather and learn about the magic of growing whole foods. On summer evenings, Karl can read his poems to us in the cafe, while we pass around heaping platters of organic veggies and Tierra Nueva guacamole.As shareholders in the farm’s harvest, we will collect our weekly bags of fruit, veggies, and flowers.At harvest time, we will gather in gratitude, gleaning the fields for the local food bank. Foremost in my vision is Leah Rose and all of our children, looking out their windows and seeing a patchwork quilt of colorful crops growing from sacred soil, wriggling with the healthy organisms of living earth.Above the farm, wind currents will carry purified air to Leah’s window. Below the ground, the underground water sources will return to their crystalline purity, no longer saturated with agricultural chemicals. Our nearby creek’s habitat will steadily improve and the native steelhead trout will swim upstream once again to spawn. The heart connections that flow through Tierra Nueva and the surrounding neighborhoods that circle the farm will sustain us for lifetimes if they are nourished with fellowship.After all, we’ve made it this far; we can’t stop now.

Snippy, the box turtle

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Preserving Open Space— and My Sense of Humor Edee Gail, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado Come see Harmony Village’s little “pocket park,” landscaped with native species; hike a nearby mountain trail; or maybe play a round of golf on the adjacent golf course. You may see and hear coyotes and meadowlarks, and you’ll certainly see lots of fat bunnies, whose population somehow stays ahead of both the coyotes and the resident mountain lion, who was recently seen peering in a neighbor’s living room window! —D. W.

Harmony resident Edee Gail plants a tree on a new “pocket park” she helped preserve. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SUSAN KEEN

I grew up on an island in Michigan seeing ships from all over the world cruise right past our house. I loved looking across the vastness of the Detroit River and Lake Erie, and from an early age, I learned the sanctity of open spaces. Years later, at a city council meeting in Boulder, a group called Ancient Forest Rescue was passionately attempting to persuade the city council to boycott Stone Container Corporation.They were cutting down the oldest trees in America to make two-by-fours to be sent to Japan at a C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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loss to U.S. taxpayers.The leftover wood pulp was made into Domino’s pizza boxes and King Soopers and Safeway paper bags, all stamped with ecological arrows on them even though they were made from virgin wood. I stood at the microphone telling of having spent eight years working for United Airlines, where I could fly around the world for $199. I told about how when you spend that kind of time in the air, you see what is being clear-cut.You see that more than 95 percent of our ancient forests are gone.You recognize that you cannot stand a redwood back up or replace an ancient forest. I spoke up not only on that day, but also on the day I was arrested and thrown in jail for defending our forests’ remaining old growth. My heart was in my stomach when I heard the cell doors of the women’s Durango prison echo as they all slammed shut.We six women arrested had our legs shackled as we were taken into court in bright-orange jumpsuits.Although I was found not guilty of trespassing on Forest Service land, I was charged $900 for attorney fees. I was innocent and it cost me $900? We risked our necks to protect the intrinsic value of this land, rich in biodiversity and history.We wanted it to be seen as something far more magnificent than profits. When Robert and I first got involved with cohousing, I liked the idea that our home would be on the perimeter of the land, so I’d have a sense of space and a vista to take in.The idea of our emerging cohousing community buying land adjacent to open space was perfect.The cohousing standard of a common green where all can play and know they’re safe from traffic felt right too. Living in Golden with its open vistas all around us would be ideal.All was going according to my visions and hopes. Little did I realize the extent to which the space around us would begin to shift and how we would need to get involved to preserve open, accessible land. My father used to say that, above all else, keep your sense of humor.This has been great advice, along with my realization in recognizing that what is important to us defines who we are.

Space for Dogs I tried to find my sense of humor when three neighbors decided they wanted dogs and didn’t feel they had room to keep them tied up at their own homes.Their vision was to have a dog yard out in what feels like REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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the only open space left at the village—right near our house. I knew a chain-link fence would not be not my idea of how open space should feel or look, and the thought of four barking dogs just outside my window did not thrill me either. I thought,“There goes any sense of spaciousness.” The night of the meeting about dogs, I felt like I was the only one out of twelve people who opposed three new dogs and a dog yard.This would make a total of eight dogs and I was thinking,“How can I possibly go against what the kids want and still get what I need? Am I the selfish one by wanting this open land and sense of tranquility? And why do dog owners think other people want to hear their dogs bark?” Luckily, a solution was found by open communication.The facilitator had each of us say what we needed in order to make the dog scenario work.Three and a half hours went by before we reached consensus on an underground electrical fence that no one would see.The owners would pay for it and agree to be mindful when the dogs were barking and bring them inside.They also promised to be diligent poop-scoopers. This agreement was a victory for everyone involved. Later in the week, other neighbors thanked me for speaking up for what they didn’t have the nerve or time to share.

The Nineteenth Hole:A Public Park? We moved into Harmony Village with five horses as neighbors just behind our house on Jefferson County Open Space.They grazed and roamed the openness, often stretching for better lunch on our side of a simple barbed-wire fence.They were able to gallop on this wild acreage that swings around to the east behind a row of big trees on the property line.An old silo stands stoically on the hill (which we were able to save from extinction with a few timely phone calls), and to the west of us are acres of old clay pits.The clay was mined and rode the rails to Denver, where it was made into brick.A gazillion years before any clay was dug, dinosaurs walked this land; a tyrannosaurus rex tooth was found in the clay pit, along with fossils of ferns and footprints more than 60 million years old. Somewhat ironically, the golf course is called Fossil Trace, maybe indicating that most of the fossils are now in the walls of Denver homes or jumbled up under the green fairways—only traces remain. The thought of losing our coyotes, horses, history, and open space to C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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men wearing madras slacks was a claustrophobic nightmare to me.At a city meeting in our common house, we were informed that only golfers would be allowed on the open space when the course opened.We did some research.According to Golf Digest, only 10 percent of the public plays golf. I knew that I was just one of that 90 percent who isn’t interested in the game, is too young, too old, or simply can’t afford it. I felt there must be someplace that the 90 percent could go to take in the green, open beauty of the soon-to-be-golf course. If we couldn’t be on it, at least we should have a place we could walk or ride our bikes to. I invited various city planners over for lunch to propose the creation of a park in place of some of the golf-course homes that were being planned.With the support of my neighbor Dave, I invited every city councilor over to see that this land would make the most beautiful park in Golden because of the 360-degree view of foothills, golf course, mesas, and mountains.

The view toward South Table Mesa at Harmony PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JACK LENZO

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I invited the developer over so he could see what our cohousing community was about—clustered housing with common spaces that allow residents to feel that they have more space in their lives.We suggested how much more marketable his homes would be with a park available to the residents. It was an afternoon of golds, from the turned cottonwoods lit up by the sun to the golden-yellow lentil soup.As we sat outside on the patio, all three of us laughed and joked, and he even asked for a tour of my house.Although he quickly nixed the idea of donating the land for a tax write-off, he didn’t slam the door on the idea of getting fair market value for several of his undeveloped lots. I don’t think he really expected us to convince the city to buy them. When the mayor saw the land, he totally understood what our passion was about. He refused lunch, yet was willing to sit and give us the low-down on the hoops we’d have to jump through to bring this to fruition. He stated the importance of getting a majority vote from the citizens’ parks and recreation advisory board before even thinking about the city council approving the developer’s $120,000 asking price. We found out all too soon that the advisory board, guardians of city open space funds, might be a hard egg to crack.About six of us in the village pulled together a Neighborhood Park Packet for each voting official, and my husband, Robert, and I hand delivered the packets on his motorcycle. Individually and in small groups, we courted each decision maker, walking the land with them. For many of our meetings, the weather was bleak, windy, and cold. Grays and browns are not a match with the word park, but that’s all God could give us at the time. I tried to bring warmth and lightness to the on-site meetings by offering cookies and hot chocolate and in colorful cups to whatever official was available that day. We organized a strategic neighborhood canvassing effort to garner signatures and contributions toward shrubs and trees. In three weeks, we collected 437 signatures and pledges of $2,200 for water-efficient landscaping for the proposed park. Months went by and we finally got the approval of the parks and recreation committee.Although they were initially opposed to the idea of a pocket park with a high price per acre, they began to listen after seeing the land and hearing our well-researched arguments. The winter night the city council voted was surreal.We had C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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experienced many footsteps and heartaches to get to this place.The near-champion Golden High School football team received an award from the council for outstanding athletics and sportsmanship, which was accepted by a physically challenged yet proud and handsome coach in his wheelchair. Having the team’s energy in the council chambers was invigorating, with a flush of small-town spirit.When the decision about purchasing the park was presented on the overhead electronic boards, there was an unprecedented jump and cheer for joy by all the neighbors. It was a unanimous decision, with the mayor stating,“This is a true example of what democracy is all about.” Last weekend, we planted our trees and shrubs in the park—one of the most memorable days of my life. I was tired after the work, but it was the best kind of tired because our efforts had gone somewhere.We were birthing a place that would be here for many future generations. The city sent over Josh, a twenty-something kid with his head on straight, to work the backhoe. He helped us distribute the trees to their chosen locations and carve planting holes into the world’s hardest material—or so it seemed on that day.At the end of that hot eight-hour period, he told us,“This has been totally cool, planting a neighborhood park I can show to my kids one day.”

Looking Out for the Future When a local gravel company offered to trade 438 acres of Golden’s North Table Mesa for sixty-three acres of gravel-rich lowland, everyone involved won.The negotiation took three long years to complete, but the rewards are forever—permanent open space on a visually and historically valuable landmark. We faced another challenge on the neighboring mesa, South Table Mountain, where Nike proposed building a 5,000-employee campus.This parcel of land, with its Castle Rock butte, was pictured on the Coors beer cans and ads for many years. More importantly to us, it’s what Golden residents see from any point in Golden.To many Native Americans, this is sacred land.To me, the Nike proposal would be like building on the Statue of Liberty’s head. To face this challenge, we formed a citizen group called Save the Mesas to educate the public and even our own city government on the importance of procuring this land as open space.We sent newspaper REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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articles and letters to the editor and to the Nike’s board of directors expressing the importance of the Mesa remaining undeveloped. Nike backed out for numerous reasons, a success still partly in the shadows since it’s unclear what the landowners will ultimately do. The future of Golden’s open space is being decided as I write. It’s odd to me how these days one must battle for frontier—we no longer battle the frontier because there is so little left.We’ve tamed, groomed, and sculpted her to suit us, like the now-complete manicured golf course we see from Harmony Village living rooms and patios.At least the neighborhood kids who helped mulch the trees in the new park will remember how we created a new public place, and hopefully they’ll feel empowered to preserve land for their kids. One thing is certain: the land can’t preserve itself—it needs our help. May we find the persistence, people skills, and sense of humor that we’ll need!

Earth first! PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MAC THOMSON

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Money, Homes, and Trust: Economic Diversity Issues at Wild Sage Ellen Orleans, Wild Sage, Boulder, Colorado Sustainability is about more than environmentally friendly appliances, sustainably harvested lumber, and organic farming; it’s also about the overall satisfaction of people. Can they sustain a high enough level of involvement in the civic life of the neighborhood to maintain what has already been created, and even continue to improve it? This piece by Ellen Orleans demonstrates that sustainability also includes qualities such as economic fairness and diversity. —D. W.

“We support connections and relationships at all levels, consciously seeking and valuing diversity and the challenges it brings.” At the core of most cohousing communities is a statement spelling out the group’s values. Common to many of these statements is a phrase about honoring diversity among its members. My cohousing group,Wild Sage, includes economic diversity as one of the differences it values. At the start of our twice-a-month community meetings, we usually read our vision statement. During this part, I often find myself thinking, “Why does a group seek economic diversity?” Because it makes for a more interesting community? Because it’s a socially responsible position? Are vision statements written from the perspective of people with more money saying they value the presence of people with less money? Is it equally true that people with less money consciously seek and value living among people with more money? These questions flit through my head, then beat a hasty path to the back of my gray matter, pushed out by talk of parking and participation, pesticides and pet policy. Sometimes, though, I wish our group could spend several hours (guided by a skilled facilitator) really talking about this. Economic diversity is a hot issue in Boulder, Colorado, where REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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rental and housing prices have spiraled upward since the late 1980s. Having survived the last fourteen years by living in increasingly smaller apartments, at age forty-two, I am now purchasing my first home, all 640 square feet of it.At $106,000 (about two-thirds of market value) this carriage house is part of Boulder’s permanent affordable-housing program.This means if I ever sell, its price will remain proportionately low. (Boulder County has about 3,000 such permanently affordable homes.) Boulder began its affordable-housing program with the intention of helping middle-income households—such as those headed by teachers, nurses, store managers, police officers, and city employees—buy homes in town. Some affordable housing is in mixed-use developments, where homes are clustered with shops and offices. My home is in one such area—a former drive-in theater in North Boulder.

Roberto does Habitat for Humanity sweat equity on his new home at Wild Sage. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JOE VANANDEL

The city-affiliated Boulder Housing Partners acquired the drive-in site in the mid-1990s and began a public-private partnership with for-profit and not-for-profit developers, such as Jim Leach’s Wonderland Hill, which has a long history of building cohousing communities. A major impetus in developing the drive-in site was to significantly increase the number of affordable homes in Boulder. Of the 329 units to be built there, 43 percent are to be affordable. Of the thirty-four units at Wild Sage, twenty-one are sold at market rate, nine are permanently C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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affordable, and four are for Habitat for Humanity. (Habitat is a nonprofit Christian housing group. Using volunteer labor, donations, and sweat equity from its homeowners, they build and rehabilitate houses. Habitat then sells these homes at no profit and finances them with affordable, no-interest loans.) When I joined Wild Sage in March of 2001, the group was a mix of affordable and market-rate buyers who were working with Habitat to find families that were a good fit for cohousing. Unlike communities that have to search for land, we already had the drive-in site, but we hadn’t yet chosen units. Individual unit design was evolving; price estimates changed monthly. It was a nebulous time, and that cloudiness carried through to the buyer categories. Only a mild friction existed amongst us. For instance, during my first year with Wild Sage, I’d hear assumptions such as,“Since we’ll be moving from larger homes to smaller ones, … ” or “Let’s have a meeting about timing the sale of our current houses to match the purchase of our cohousing unit.” Remarks like these didn’t recognize that many affordable buyers were currently renting and would be moving into larger homes than those in which we currently lived.These comments were not devastating, but they did lack awareness.Although the Wild Sage vision talks about “consciously seeking and valuing diversity,” some members seemed pretty unconscious. I didn’t push the matter though. I was still in the group-development stage known as “dreaming and planning.” During this stage, community members don’t tend to challenge each other.The emphasis is on fitting in. Two things changed during the next year.The first was personal: I left my adjunct faculty job at the University of Colorado and found steadier work. Happy in my new job, I remember one Wild Sage member (I’ll call him Pete), asking me how much I was making. “Thirty thousand a year,” I told him. “Wow, that’s practically volunteer work,” he said. He worked in high tech. I didn’t tell him it was the most I’d ever earned. More importantly, I didn’t tell him, as I should have, that I felt insulted. For me, this conversation drove home the salary gap between me and some of my future neighbors. The second change was that money conflicts began brewing at Wild REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Sage. Boulder Housing Partners clarified and changed some rules about required square footage and prices of affordable homes.This created an overall price increase.To absorb the increases, the prices of our units went up—market-rate homes disproportionately more than the affordable ones. Increasingly at meetings, talk arose about market-rate buyers “subsidizing” affordable buyers. The conversations felt condescending, but since none of the other affordable buyers were speaking up, I didn’t either. Finally, at one meeting, when Pete again said,“Yeah, but we’re subsidizing you, so … ” I lost my composure. “Actually, Pete, affordable buyers are subsidizing your overpriced salary, which wouldn’t exist if the people you rely on for your health care, city services, and foamy mocha lattes got paid a living wage.” I wasn’t quite as quick and eloquent as that and I said it while I was facilitating (which is highly unprofessional), but the effect was immediate.The room got quiet until someone from our process team said,“This sounds like an important discussion to have at a later time.” After the meeting, three affordable buyers spoke to me. One said,“I’m glad you spoke up. I’ve been wanting to say something for a long time.” The other two said they were starting to feel guilty, as if they weren’t pulling their weight simply because they were buying affordable homes.

Wild Sage residents salvage twenty-seven solar panels.

As a way to explore the growing divisions at Wild Sage, our group tried an activity to help members think outside their own experience.We used the activity during an upcoming discussion about the homeowners’ association (HOA) dues in which Wild Sage’s finance team was wondering if the category of one’s unit—whether market rate, Habitat, or affordable—should be taken into consideration when determining dues. C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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At the next meeting, we arbitrarily divided the community into groups of threes. In each of these groups, the members were again arbitrarily assigned identities, as a market rate, Habitat, or affordable buyer. If a member was assigned, for instance, the identity of an affordable buyer, no matter what category of unit they were actually buying, during this exercise, they needed to speak from the perspective of an affordable buyer. I then posed the question about homeowners’ dues. The resulting conversations surprised me.A few market-rate buyers, for instance, were only slightly over the eligibility limit for affordable housing and could barely afford their units. Other market-rate buyers were unemployed and concerned about down payments. One Habitat buyer wanted to pay the same HOA dues as everyone one else because she didn’t want to feel indebted to the group.A market-rate buyer was eligible for affordable status and was considering switching to an affordable home.This exercise was a success; it got us talking and helped us gain empathy for each other. A few months later, tensions again rose with a sudden “garage shortage.” In part, this shortage was caused by a new rule that allowed affordable and Habitat buyers to purchase garages.Again there were scattered comments about garages being an extravagance for Habitat and Affordable buyers. What underlies this attitude is a false belief that one group of people knows best what another group needs. For instance, one of Wild Sage’s many single moms told us that, for her own sanity, once a month, she treats herself to a day at a spa.A market-rate member commented that someone buying a discounted house shouldn’t indulge in such luxury. But who are we to judge how someone prioritizes their money? Such judgments aren’t a one-way street. One time, a potential member, another single mom, was considering purchasing our most expensive home.A few days later, an affordable buyer apparently remarked,“What is she, a princess?” Maybe this potential buyer was a princess or perhaps she simply had a high-paying job. Perhaps she’d invested well or had recently moved from a part of the country where homes cost more.The point is that when we make snippy comments, whether based on envy or distrust, it’s a sign we aren’t taking the time to learn about an individual. Assumptions are walls; we need bridges. One bridge-building exercise we used at Wild Sage took a hard look REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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at communal dust we’d swept under the rug. For this activity, I wrote twelve statements that summed up, in tactless and thoughtless ways, unspoken concerns about anxiety, participation, and finances.A few examples: • I’m tired of subsidizing affordable units. I don’t make much money myself. • If Habitat buyers can afford to purchase a garage, they should pay more for their houses instead. • Market-rate buyers are patronizing. I’m sick of how clueless they are about gender and class issues. I purposefully made the statements harsh to cut through the politeness that sometimes keeps us from honest conversation. For the activity, I again asked the community to divide into groups comprised of at least one buyer from each category. I asked them to read and discuss the statements. Some groups focused on how unrealistic the statement seemed—“No one really thinks that, do they?”—while other groups directly tackled the issue raised.The ensuing discussions succeeded—if not in vacuuming up the dust under the rug, at least in lifting up the rug to reveal the hidden dirt. Another bridge-building exercise I’ve used is “Standing in Each Other’s Shoes.” For this activity, the group forms a circle.The facilitator reads a statement, and if it is true for an individual, they take a step forward.The resulting inner ring of people is then encouraged to look at each other, acknowledge their commonality, then step back. If the statements are mild, such as “I have a dog,” or “I like vegetable lasagna,” the activity simply encourages connection among members. However, if the statements are riskier, such as “I have been in an abusive relationship,”“I have been threatened because I am gay,” or “Someone I cared about has recently died,” the exercise drops to a deeper level. When you stand in that inner circle, amid people who have experienced similar suffering or heartbreak, the affinity is more profound. To help the group explore money differences, I prepared statements reflecting economic concerns. One statement addresses that casual remark I first heard two years ago,“My Wild Sage home is larger than where I live now.” Other statements read,“I am concerned about HOA dues and I’m not sure I can handle my mortgage payment.” For these C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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statements, I imagine buyers from every category will be represented. This, I hope, will remind us that money worries are not confined to a single income level. As we continue to build community at Wild Sage and participate in bridge-building exercises, my hope is that someday we won’t need them. It’s not that I imagine our conflicts will magically go away, but instead that we will know each other well enough and trust each other deeply enough to initiate discussions on our own, preferably in the common house, over a big slice of vegetable lasagna.

Have Conscience, Will Build: A Developer Reflects on Cohousing Jim Leach, Wonderland Hill Development Company, Boulder, Colorado If cohousers resemble the European frontier folk who settled America, it’s not difficult to picture developer Jim Leach in a buckskin coat. In a variety of ways, he’s in the vanguard, leading the movement to resettle America. In addition to being the developer of Silver Sage Village, an experiment in elder cohousing, Jim and his wife, Brownie, will also live there. —D. W.

Like a flame draws a moth, cohousing attracts a certain type of house builder. I’m afraid I am one of those types, as are many of my friends and associates. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we think we are going to save the world, our country, or at least our hometown from environmental and social degradation through the quality of the housing we create.This challenge keeps a lot of us going in an industry that is full of political adversity and economic risk. Back in 1989, my friend Ed Trunk, a fellow home builder and a founding member of the Nyland Cohousing community, approached me with the idea that I might be interested in helping Colorado’s first cohousing community develop their project. He thought cohousing and I might be a nice fit together because I had, with partners, developed REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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several planned communities in Boulder, Colorado. In fact, my company laid claim to having developed the first planned community in the city and probably in the state of Colorado that had common areas and a homeowners’ association (HOA).We had also done some innovative solar- and energy-efficient housing in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had collaborated with the Department of Energy to the tune of $250,000 in solar grants.All of this played well with the members of the cohousing community that later became the Nyland community. By the time I met them, the future Nyland community consisted of more than twenty members, mostly proactive, relatively highly educated, and talented individuals whose heads of household ranged in age from their late twenties to mid-seventies.They had plenty of variety and talent in the group, including architects, at least one builder, and a number of educators, therapists, artisans, business owners, and even retired military people.They had taken the leap and gathered enough resources to option a forty-two-acre former farm in eastern Boulder County on land once farmed by the Nylands, a family with Danish roots—very appropriate, since the roots of American cohousing are also in Denmark. When Ed described the concept of cohousing, which includes a strong commitment to green building and living sustainably, I was intrigued. I immediately went out and bought Kathryn McCamant’s and Charles Durrett’s book, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, and speed-read it.This idea seemed like a breakthrough in developing a market for more environmentally progressive housing. I was eager to work with the cohousing group to create a method to develop their community. Maybe they could become a model for other similar communities. It was clear to me that cohousing was very much resident driven: it is basically a group of people who want to design and build their own neighborhood and do a better job of it than conventional builders are doing. As a custom builder, I’ve observed that just designing and building one’s own house is a monumental endeavor that few people have the energy to even attempt. Of those that do, many are tortured for years by the process.The decision making alone is enough to break up a good marriage.Trying to do this for a whole neighborhood of homes seemed like an overwhelming task for a diverse group of households, and the Nyland group was just coming to that realization after optioning their land.They had decided to seek outside professional help.After I began C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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working with them, I had a realization of the potential power of community to change the way Americans live, moving us in a more sustainable direction. Modern housing for the majority of the America population really traces its roots to the early-production models of suburban housing created by the Levitt brothers and other builders right after World War II. It was a natural evolution of the mass-production mind-set that brought our country so much success in winning the war and creating the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s.What some call the American Dream was just beginning to blossom. But like most success stories, too much of a good thing creates problems—in this case, long commutes, traffic issues, and the “collision” of automobiles with neighborhoods. It’s hard to get to know your neighbor when you’re inside a car or she’s disappearing into her garage with the door closing behind her like a drawbridge.

Jim Leach at the Wild Sage site PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF EVANGELINE WELCH

Solutions began to emerge in the 1970s and the 1980s—planned developments and planned communities where open space and common facilities were incorporated into neighborhoods to alleviate the negative impact of the automobile. In the past ten years, new urbanism has emerged as a strong force in attempting to make our developments more livable. Greater social interaction and community is encouraged in REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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front of the houses in an attractive environment that’s not designed purely to accommodate automobiles. But when cohousing came along in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was like adding a whole new dimension. Now, instead of just designing housing that offered a more attractive and resource-efficient product, we could codesign neighborhoods with the very people who were going to live there.These future residents could help decide where the kids’ playground should go and what kind of building materials should be used. They could tap into the synergies that inevitably arise when many creative minds focus on a single project.They could make a commitment to live a more sustainable, satisfying lifestyle together and could share not only common facilities but also their experiences, talents, and aspirations. The Nyland community, like other groups we’ve worked with since, included several strong-willed interest groups.Among them were avid environmentalists with extensive knowledge about green building who wanted their future community to be a model for sustainable living. There were also individuals with great knowledge and interest in building the social aspects of the community.They spoke passionately about concepts such as raising children in a nurturing environment. For many, the affordability of their future homes was foremost, so they needed to participate in a program that delivered high quality at prices near the conventional market. What resulted from this mix of needs, knowledge, and commitment was a very pragmatic approach to creating a resource-efficient neighborhood. Nyland was deemed by Public Service Company of Colorado to be the most energy-efficient new development built in the state the year it was completed, and it was the subject of many magazine and newspaper articles.We included a host of green-building techniques in the project, ranging from lumber-conserving framing techniques and the use of manufactured wood structural components to water-conservation techniques in both homes and landscape. Grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Colorado Office of Energy Conservation funded the testing of indoor air quality in the homes, both when the homes were first completed and several months after the homes were occupied. The tests determined that the Nyland homes had significantly lower levels of indoor air pollutants than a group of comparable new homes built at the same time. Some of the contributing factors were innovative C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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low-cost fresh-air ventilating systems, paints that emitted fewer fumes, and carpeting made from recycled materials. However, one of the most important differences was that the Nyland homes in the study didn’t have attached garages, while the standard homes experienced significant pollution from automobiles and the chemicals associated with them. In the tests made after occupancy, the most significant Nyland indoor air pollutants were generated from furnishings, household cleaners, and other substances brought into the homes by the occupants. One conclusion that can be drawn from the EPA tests is that lifestyle choices, such as the kind of household chemicals a person chooses and whether the car is parked in an attached garage, are likely to be as important as the way the house is built.The cohousing community process influences these lifestyle choices because households learn from each other and adopt behaviors that become part of their mission and their community culture.

Common house at Nyland, a community developed by Jim Leach

Nyland also implemented an aggressive recycling program, as well as transportation programs that resulted in one-third fewer vehicle trips in and out of the neighborhood than comparable developments, as tested by the City of Lafayette.These various efforts resulted in an exemplary sustainable neighborhood of quality homes that were built for just 5 REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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percent above the typical production home-building budget. Nyland was ahead of its time: many of the green-building techniques used there ten years ago have since been incorporated in good quality production housing throughout the Denver area because they make good common sense. However, it takes something like a group of future neighbors working through a functional community process to successfully challenge and change the paradigm. The community process provides the energy that drives the change. However, it helps to have knowledgeable and experienced professionals who are willing to put in the extra effort it takes to push the envelope. In the Nyland project, these building professionals ranged from the primary designer, Matt Worswick, who brought practical green-building experience, to the tradespeople who had to take extra care and sometimes learn new, innovative techniques. I have a slide that I’ve used many times in speaking about our greenbuilding experience at Nyland. It’s a picture of one of the first homes under construction with most of the rough framing complete.The carpentry crew is standing around listening to a group of designers and engineers explaining a method of eliminating unnecessary framing lumber—Optimum Value Engineering, or OVE.The leader of the framing crew is standing, holding his bowed head between his two hands as if he just felt a big headache coming on. Still, the community’s commitment to green building energized the professionals and, in a way, made them part of the community. It was evident that everyone working on the job felt the underlying vision of the group. Wonderland Hill has now served as the developer in eighteen cohousing projects, and one of the things we learned early on is the importance of good community process. Most cohousing groups practice consensus, in which a decision requires unanimous consent.Typically, it’s regarded as inappropriate to block consensus for reasons other than the good of the group as a whole. For a group of twenty or more often diverse-thinking Americans, consensus decision making can be a very time-consuming process. Group members must reach a high level of understanding and trust in each other and must be reasonably aligned and clear about their common vision for their community.This requires continuous team building and group process work that many Americans are not familiar C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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with.That’s why we at Wonderland decided to establish a professional community-building and group-process function within our company. Their job is to help the groups become stronger communities with better group process. From our standpoint as at-risk developers, this is important both for project management and marketing. New prospective members want to join a well-functioning community and are turned off by poor group process. In fact, group process is probably the greatest single challenge in cohousing developments.The process needs to be managed carefully but can’t be overly controlled by either professionals or individual community leaders. Lessons learned by Steven Covey, Jim Collins, and others in the creation of high performance and high creativity in business management are valuable in the cohousing process.As in business, we have found the Myers-Briggs personality profiles helpful in building understanding and respect among group members.A mature cohousing community, like a well-functioning business, takes on a life of its own and becomes like a living organism that transcends the individuals within it. People can leave or enter the group and it goes on in a flowing, organic way, moving toward the fulfillment of its vision. We at Wonderland also believe that it is important to have a viable financial partnership between the community and the professionals, with both sharing the risk and success of the project.When inevitable disappointments arise in the development process, members and professionals who have financial risk in the project are more likely to pull together to resolve issues than to abandon the project. The first cohousing communities developed in the United States faced special challenges due to the unique nature of the concept.There was this nagging perception that cohousing communities were communes. I can’t count the number of headlines for newspaper articles that included the words “communes of the 1990s.”Another misperception that affected the financing of early projects was that American homebuyers would not accept homes that didn’t have attached garages, or at least parking very near the house.The Nyland community debunked this myth when their first homes were chosen.The homes with the highest location premiums (perceived to be ideal locations) were also farthest from the parking lots.The home site with the highest premium of all was more than 100 yards from parking, but it had the best view of the mountains to the west and was chosen first. So much REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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for conventional suburban expectations. Then there was the issue of common facilities adding to the price of the homes.These unfamiliar factors made it hard to get a construction loan at Nyland. But when we pointed out to the banks that more than 70 percent of the homes were presold, they began to warm up to the concept. It was important to make cohousing seem familiar to the lenders.We structured homeownership as it is in a normal, planned residential development, where individual households own homes and common areas are held in a homeowners’ association with covenants and bylaws.We also pointed to successful developments that our company and other home builders had done, with fairly extensive common facilities, such as pools and clubhouses and community greens. Our aim was to show that cohousing was not that much different—the buyers were just choosing slightly different common facilities. Since Nyland, we have had very few problems obtaining construction financing for cohousing projects. Local smaller banks seem to love them because they are mostly presold to a group of potential future loyal bank customers. However, having an experienced cohousing developer backing the financing has been important.The construction lender’s greatest and most legitimate fears revolve around dealing with a group that is relatively inexperienced in real estate development and that might fall apart during the process. Housing value is another challenge that cohousing struggles with. Not only do the cost of common facilities and sustainable design add to the price of cohousing homes, but the cohousing process is inherently less efficient than production-built housing, since the involvement of future residents can slow the project down. More professional time and talent are required to manage it effectively.A common question that comes up among professionals first looking at the cohousing process is: why can’t it be done without so much resident involvement in the development process?

The Mainstreaming of Cohousing Some larger production builders, such as my friend Perry Bigelow in Chicago, are experimenting with cohousing-style design without the cohousing process. By eliminating the community involvement in the design and construction process of the homes, Bigelow will be able to C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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offer significantly lower prices for cohousing homes than we’ve seen in the recent past.What they will lose is the community building that grows out of the experience of participating with your future neighbors in decisions about the design and construction of your homes. Obviously, there’s value in a sense of community, but the homebuyer market often overlooks that value. We are a society that’s used to having our purchases fully assembled and ready to work without much effort on our part. Not very many Americans—even the so-called cultural creatives—are able to understand the value they will get from cohousing and are willing to pay the price for it.There is a need to document with credible research what existing communities are doing that adds significant value for their members. (I suspect this book may help identify some of these values.)

The Cottage Company, based in Seattle, adapts many cohousing principles, such as a community building, clustered housing, common green, and remote parking. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE COTTAGE COMPANY

To have broader appeal, cohousing will have to offer better understanding earlier on of the expectations that the group will have on the individual both financially and in terms of personal time and energy.A better understanding of the vision of the community and how it will be implemented is also important, along with a clear understanding of the benefits that vision offers. Clearly, some people are able to see the final product even in the early stages of a cohousing project, but can we expect the typical homebuyer to be that visionary? One way to create a stronger emotional appeal for cohousing is to tailor it to special segments of the population, such as seniors.This will REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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result in less diversity but more easily defined satisfaction. In Denmark, they have been successfully creating seniors-only cohousing for the past twenty years.We are just beginning to work on similar communities in the United States. From a few early meetings with interested seniors, we have identified some interesting departures from the typical intergenerational communities we have been working with. Seniors place a high priority on a supportive physical and social environment that they can live in for the rest of their lives.They also place a higher emphasis on luxury and the aesthetic qualities of the homes and common areas.Wellness is a strong interest with a desire for common exercise space, lap pools, and therapy rooms, and even possible living units for wellness practitioners who would become part of the community. Likewise, communities that offer a special environment for families with children, such as special schooling opportunities, play groups, and coparenting to free up parent time, will have a stronger appeal to young families. By locating senior communities next to communities that emphasize the needs of families and children, the intergenerational advantages of cohousing may be captured, while providing a stronger emotional appeal to both seniors and families. Another unique quality that cohousing has is its ability to integrate households of diverse economic means.This attribute could play an important part in cohousing’s future and has already been demonstrated well in several communities in Colorado and California, such as the Nomad and Wild Sage Cohousing communities in Boulder. Boulder has an aggressive permanently affordable-housing program that is promoted by inclusionary zoning and financial assistance from the city. (Inclusionary zoning refers to the affordable-housing requirements that local governments place on new residential developments, requiring a minimum percentage of the homes in the development to be affordable to low- and moderate-income buyers or renters.) Nomad and Wild Sage have more than 60 and 40 percent respectively of their housing units in the city’s permanently affordable program, and Wild Sage has four units that are being built for Habitat for Humanity buyers. Home prices within these communities range from well below $100,000 to more than $400,000. Integrating households with that much economic diversity is not easy, but it is a challenge that is being met in cohousing. Diverse households are discovering the synergy that is generated through community and helping each other in ways that go beyond just providC R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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ing decent housing for all. Habitat’s slogan,“It’s not a handout, It’s a hand up,” is taking on a whole new dimension in these progressive cohousing communities.

Are We Having Fun Yet? Joining a cohousing community has been described as the longest and most expensive personal growth workshop you can attend.While it’s a major challenge for a community to organize itself effectively enough to get through the development process, for most groups, learning how to live together after moving in is even harder. Yet, after nearly two decades of cohousing experimentation, several observations keep coming up.There’s a very tangible dynamic that occurs when people cooperate to build their community and reach an understanding of how they will live together.They become an extended family of sorts, and they develop ways of loving, respecting, and having patience with each other. If cohousing is, at its core, about building a better world, one neighborhood at a time, then the world has already been improved by sixty or seventy neighborhoods, and many more are on the way.That’s a start.

“Now what?” Pioneer Valley shaving cream fight PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

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The Journey to 90 Percent Recycling at Quayside Village Brian Burke, Quayside, North Vancouver, British Columbia The Quayside community recently won the annual Environmental Stewardship Award given by the City of North Vancouver. Says Brian, “Seizing the opportunity to impress the city council with Quayside’s efforts toward Zero Waste, the Quayside kids took bags of what we recycle— and what the city at present does not, such as three kinds of Styrofoam and meat bones—along to receive the award at City Hall. We struck up a chorus to the tune of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ with the words ‘Zero waste we say, in thirty different ways, reduce, reuse, recycle, rejoice, you can start today.’” —D. W.

What happens when an aging hippie who got arrested protecting the last of the Canadian rain forest meets an irrepressibly positive grandmother and former shop steward? Well, for one thing, you’ve got a recycling problem! When Carol McQuarrie and I first met seven years ago, I was looking for a new, environmentally friendly community to buy into and she was one of the original Three Blind Mice, a trio of single almost-grandmothers who didn’t want to grow old and lonely in their empty nests.They had an idea for creating a friendly, supportive neighborhood, and by the time I met them, five other families had bought into their crazy idea. They had plunged their savings into hiring the cohousing consultants Community Dream Creators. At those first dream-creating meetings, often at Carol’s old heritage house, I noticed that her blue recycling box on the back porch wasn’t used all that often and there was no compost out in the yard. My mission was to change that kind of behavior. I asked the emerging community if they were willing to adopt a goal of diverting 90 percent of its waste into recycling. Perhaps they were overly influenced by the desire for more members, but they said yes, and I joined the community. A year later, our cohousing consultant was on the front cover of the local newspaper, pictured standing on our beautiful urban site that overC R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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looks Vancouver Harbour, the Pacific Ocean, and the snow-capped North Shore Mountains. Downtown Vancouver was only a ten-minute ferry commute away.What a location! The recycling program was already well underway during construction.The first step was to demolish three houses on the site, and based on my two years of experience in the recycling industry, I instituted an extensive demolition salvage-sale and recycling program. During construction, 51 percent of all material was recycled—the highest level ever achieved in the Greater Vancouver area.Wood, cardboard, paper, metal, Styrofoam, soft and rigid plastics, beverage containers—all were separated. Lunch leftovers were composted off-site and even all the old concrete foundation material ended up in the harbour as fill for the new cruise ship terminal. By the next summer, that excavated site had been transformed into Quayside and we began to move in. Quayside inherited the contractor’s supply of garbage cans, which ended up in the parkade.This fleet of carts and bins holds both the materials picked up by the city as well as twenty-two other materials to sort, all of which I load into my van every month and take to a number of recycling facilities across the city. “I’ll never get the hang of this,” Carol would cheerfully report in those early days, but I was determined to prove her wrong.

Challenges At move-in, Quayside was halfway to our goal at 50 percent diversion, thanks to community members such as Kathy McGrenera, super single mother. Her daughter, Elise, became the first member of the day-care operation that had been Kathy’s dream to open in cohousing. Kathy was soon seen squinting over recycling bins separating items too small for normal people to see.“You know,” she giggled at one point,“once you get started on this, it’s hard to stop!” But we faced other challenges. Some neighbors, perhaps a third of the community, made our recycling goal of 90 percent seem very unlikely.As recycling coordinator for the maintenance committee, I started recording how full the two-cubic-yard Dumpster (the smallest unit available) was every two weeks on pickup day.When several new members moved in, in spite of the clearly marked metro-wide cardboard ban that threatened fines, cardboard boxes began appearing from every REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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weekend’s shopping sprees.The bin measurements went from averaging 75 percent full to overflowing. It was obvious that part of the challenge was to reduce what we brought into the community. Then there were the days shortly after the Chinese owners of the little corner store in our building moved into their new house.They had bought the same historic corner store site where the Dome Mart had stood since about 1915. (Although the historic dome itself was relocated, Quayside’s architect had carefully reproduced the famous dome on the new building.) Suddenly, the day after regular pickup, the little Dumpster was full again, this time with cardboard boxes full of Chinese papers and old business files. Did that have something to do with the $1 extra garbage can fee assessed by the city?

Quayside Village’s urban site in North Vancouver, Canada PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GRAHAM MELTZER

Progress! For two years, nothing much seemed to change, except that the donated backyard composters multiplied from two to four. Soon even the four units were not keeping up with demand, with, at that time, about threefourths of the community participating. So we decided to invest in a high-volume, triple-bin composter made out of cedar, similar to the one at Cardiff Place, in Victoria, British Columbia’s first cohousing community.Was our community culture maturing? My investigations showed we C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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had now achieved 63 percent recycling, and six months later, this had risen to 70 percent. But our goal was still in the distance. Most other similar buildings in the neighborhood were on weekly Dumpster pickups, but Quayside’s remained on a two-week schedule, in spite of the challenges. Clearly, the last one-fourth of the community was producing almost three-fourths of the waste. But people such as Kathy were leading the way, with program breakthroughs such as: • Putting a plastic bag in the common house freezer for bones, which get taken to a willing butcher for inclusion in the bonemeal industry pickup. • Collecting all Styrofoam. White bead board goes to the local ‘retro’ beanbag chair manufacturer. Eggs, coffee, and meat trays, weighing almost nothing, are nested and mailed to the Canadian Polystyrene Recycling Association in Toronto. Net cost is about $35 a year. • Bringing batteries and compact fluorescent lightbulbs to the IKEA company’s new recycling program. A Quayside kid demonstrates at a City Council meeting. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BRIAN BURKE

What Goes Where? While the municipality does pickups of metals, glass, numbers one and two plastics, mixed paper, cardboard, and newspaper, Quayside has recycling bins for many other items, including soft plastic; numbers three through seven hard plastics; low-grade paper and cardboard, such as pizza boxes and milk containers; Styrofoam; and several other groups of items.There are labels on the wall above the bins to give residents a map of what goes where. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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We have a container for deposit bottles for funds that go toward common-house expenses.We have a container for clothes that gets taken to the Salvation Army.There’s even a bucket for wine corks and wood; these are combined with other landscape materials to become garden and landscape mixes. Soft plastics get recycled into pellets that are then recycled into more plastic bags. There’s no such thing as real garbage. But some of the items that we haven’t figured out how to recycle include incandescent lightbulbs; items that are made of different types of materials glued together, such as metal and plastic toys; disposable diapers; cat litter; and large vinyl items, such as shower curtains and raincoats.

The Final Push On our journey to 90 percent, a fundamental question kept coming up: how to get problem recyclers such as Carol on the recycling bandwagon? I asked her if I could look under her sink, which was very fastidious, the same as the rest of her showpiece apartment. I saw a problem here. One of the keys to a successful program is to reorganize under the sink to allow for multiple bins, such as our recycled ice cream buckets, so that sorting and emptying is just as fast as throwing out garbage. There weren’t enough such containers under Carol’s sink.“How about starting with just one or two more items?” I asked. “No, too complicated! Too yucky! I don’t do ugly!” she protested. And what can you do when someone blocks consensus on your proposal? We were head-to-head. She was the interior-design nut who refused to budge, but I was equally as determined—an activist who had once said no to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Clayoquot Sound when my environmental values were at stake. But this is Canada; you act polite.We weren’t playing hockey, after all. Then, strange things started to happen.A few months later, I was back in her kitchen and noticed a beautiful ice bucket on the counter. Since she wasn’t known as a drinker, I asked her what it was.“My compost bucket,” she said.“It was a perfect match with the sink and faucet.” Next, she volunteered to empty the three little bins in the common house laundry, which are for lint, paper, and everything else.“Start small so you don’t fail,” she said. Finally, I remember feeling hope for the world when Carol started C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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her own recycling program, signage and all. She collected and delivered tin cans for the Community Arts Lantern Festival and corks and paper for the museum’s children’s program. She told me,“I love doing that. It makes me quite happy when I help recycle.” It was the same voice that had started the community. In our early meetings, Carol’s voice had sometimes risen above the despair in the room to rally the group with her unwavering positive words. Now she was becoming a leader with the recycling. “Yes, we can do this too.”

P.S. No, we haven’t reached our lofty 90 percent goal as of yet. But four homes have recently sold to new members who are all, so far, looking like more avid participants than the outgoing group.We must be well over 70 percent, although I haven’t done a formal calculation this year. And this weekend, we cancelled the garbage pickup for the third time in five years.After three weeks, we’re still not full!

Hypnotic zucchini PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JENISE AMMINOFF

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The Landscape of Cohousing and Other Reflections Grant McCormick, Sonora, Tucson, Arizona

Is sustainability possible in a resource-hungry location such as Tucson? Maybe so, if someone like Grant McCormick is on the design team. —D. W.

In addition to the appeal of community living, I became involved in cohousing as someone who had skills to offer in the development process. I was interested in eventually owning a home, but I didn’t have the resources to buy one at the time, so it was more about supporting something I felt would be good for Tucson. I studied community planning in school, with an emphasis on the social factors in design, and cohousing seemed to offer solutions to many problems.There are many assumptions built into the phenomenon of suburban sprawl, for example, that suburban locations provide better environments for children, or that far-flung locations provide better access to nature and open space. Cohousing seemed to be able to challenge some of those assumptions. My goal was to choose an urban in-fill site instead of destroying untouched desert, and also to avoid infrastructure burdens associated with new suburban development. I wanted a location close to downtown, commercial services, and public transit. The social aspects of cohousing—community, collaboration, and consensus—were especially appealing to me. I wanted to promote and learn about these aspects and integrate them into both my personal and professional life. Many of the textbook cohousing ideas about being connected to a community—casual social opportunities, a pedestrian orientation, participatory design and management, shared open space, knowing neighbors—were also appealing. The prospect of collaborating in the creation of an entire neighborhood from the start was interesting to me because of the contributions I could make in both urban planning and landscape design. I was also intrigued by the possibilities of a highly participatory planning-and-design C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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process, producing results more responsive to future residents than occurs in typical developments.Aside from opportunities to demonstrate specific sustainable-development techniques, such as material selections, cohousing offered the potential to demonstrate sustainability due to the collaborative, shared resources nature of the community. The most surprising part of creating Sonora Cohousing was how long it took—seven years from the first meeting to move-in. Still, even the more developer-driven and streamlined forms of cohousing development can take many years, as can conventional development projects. The key stumbling block is related to financing. Finding a partner that could arrange financing was the watershed event that eventually made the project happen. Despite the fact that government regulations related to codes and the approval processes were a drag on the development process, in our case, the city was very supportive, predictable, and presented little overall impediment.A far more limiting factor in terms of time delay and innovative design was what might be called “design by inertia” on the part of the professional development community.The idea of a participatory design that included future residents in decision making was unfamiliar to design professionals, the builder-developer, and the city; thus, we met some degree of resistance. Yet, the results of our participatory-development model speak for themselves.Value was added and many sustainable goals were included as a direct result of resident input. For example, the community has more than forty fruit trees, including citrus, avocado, peaches, nuts, and others. One hundred percent of our sparse rainwater is captured in drainage basins designed to slowly percolate the water back into the soil; it is also used to provide on-site landscaping.The common house was built out of straw bales with a stucco finish and it has photovoltaic panels on the roof.We recycle gray water from the common house laundry room for use on our landscape, and a number of homes have cisterns to store rainwater.

Goals Realized and Future Goals Most of my early goals have been realized to some degree. I have a home in Sonora Cohousing.While the site isn’t as urban as I would prefer, it is within several miles of the city core and is built on an in-fill site. I REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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believe it is a great environment for kids and parents and it has a lot of very appealing open spaces. I’ve learned a lot about community, collaboration, and consensus, although I think we have a ways to go to reach our full potential.The social results are not as fulfilling as I had originally hoped, largely because of my full work life, the time demands of being a primary steward of the community’s landscape, and a few community conflicts.

Gateway to Sonora, made from welded rebar PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SIMMONS BUNTIN

My goals for the future are focused more on the social aspects, centering on my family, the creation of a more effective community decision-making process, and stronger personal relationships with other community members. I continue to nurture the Sonora Cohousing landscape, which I believe is key to the community’s sense of place within the Sonoran desert.The landscape was designed to be a diverse and beautiful place for people’s enjoyment, while also demonstrating appropriate ecological choices for the Sonoran desert. Other outstanding development projects also demonstrate sustainable practices appropriate to the region, such as landscaping with native and edible plants and water harvesting. But what distinguishes our landscape is the integration of these practices into shared spaces.We don’t know exactly what will evolve, but it will likely be a compelling C R E AT I N G S U S TA I N A B L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

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symbiosis between the natural world and the resident stewards who care for it.This is rather uncommon beyond the scale of the single-family home. There’s also symbiosis among Tucson cohousing communities. For example, Stone Curves used our common house for many of their development-phase meetings and used our physical environment as a marketing tool. Sonora’s landscape may have “raised the bar,” encouraging an above-average budget and consideration given to the Stone Curves landscape, and hopefully others. I suspect that after Stone Curves is complete, many opportunities will emerge for sharing experiences and knowledge among residents.

A welcome water fight on a hot Tucson afternoon at Sonora PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF PAUL AFEK

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CHAPTER FOUR

VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES Here in Colorado, many a devoted hiker has climbed all fifty-three peaks that are higher than 14,000 feet. It might be an even greater challenge to visit all the cohousing communities in North America, especially since—unlike Colorado’s Fourteeners—a new one seems to appear every month. Raines Cohen, a resident of Berkeley Cohousing, observes that cohousing communities (and their guest rooms) are now within a day’s drive of each other all the way across America. “Boston, Ithaca, Ann Arbor, St. Louis, Lawrence, Denver, Salt Lake, San Francisco Bay area,” he says, offering one possible itinerary as evidence. “You could also tour cohousing on the East and West Coasts that way,” he adds. The nice thing about such a tour is that guest rooms tend to be pretty reasonably priced, from “Suggested donation” and “Please wash and dry the sheets” to $35 or so. And chances are decent that there will be a common meal the night you’re there. There are always opportunities to rent a cohousing home if a person wants to try out living in cohousing before buying. And cohousing residents often trade homes with each other (one household wants to be in Colorado, another wants a vacation in Washington), or rent a home while a cohousing resident goes on a sabbatical or into the Peace Corps. Recently, there’s been a lot of

talk about the collective members of cohousing cooperatively buying a vacation home in Mexico, Costa Rica, or some other warm, decompressing location. The concept is great, and if that idea gains momentum, it would be a great opportunity to practice my Spanish … Whenever I visit another cohousing community, I see familiar patterns in both behavior and architecture. And I always come away with design ideas for possible use in my community—for example, I love the Sonora Cohousing fence that’s constructed out of welded rebar, and the tiles in the River Rock common house that celebrate the passions and personalities of each resident. Newcomers to cohousing: go out and see what do-it-ourselves neighborhoods are like; most have scheduled tour days, or at least tour contacts, listed at www.cohousing.org. Or, if visiting cohousing communities in person is a logistical challenge, there’s a perpetual flow of cohousing chatter on the Listserv, Cohousing-L@cohou ing.org, a great tool for getting to know specific communities. Usually there are pictures and community histories and sometimes also virtual tours. (By clicking to the left or right of a picture, you can walk through a neighborhood and see its features.) A lot of “lessons learned” are shared among communities on the Listserv. For example, as I work on this chapter, I notice that a survey of the pet policies throughout the cohousing world was recently completed. Fifty-seven communities responded to Sonora Cohousing’s survey, reporting issues such as off-leash dogs attacking leashed dogs; pet excrement in common areas and private yards; cats killing wildlife; barking dogs and meowing cats; and other petrelated dilemmas. Of course, we tend to think our pet is angelic, while neighbor pets are silly looking or foul smelling. So the pet issue has never been a particularly easy one to resolve. In the survey, five communities responded that they allow no dogs and two have no cats. Thirty-five communities require a leash, fence, or documented voice control for dogs and thirty-one require bells and owner assurances that cats won’t endanger wildlife. (My “pet peeve” (literally) is that hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent for human wastewater treatment and zero for pet poop treatment. And whose poop is that, anyway? As one of my neighbors suggested, “We already have designer poop scoopers—why REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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can’t someone invent a laser poop scanner to identify, with DNA data, which overlooked pile is associated with which pet?”) Sometimes, unfortunately, pet issues cross the line from nuisance to trauma. A recent incident in our neighborhood was reminiscent of a fictitious story Garrison Keillor might tell on “Prairie Home Companion,” yet it actually happened. Two preschoolers were walking a neighborhood cat, Thunder, on a leash. They didn’t see the harm of letting go of the leash, and, poignantly, they watched Thunder dart up a tree after a bird and hang himself. In other news from Lake Woebegone, community policies to mitigate personality conflicts continue to evolve. Fortunately, no serious injuries or homicides have been reported in the first decade and a half of cohousing in America, including the five communities profiled in this chapter. The neighborhoods described here offer a good cross-section of urban and suburban cohousing, communities-from-scratch, and communities carved out of existing neighborhoods—what has come to be known as retrofit cohousing. Enjoy the tour! —D. W.

GREYROCK COMMONS, F O RT C O L L I N S , C O LO R A D O

Growing Pains, Trials, and Triumphs Katharine Gregory Katharine Gregory’s story was a welcome addition to this anthology because it highlights so many familiar cohousing practices and very effectively answers the question “How can we make this work?” —D. W.

“So, what’s this crazy living situation you’re into this time?” my longtime friend Lindsey asked me over the phone from the East Coast.That was shortly after I’d left a voice mail message for her trying to tell her about the cohousing neighborhood my husband and I planned to move into. “Well, this time,” I told Lindsey and others (as opposed to last time), “the community I am moving into isn’t based on a spiritual practice. It is VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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based instead on the idea of an old-fashioned neighborhood, where people know each other, help each other, and share resources.And like many cohousing communities, at Greyrock Commons (named for the view of Greyrock Mountain), the neighbors hail from varying backgrounds, ethnic groups, and religious and political beliefs.” “But does everyone get along?” Lindsey later asked me skeptically while standing in the kitchen of my new home during a visit. At that point, my husband, Dan, our two-year-old daughter, Kate, and I had lived at Greyrock for about six months and had spent more than a year prior to that in cohousing planning meetings getting to know our soon-to-be neighbors. I looked my old friend in the eye.“People seem to get along most of the time,” I told her.“We definitely don’t always agree, but we try to work things out and respect different viewpoints.” I glanced out my kitchen window and spread my palms toward the houses we could see through it across the grass.“With thirty single-family homes,” I explained, “there are enough people so you don’t necessarily have to interact with everyone. I find I’m friendly acquaintances with most and closer friends with others.” Looking back now on the past seven years of living here, the interesting truth is that our most obvious differences—such as religion and politics—seem to pose much less of a challenge than our more subtle differences do.Whether we’re of the same religious or political bent or not, practically any combination of neighbors can have, for instance, varying ideas on how to run a meeting; radically different parenting styles; radically different standards for how to care for the landscape or the common house; and downright opposing views on how closely we have to adhere to previously agreed-upon guidelines and legalities. If the actions of certain children seem playful or healthy to some parents but destructive or rude to others, how do you resolve the conflict? What do you tell the children? If lack of adherence to the Codes, Covenants, and Restrictions (CC and R) and other written agreements seems to some households disrespectful but seems to other households natural or even necessary, how does a community deal with the intense frustration, anger, and disappointment that inevitably emerge? The best answer to all of these questions is that, for the most part, we’re still finding out. Often, disagreements and problems are tackled well during our once-a-month community meetings. Occasionally, though, tears or angry REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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words surge to the surface.We’ve struggled, for instance, over countless decisions, such as how severely to limit the number of garages and parking spaces per household and how to deal with various instances of private structures being built on commonly owned land. Many final decisions are reached as a matter of compromise. Our decision early on to limit the number of second garages to seven has worked well, giving members the opportunity to buy or sell one of the seven as needed. However, we’re still in the midst of discussing our diverse views regarding private use of commonly owned land. The consensus process we use during some meetings, when important decisions need to be made, presents unique challenges, sometimes drawing out the process over several months or longer.As a community, we often look for guidance regarding consensus issues from Greyrock member Renate G. Justin, who, now in her seventies, has had decades of experience using the consensus process within the Quaker community. (See her story on page 114.) At a community meeting during Greyrock’s first year or so, Renate pointed out that sometimes, when we don’t know at first exactly how to resolve an issue, “We just have to muddle through, finding our way.”As a group, we laughed in agreement with this energetic, wise community elder.Years later, her comment still seems such an apt description of our experience.

Greyrock playground

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Muddling Through Early members wrote as part of the Greyrock Commons mission statement: “We understand that building community is a fluid, evolving process to which each of us contributes. As we move along this path, we expect course corrections and value learning from our missteps.” We have indeed continued learning and making course corrections. Quite a number of households, for instance, had outdoor cats when we first moved to Greyrock and had failed to notice the clause in the CC and R stating,“Household pets shall not be allowed to run at large within the community.” Quite a few other Greyrock members had looked forward to a neighborhood where birds wouldn’t be disturbed or threatened by cats, where gardens and sandboxes wouldn’t be used as disposals for cat waste, and where newly planted trees wouldn’t be damaged and sometimes destroyed by excessive climbing and scratching. Many of us moved in, however, never imagining that we would be expected to tackle the near-impossible task of keeping our outdoor cats inside. We formed a “cat team” and took five months to come to an acceptable agreement for the community, in which current outdoor cats would be able to remain outdoor cats as long as they wore bells to warn birds and as long as we would put protective barriers on the trees and scoop out our shared sandbox.All new cats coming into the community would need to be kept indoors. Doug Swartz and his wife, Karen Spencer, who put in years of generous hard work as two of the original founders of Greyrock, have held the vision for a neighborhood where birds and other wildlife would be less threatened than they are in typical neighborhoods. Doug recently described his memory of our approach as a community to the cat dilemma saying,“This is a good example of a decision that was by no means my first choice, but that I felt I could live with in the interest of community harmony.” Our optional program of sharing meals together stands as another example of course corrections we’ve had to muddle through.At first, those who chose to cook on a certain evening posted their menu and anyone was welcome to sign up. Sometimes so many signed up that the REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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dining room was overcrowded.The cooks and cleaners were overwhelmed with extended hours of work.Also, some members were discouraged by the noise and high energy of so many kids at the meals; little ones have a hard time resisting running across our wood floors in stampede fashion, shouting to friends across the dining room, and regularly interrupting their parents mid-sentence. So we experimented and finally settled on a meal program everyone’s been happy with. For instance, the Tuesday dinners are for adults only and usually include hors d’oeuvres, wine, and relatively uninterrupted conversation.We also struggled with how to collect payment for the dinners, at first experimenting with handmade tickets and later settling on a household billing system that works well. Our willingness to gradually muddle through the decision-making process and to keep making course corrections as we go allows us to reach decisions we can live with. In spite of the inevitable challenges (and, in some cases, perhaps because of the close interaction required to confront those challenges), we continue to build trust and strengthen rapport.

Sharing Resources What are some of the ways we support each other and share resources? The list seems endless.Via our shared local area network, we can e-mail all households at once whenever we need to. E-mails include announcements, invitations, and requests to borrow items or equipment, as well as details about occasional nighttime thefts on Greyrock grounds (and the consequent need to lock cars and watch for strange vehicles).We watch each other’s houses when we leave town and there’s almost always someone taking care of someone else’s children and/or pets. All thirty homes share a fenced-in Dumpster area for collection of trash and recyclables.An organized program for recycling cardboard and paperboard, with special bins built by Greyrock members, has inspired many of us to refrain from adding these items to the trash and to take turns driving them to the recycling center. Likewise, many have been inspired to use our community compost bins instead of contributing extra bulk to the landfill. In addition to the shared dinners and occasional breakfasts, we use the common house regularly for potlucks, parties, dances, talent shows, VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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fundraisers, and meetings.The basement rooms include a guest suite, a study/library, an equipped exercise room, a rec room with a pool and ping-pong table, a teen room, and an office—all resources that reduce our need for huge, overequipped houses. Many of us enjoy sharing holidays.Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in the common house often include non-Greyrock friends of various backgrounds and nationalities who contribute unusual, delectable dishes to the feasts. During Hanukah, Greyrock Commons children—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—light the menorah and dance the Israeli horah with the adults. Kids of all ages enjoy our annual spring egg hunt, and the Fourth of July decorated-bike parade, as well as the Halloween trick-or-treating followed by the chili cook-off and costume party in the common house dining room and spooky haunted house in the common house basement. While many conventional homes in Colorado sport large grassy lawns and individual backyard play sets, at Greyrock Commons, our private backyards have very little grass in order to reduce the use of water in this arid region. Instead, we’ve worked together to landscape with water-wise perennials, including native grasses, blooming ground covers, hardy shrubs, and colorful wildflowers.And our thirty homes form an oval around an area that includes a large shared play structure and one large Kentucky bluegrass lawn—both of which get a lot of use.

Community Meetings During our first few years, the Process Team planned and facilitated our once-a-month community meetings, working together to address the needs and challenges of the community.Then, five years after move-in, a new group formed to take this on. “We already had acronyms for other teams,” explains Marilyn Murphy, whose steady, warm personality provides a calming influence in our midst.“We kept asking ‘how’?” she says.“How can we improve our communication? How can we build greater respect and trust among ourselves? How can we keep ourselves organized? So we decided we could call ourselves the HOW Team, an acronym for honoring our wisdom.” Sometimes referred to as “Hell on Wheels,” any way you cut it, the HOW Team has no easy task. Its members have been making an effort to REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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pay attention to how we relate to one another and to reduce the challenges we face regarding disagreements and decision making. In several situations, newer Greyrock members have wanted to be helpful—to contribute their time, effort, and ideas—only to find out that to follow through with these contributions, they were expected to closely follow the process that had already been set up. In one instance, a small team wanted to find a simple, effective way to make decisions about purchasing furniture and games for the common house rec room. Other members—some who had spent years of work envisioning and creating Greyrock Commons—had strong convictions that our previously established processes needed to be followed. Intense discussions such as this one can end up causing rifts and open wounds, especially when there are differences in style and approach.The HOW Team helped steer this discussion toward consensus.Although the process wasn’t simple, we did successfully end up with great furniture and games for our rec room. One of the fruits of the HOW Team was two workshops offered to Greyrock members: the first focused on group dynamics and communication and the second on effective facilitation of meetings. Both programs were led by two women, non-Greyrockers, who work with issues such as cultural diversity and team building in professional corporations. The HOW Team later organized a retreat—partly as a way of helping to orient several new households—in which many seasoned as well as new Greyrock members participated. Held for a day and a half in the common house, with small groups meeting in individual homes, the retreat’s themes centered around the many aspects of what it means to each of us as individuals to sustain our community—to let it thrive as more than just a typical neighborhood.Although certain challenges will always be part of community living, the workshops and retreat—along with games and exercises we’ve incorporated into meetings—have helped strengthen our understanding of one another, our ability to work together, and our friendships.

Kids One of the first warm evenings this past spring, I stood in my doorway marveling at the sight of kids, kids, kids (including my now nine-year-old VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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daughter) running around together on the common green.There are currently thirty-seven kids between the ages of two and eighteen and the summertime ritual of playing there together until after dark had begun.This time, it was a beloved game of Capture the Flag, and I counted twenty-five children, ages two to fifteen, playing it together, the older ones helping the youngest. One of Dan’s and my reasons for wanting to move into a cohousing community was that we planned to have only one child and we wanted to make sure she had lots of interaction with other children. She has cousins, but they live about half a continent away. Several families began watching each other’s children long before our Greyrock Commons houses were built, so by the time we moved in, we all knew each other pretty well. One afternoon, after our neighbor Heidi von Neida and I had been watching each other’s children for a year or so, I left Kate with Heidi and her children.When I arrived at the door to pick up Kate later on, Heidi told me,“I have good news and bad news.” I looked at Heidi closely, never sure exactly what to expect from this petite, vivacious woman with an infectious sense of humor.“The good news,” she said,“is that Kate and Eli played together like siblings.The bad news is they fought like siblings!” I laughed and told her,“That’s good news to me! Kate needs that experience!” Heidi heartily agreed that the extra challenge she’d had with the two of them that day was worth it—you can’t learn how to work things out and settle conflicts if you never have conflicts. I’m thankful that, through the years, Kate has developed close relationships with several children here—for all the benefits and enrichment that provides. Some of the children seem to be receiving a unique education in cooperation and are passing it on.A couple of them have, at times, been overheard making gentle comments to others who haven’t lived here as long (and who may attempt to try to take over certain parts of the play structure or to hoard common toys for themselves), such as,“You know, when you live in cohousing, everybody plays with everybody, and we share our toys.”

Celebrating Success Despite the growing pains of building a community, we find our triumphs in so many of these little things: in the caring environment and REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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countless opportunities for children, in the pooling of resources and ideas, in the ongoing processes of problem solving and learning to respect differences, and in the joy and fun we share together. So, back to my friend Lindsey, who was standing with me in my kitchen those six and a half years ago (not long after that sibling-rivalry incident with Kate and Eli).After Lindsey was here for about a day and had had a chance to look around and meet some of our cohousing neighbors, she said to me,“To be honest, when you told me about this cohousing thing over the phone, I really didn’t think it would work.” I smiled at her with raised eyebrows. “I was wrong!” she said, laughing.“I’m glad I was wrong!” The extent to which cohousing will really “work” on all levels, or prove itself successful in the eyes of many in the coming decades, depends, I think, on the willingness of its participants to share more than physical resources; it depends also on our willingness to share genuine, deep respect for different opinions, standards, and values that make human life so interesting. Many quotes have graced the walls and bulletin boards in our common house through the years. One quote that hung in the middle of our main outside bulletin board for awhile last spring—handwritten by a Greyrock member in black marker on plain white paper—was authored by Thich Nhat Hanh, a renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk: It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community—a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth. We don’t make any claims that Greyrock Commons strives to collectively manifest the Buddha or any other deity, but we’re grateful to be part of a community where people sincerely try to practice understanding and kindness. So in this culture we’ve created—where caring and playfulness are never more than a heartbeat away—we continue to muddle along.

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Reflections of a Cohousing Elder Renate G. Justin The blizzard Renate G. Justin writes about in this story brought Colorado to a screeching halt for three or four days. No doubt there were many households in which cabin fever took hold. But in the state’s diverse collection of cohousing communities, deepwalled pathways to the common house turned the blizzard into a great excuse for a party. —D. W.

Snow, snow everywhere, two feet high and drifting much deeper.The sky is gray and flakes are dancing slowly and deliberately to the ground. The bottom half of my door is covered by snow, but I can still see out the top.The sharp outlines of our houses and their roofs are rounded and softened and the picnic tables are just humps under the cold blanket of snow. In this whiteness, every able adult in the community is shoveling the paths that lead from one house to the next and to our common house, the web of our connectedness. It is the second day of this great blizzard (more than three feet of wet snow), and even though our members have shoveled the same walks at least three times, they are still cheerful, calling out to each other in astonishment at the amount and weight of the snow; there is joy in working together.We are hoping that this is the end of a two-year drought, including the driest summer in 200 years. Our children are yelling happily as the younger ones disappear in the snow and the older ones build igloos. Snowballs are flying in every direction on the green. I hear a scraping on my porch as my neighbor digs me out.Yesterday, she even swept the snow off my car. No one can go to work today—schools and shops are closed and there’s no mail service. It is a snow holiday for adults and children alike and we are celebrating! It is invigorating to be a senior citizen in the Greyrock Cohousing community—part of a vibrant, active group of people, young and old, who I have come to love and respect. My neighbors phone just to check on me.We will have a potluck supper tonight, and last night, I was invited to a birthday party next door. Once we can get around in the snow, I might organize a Scrabble game in the common house.The children can enjoy their own games in the playroom while the adults try to REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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think of words with X,Y, and Q. My community of neighbors keeps me from feeling lonely. Every day, children come to my door and ask if they can play with me.With my friends I can share the joy of nature’s abundance and the ubiquitous anxieties of politics in America.This blizzard, like the flood a few years ago, draws us closer together and quickly becomes a noteworthy event in our collective memory.

The blizzard of 2003 blankets Greyrock. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WILLE SCHREURS

As I watch the snow continue to fall, my thoughts travel to my happy, secure childhood in a small village on the edge of the Harz Mountains in Germany, where I lived on skis and built snow sculptures.The shock of being expelled from that community at the age of ten because of being Jewish remains painful to this day. I was fortunate that after having to leave my school, my friends, my parents, and my sisters, I was allowed to join a group of refugee children at a boarding school in Holland.This community of orphaned, displaced, and disoriented youngsters and teachers, located in an ancient castle, prepared me for cohousing and supported me during the difficult years of the war. In the castle, the kitchen was large to accommodate the huge wood stove. It felt warm, cozy, and busy in that kitchen.You could look out a small window across the moat where sheep grazed in the field.The ample cook, Mrs. Schmitt, could throw pancakes high into the air and VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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catch them in her skillet every time.We students in the boarding school helped in the kitchen, washing and drying dishes, setting the table, and cleaning the marble floor of the castle’s large dining room.As we peeled potatoes, shelled peas, and cut beans, we sang and talked, momentarily forgetting our longing and despair.

Renate pitches in at a Greyrock Commons workday. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WILLIE SCHREURS

Today, when working with the Greyrock kitchen crew, I inevitably think about those early days in Holland.We have lots of electric gadgets to prepare our food for cooking and to help with the cleaning (including a dishwasher that finishes a load in thirty seconds), but the sense of community is cemented by preparing food and eating together, the same way it was sixty years ago in the castle. At Eerde, in Holland, we grew the food we ate, sheared sheep, cleaned dormitories and windows, and took care of the grounds—jobs we each had to learn, which stood many of us in good stead as we became older.At Greyrock, we also garden and plant together, we anticipate the flavor of our homegrown produce, we become friends as we fertilize and rake leaves. In 1934, we students at Eerde decided we wanted to build a swimming pool. Money was found for shovels and with young and old working together, we dug the pool. Since this was a Quaker school, consensus was achieved by respectful consideration of the opinions of all, very much like our Greyrock business meetings.As Americans, we start to vote as toddlers, learning to raise our hand before we even walk.The concept of decision by consensus is foreign to many of us and requires selfdiscipline and willingness to learn a new skill.As we get to know each other at ever-deeper levels, we can acknowledge and accept the differences among us. Indeed, the value we assign to those differences makes REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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each person an equal member of the group. It is this acceptance that makes it safe to voice our views in a business meeting. Consensus is more time consuming than voting, but as in the case of the swimming pool, once achieved, the final product is mutual satisfaction. Its completion is a triumph both for the consensus process as well as the community. The fellowship that grew at Eerde was tightly knit, supportive, and comforting.The student body was in flux because of the frequent arrival of new students fleeing from war and extermination, and the departure of those who were fortunate enough to emigrate.When parents were killed or incarcerated, when siblings were missing in action, the group mourned together, enabling us to survive as individuals.At Greyrock, although membership is more stable than it was in Holland, we have had one of our members die, we have had families splintered by divorce—all of us shared in the grief and difficulty of these events. My eyes stray to the window again. It’s still snowing, and I recall another snow day. At a Quaker boarding school I attended after coming to America— right before World War II—we were blessed with a huge snowfall, similar to the one we are experiencing at Greyrock today.At breakfast, we were told to get into our snowsuits and assemble to help build a sledding track.The headmaster declared a snow day—no school.The teachers and students spent the morning building the long track and the afternoon sliding on it. It was only because of the combined effort of the faculty and student body that the track was created before the snow melted and we could enjoy the speed, thrill, and laughter of using it. I’m sure the Greyrock igloo builders outside my window feel a sense of accomplishment and community similar to what I felt building that sledding track. To my surprise, at this American school, the students had no duties to help with housekeeping, apple harvesting, or kitchen chores. However, once America declared war, food became harder to purchase and most of the paid help was conscripted into military service.At that time, we started a work program, and soon everyone participated in all the tasks involved in keeping the buildings clean; raising, freezing and preparing food; as well as caring for the grounds. Once again, I experienced the healing power of community work and the sense of pride and achievement that comes with it.This particular school continues its work program to the present day because of the positive effect on the community that comes about when students and faculty work side by side. VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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When as an adult I became acquainted with the cohousing philosophy, it seemed logical and desirable to join a group who works, laughs, and grieves together.The commitment of time and energy required to make community living successful is considerable.The patience needed to sit through many long meetings is even more demanding.The delicate balance community members have to maintain between individual and group interests may, at times, lead to strong differences of opinion.To achieve a satisfactory melding of these two interests is especially difficult for Americans, who are protective of our individual privacy, rights, and privileges. In cohousing, as in my school years, consensus, respect, and a strong sense of community help resolve the inevitable conflicts. The rewards of shared meals, of landscaping achieved by hard work, of friendships, neighborliness, and trust are immeasurable. I probably could not have survived the difficult years of my childhood—both in Holland as a refugee and in this country as a new immigrant—without the support of a community.As the snow continues to fall outside, I reflect on how fortunate I am to live the years of my old age in the embrace of another strong community: Greyrock Cohousing.

Learning from the Land Deborah Warshaw Every time I visit Greyrock, I’m envious of the lush, well-designed landscaping and garden. I guess it helps to occupy land that was once a farm, but more importantly, it’s about the people who take care of the land. Deborah Warshaw’s essay “Learning from the Land” also appeared in the Cohousing Association of the United States e-zine at www.cohousing.org. —D. W.

Year One We waved goodbye—and good riddance—to the last of the construction trucks. For more than a year, they had used what the architects so neatly labeled “community garden” on our blueprints for their staging area. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Dump trucks, pickup trucks, eighteen-wheel delivery trucks, piles of lumber, stacks of pipes, and industrial-size Dumpsters squatted on our scraped-dirt field all during the building of our community. But now they were gone and we could begin to reclaim the land.

Greyrock’s walkways are lined with beautiful perennial flowers.

Long ago, before the farmers arrived in this part of Colorado, our field was part of the vast short-grass prairie that runs up to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Later, after settlers figured out how to channel water from the wet mountains down to the dry plains, the field became, in succession, an apple orchard, a sugar beet farm, and a feed-corn plot. By the time we bought the land, the field had become a scratchy pasture of grass and weeds.With a little imagination we could squint at our hardpacked acre of hardened mud that flung stray particles of dirt into your eyes whenever the wind blew and see our own cohousing Eden. The wind sweeps down from Wyoming like a flash flood of dusty air. In the spring, when young plants are the most vulnerable, it blows hard enough to toss roof shingles down from their moorings and mercilessly whips any plant taller than short buffalo grass or more tender than the stiff-spined yuccas. I know every gardener claims she battles the worst of the weather and soil wherever she happens to spade her soil, but this is a hard place to garden. It’s true, ask anyone—between the wind and the hail, the early frosts and the late thaws, the locusts and the flea beetles, the floods and the droughts, gardening here is no game for VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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the easily defeated. But I get ahead of my story here, so let me return to that first spring. That spring was a wet one (how sweet that sounds now as I write this after two harsh years of drought). Back then, we cursed the rain that delayed and then delayed again our progress in getting the landscaping installed around our houses. Every family invested in a set of rubber boots—the kind that farmers and ditch maintainers wear—to make the trek between their houses and the common house.We decided not to plant gardens in the field this first season; there was just too much other work to do. So we planted grass seed, installed a ditch-fed irrigation system, and tended to other parts of the landscape. During construction, our site was rendered so lifeless that all work stopped one day when a worker came across something living: a snake crawling across the dirt.That first spring, completely ordinary phenomena became benchmarks of our progress.We were amazed when the field sprouted short nubs of green. I remember the first time a bird—I think it was a magpie—lit on someone’s roof.Another time, we celebrated when a person discovered an earthworm in their front yard. Worms were so uncommon that summer that someone bought a bucket of fishing worms and anointed our common green with them.

Year Two The second winter, a group of us met to plan our first garden.To start us off, we asked Dennis, a local organic farmer, to give us a talk.We wanted to know what sorts of soil amendments we needed, what was the best mulch, which seed varieties he preferred, and what were his sources for materials.We wanted practical, ready-to-use information that would turn our field of grass into the gardens of our dreams. We knew Dennis had idiosyncratic views on farming. He ran a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, in which subscribers received a brown paper sack stuffed with the week’s harvest in return for a lump sum of cash at the start of the growing season.What we didn’t know was just how esoteric Dennis’s advice would sound. He told us about the ineffable vibrations of moonbeams and the spiritual essences of rain.“Spend time on the land,” he said.“Sleep on it, taste its dirt, and breathe in its aura.” Listen to the land, he told us. Pay attention and it will tell you how to live. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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We are a polite and practical bunch; idealistic, yes, but in a very grounded, get-the-project-off-the-ground kind of way—necessary when getting any cohousing development built. Once it became obvious that Dennis wasn’t going to lecture us about the benefits of cow versus horse manure, or whether bush beans or pole beans worked better for our climate, we sat in polite, embarrassed silence.We stared at our shoes, an odd assortment of Birkenstocks, clogs, hiking books, and sneakers.We fiddled with our fingernails, bit our cheeks, and tried not to roll our eyes too obviously. He was telling us to “listen to the land” when all we wanted to know was how best to grow tomatoes. Good lord! We had enough trouble trying to listen to each other.

The hard work begins to pay off in Greyrock garden.

So we went back to our meetings and, as a result, we decided to garden cooperatively.We grouped ourselves by crops: some of us would cultivate tomatoes, others beans and squash.All would share the harvest. We made plans for distributing all the excess produce we imagined we’d be burdened with.We ordered seeds and started them in trays in our basements. Once the soil warmed up, we rented a rototiller and broke ground in what was now a thriving field of grass.We were pleased and surprised at how quickly the land seemed to be healing itself. I can’t remember how we chose where in the field to make our plots. I know VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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we didn’t think about it too much, ending up with three or four random patches of broken ground in the middle of the field of grass. We waited past the average last frost date just like the agricultural agent advised.We chose the hardiest varieties, planted, weeded, and waited. From the beginning, difficulties arose between us about who was taking care of what and when.What seemed so obvious in the winter—the division of our labor into different crews—was turning out to be much more difficult than we imagined.As we got down to the real work of gardening, social fissures and clashes began to show up.And then we learned the first of many lessons that land had to teach. That year, we had a late snow in mid-June. Colorado strikes again. I was on vacation when it happened.The cold killed nearly everything we’d planted and I returned to find that all of our tender seedlings had shriveled and turned black.And the weeds, which were, of course, in no way damaged by the frost, had started to take over the plots.That year, we never recovered from this initial setback.A few of us tried replanting and tending to the plots, but not much came of it. It all seemed so daunting now—the unpredictable weather, the complexity of working together.And we still had plenty of other landscaping work to be done around the community. For the garden, there was always next year.

Year Three After the abysmal failure of our first gardening year, we decided to restructure.What that means in a cohousing community, of course, is more meetings.We needed a plan, we decided.We needed to set strategies and priorities and reach consensus on them.These garden meetings happened in the context of myriad other meetings concerned with running the community. (It was around this time that my young daughters played a game called “pretend meeting.”They would scribble agendas and then go around trying to recruit [often reluctant] kids to come to their meeting. I don’t know if they got things done in their meetings, which sometimes ended in tears because someone wasn’t cooperating or else someone came up with something more fun to play.) As a result of our meetings, we came up with a list of all the components we wanted in our garden: grapevines and strawberries, pumpkin patches and pergolas, pathways and meeting places.We held a design competition to get things going. Anyone who wanted to could pick up a REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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plat of the garden and draw their vision of what it should be.We came up with a beautiful assortment of plans, but then we couldn’t decide on the criteria for choosing one. It came down to a vote. Feelings were hurt, personalities clashed. It was three years now into our experiment of living together. Cohousing, we were realizing, was a hard thing to do. People began to question their commitment to the community. (The garden was just one part of a larger web of figuring out how to coexist. During this time, we were endlessly debating issues around parking spaces and meal programs.) What should have been a simple thing—after all, what could be more straightforward than planting vegetables?—had turned into something complex and difficult. We were learning from the land, but not the lessons that we had imagined we would learn.We were learning patience and perseverance. We were learning to grow through conflict.We were learning that being connected makes life richer, but not easier. We compromised, we reconciled differences, and we came to consensus.We had a plan! And, in the early spring, we laid it out. Each gardener had a ten-foot by sixty-foot lot bounded by four-foot paths on the north and south and five-foot paths along the east and west.We again rented a rototiller, bought a huge pile of mulch, and laid out the garden as a team. It felt good to be working and sweating together after a winter of contentious meetings.At last, things were happening instead of just words being spoken.And by the end of our last workday, the garden was beautiful.As cleanly laid out as a carpet, the garden was full of potential; its rectangles of plots and paths were at last ready for growing. By the end of the summer, the field had turned into a quilt with each gardener’s contribution a variation on the same theme. One gardener hauled an antique metal baby crib to grow her peas on.Another gardener grew eight-foot-tall mammoth sunflowers. One gardener mulched with hay, another with shredded leaves.The water in our ditch flowed all summer and there was no late frost.We battled bugs and weeds, but neither seemed overwhelming.The soil left much to be desired and the crops weren’t as fruitful as we hoped, but at last, we were growing.

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NEW VIEW COHOUSING, AC T O N , M A S S AC H U S E T T S

New View adventure offers a new view. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KOURÉ

With a Little Help from My Friends Dana Snyder-Grant Dana Snyder-Grant was the first cohousing resident to respond to my call for contributions, and when I received her work, I thought, “If the rest of the book is as well-written as this piece, readers will get a great description of both personal and community life in cohousing. They’ll experience what it must be like to brave a debilitating illness, as well as what daily life in cohousing feels like.” In the New View common house, Dana cooked her first Thanksgiving turkey—with much appreciation from her neighbors—and regained a sense of spontaneity in a spirited ping-pong match with a neighborhood kid. —D. W.

My eyes feel hollow. My head feels like a bowling ball.Throbbing.The sides of my face feel like someone has beaten me up. My legs are made of lead. I plod through my day.This isn’t a new flare-up; it is recurring symptoms of multiple sclerosis. I remember the words of my first neurologist, “This, too, will pass.” Her optimism calmed me then and I want it to now. It’s five o’clock. I lie down in preparation for dinner at my neighbor’s at six.When I awake, the house is quiet. I call out for my husband. No response. Has he left for dinner? I turn and look at the clock: 6:46. I suddenly notice that I can move my head without fatigue. My body feels at peace. My body is my own, no longer trapped in a spiderweb of tight muscles and aching joints. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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I get up and dress in a daze. I move slowly, not entirely trusting how well I feel. I call Marcia, ask if there is any dinner left.“Plenty,” she says. When I walk into her home, I see friends talking, laughing. Children are playing. My very young friend Sam sees me and grins. I tell myself that I will go over and give him a hug later. I want to yell,“Everyone, I’m okay. Come talk with me. I can engage with the world.” Marcia interrupts my silent soliloquy as she gives me a hug and says,“Wait here. I’ll get you a plate of food.” I follow her into the kitchen where an array of Mexican food awaits. She puts two enchiladas on my plate, rice, and beans. Marcia seems to know exactly what I need. She senses my feeling that I have just risen from the dead. Neighbors and friends fill the living room and kitchen. I spot an empty seat at the dining room table and go there. I am amazed that my head and eyes are still clear. I smile for the first time in three days. My husband sees me from across the room, comes over, and gives me a hug. “I’m okay. It’s gone,” I say to him with pleasure. He smiles. The evening continues in a serene sort of way. I stay seated; friends come over to chat.They greet me with warm hugs and smiles. I feel their love. Did they know I was not feeling well? Later, I realize that it was I who projected love, feeling comfort with a body I can trust for now, with my ability to simply appreciate the warmth of friends. Sometimes in a life with an illness such as multiple sclerosis (MS) that brings unpredictable hours of sensory puzzles and bodily fatigue, what matters most are the simple things: a child’s laugh, the hug of a friend, the hearty taste of black beans. One conversation I have that night is with my friend Sue. She learned the day before of her friend’s death from breast cancer. She tells me,“I’m doing okay. I’ve cried.Things coexist.” She pauses and with tears in her eyes repeats,“Things coexist.” Yes, things coexist, I think later, walking home with my husband.The memory of pain exists, knowing its tentacles are just around the corner. But so does the soothing pleasure of the evening.

Looking Back By 1993, when we future residents of the New View Cohousing community, in Acton, Massachusetts, began codesigning our common house, I had already lived with MS for twelve years. MS was a big deal, but it was VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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not a big deal. I had a loving husband and worked part-time as a psychotherapist. Fatigue limited my activities. I’d lost coordination in my hands and strength in my legs. Double vision paid a visit at times.The unpredictability of these symptoms was scary; I could end up in a wheelchair or lose my vision. Or none of these things might ever happen.After ten years, I had learned to live with that unknown. It was just my life.The illness had taught me that life was precious and that people mattered. Cohousing came naturally to me. It’s the weekend scheduled for common house “programming”—our term for group brainstorming and design—and I’m in the middle of a major flare-up. I draft a heartfelt, brutally honest letter, which my husband reads to the group: Dear New View: I write this at 2:00 A.M. as my body, full of steroids, resists sleep. I’m very sorry not to be with you today. It’s hard, but I’ve learned that I must listen to my body when it goes awry (but God knows, I fight it). I’m having a flare-up of MS, mostly sensory, with lots of pinsand-needles sensations in my feet, torso, and face. Fatigue comes and goes unpredictably, so I turn over my trust to the group and know that you will design a splendid common house. I ask as you design the common house to keep in mind the needs of any of us who become disabled as we live and grow old together. Mobility impairments, whether they demand canes, crutches, or wheelchairs, necessitate some accommodations. This episode has reminded me of my need for an easy grade around the common house and ramp or chairlift accessibility inside. It’s scary to write this, to expose my vulnerabilities, but MS is a part of me and I am conscious that we are all only temporarily ablebodied, though hopefully for a long time. I want our community to model a place where we can all live well with each other’s love and support. I am so excited by what we are doing. Last, I want you to know that I like to answer questions about my illness. It’s a confusing and bizarre one. Pussyfoot around it if you wish, but I prefer more than that. Everyone in my life deals with this added dimension in the way that fits for him or her. It’s a process. Jim and I have coined a phrase for hard times with MS: “Just like life … only more so.” We reset priorities, learn what’s truly important, REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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and understand our limits as human beings. I thank all of you whose thoughts and/or words have been with me. I love you and am with you in spirit. Love, Dana My letter speaks of healing. Healing as care, not cure; as emotional, not physical. I am hesitant to write about the healing benefits of community because I don’t want to be misunderstood. I have come to believe that there are aspects of physical illness that we cannot control, aspects that have a life of their own. I go to bed feeling well, and overnight my limbs become heavy, stiff, and tight.The same happens in reverse. But I can control how I respond to and cope with the illness. We blame the victim when we hold out certain models of cure—if she only had a healthy diet, did more yoga, saw that acupuncturist, had more friends.Well, maybe her tumor would have grown anyway or he would have needed a wheelchair after the last flare-up nonetheless. It is models of care, not cure, that the life of community offers. Care for the hearts and souls of its members, whether ill or well. Community and connection make a huge difference in the quality of our lives. A week or so later, I am feeling a little better, and because I had shared my personal challenges with the group, I make it to the last programming (designing) session. I lie on my portable cot for most of the day, which enables me to participate.Afterward, I write the community another letter, this time one of gratitude.

Building trust at New View PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KOURÉ

Dear New View: I’m writing this on Saturday evening after programming. My heart is so full of your love and caring. I want you all to know how VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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special and healing today was for me. That I could be with you in the way that I needed and that you could give me your hugs, love, tenderness, and caring is a tremendous gift. The last few weeks have been tough for me. MS is more of an emotional battle than a physical one for individuals with this bizarre illness. When I feel isolated and strange in my body during these times, I so often feel isolated from people. I didn’t feel that today. So many of you were just there, accepting me. I’m blessed that I can receive that, and we are all blessed to have each other. Thank you for your healing energy, for help in lifting my spirits. With love, Dana

The First Thanksgiving After a full year of living in a construction site, I wait with bated breath for our first Thanksgiving together. In November of 1996, all twenty-four homes at New View have been completed and are occupied and we’re ready for celebration. Four households—nine adults and four children from the community—will join us on the Sunday before Thanksgiving for a holiday feast. Since our common house at New View is not yet complete, several households will host meals.At age forty, I will cook my first turkey. It is the inauguration of our community. On Sunday, after the meals, a rock ’n’ roll extravaganza will be held and we will all dance and sing our hearts out. I will sing the seventies hit song “Red Rubber Ball” at the top of my lungs in my black leggings and red blouse with the heartfelt sincerity of a teenager. It might be the closest I will ever get to my dream of a nightclub act. I am out of bed and in the shower at 8:00 on Sunday morning.With the excitement of an adolescent, I prepare for my debut. I move quietly so as not to awaken my husband. I dress in informal clothes and go to the kitchen to prepare the bird. I feel the tingling excitement of a child before her first piano recital. First, the bird. My arm goes into her cavity and pulls out her neck, kidneys, and giblets, all wrapped in paper. Peel the onion, cut the celery, snip the parsley. It is almost 9:00 A.M. and I can already bring the bird to her fate: the oven.“Am I a grown-up now?” I ask myself as I shut the oven door on that first turkey. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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The meal has a resplendent air, just as Thanksgiving should.We add extra leaves to our dining room table, which gives a banquetlike tone to the occasion. Carol and Becky prepare the gravy, Martha and Bill contribute cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes, and Franny makes her brother’s favorite dish of Brussels sprouts and onions.We reminisce about a Thanksgiving we shared a few years back, before we found land. We imagine future Thanksgivings in our common house when we can all dine with ease under one roof.We feast, trying to save room for dessert, which will come later that afternoon. The community congregates at Carol and Becky’s for the 3:00 P.M. rock ’n’ roll celebration.The highlight for me is, no doubt, my rendition of “Red Rubber Ball.” Priscilla, one of the few professional musicians in the bunch, backs me up on the piano,Ward’s bass guitar gives us depth, and Jim’s saxophone offers soul.With the genuineness of a scorned lover, I belt out the lyrics. Priscilla joins me in harmony on the chorus. As I walk off the stage—which is only a living room, but feels like much more—cheers ring out.A neighbor remarks that she can tell I sing from experience. I bring myself back to high school and college days with that song, singing to men who jilt women as a hobby, and dedicating it to women who triumph nonetheless. The music ends at 6:00 P.M. Jim and I come home and I collapse on the bed.The clock says 6:30. I fall fast asleep until 8:15 P.M. and get back into bed for the night at 10:30. I dream of turkeys playing the sax.

Balancing Private and Public Martha, Kate, and I roam the narrow strip of woods by my house, trying to resolve the group’s continuing conflict over the design of the woods path. I argue for a winding path of reduced grade to attend to the needs of people with disabilities, Kate wants to honor environmental concerns and save trees, and Martha wishes to respect the privacy of residents shielded by the woods. Some of us want all three, which heightens the tension. “I’d be willing to lose some trees if they are closer to your house than mine,” says Martha.“I might consider a 6 percent grade, rather than 4 percent, to save some trees,” I return,“as long as we create a resting area where the path is steepest.”And we do just that. Another challenge we each discover is the balance between privacy VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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and community.All of us can prefer the solitude of our own homes at times, and because MS fatigue can be exacerbated by sensory stimulation, I sometimes have mixed feelings about visits to the common house. I know I must pace myself when I go there. I remember a particular evening one President’s Day weekend six or seven years ago.“I’ve been less social than usual for the past three days,” I write in my journal,“hanging out with my husband and our cats and holing up with Barbara Kingsolver’s fine book Prodigal Summer.” Although I have been in a solitary mood all day, or maybe because of this, I look forward to tonight’s meal. Depending on the whim of our volunteer cooks, it’s not unusual for there to be meat and vegetarian options at dinner.Tonight, four-year-old Kaya and her mother, Sue, prepare pizza for the kids and James and Nola make chicken stew and vegetarian chili for the adults. Kaya stands behind several trays of pizza and greets those of us who have signed up for this meal. Her head comes up just above the counter and she looks very official in her blue apron. I walk around the counter to kiss the top of her head and tell her she looks great.“Are you having fun, honey?” I ask. She nods her head vigorously, but stays focused on the trays of pizza. I move to the large pots of chicken and rice, whose aroma is making my stomach growl, and dole out a portion for myself. I look around and reject the larger tables. I don’t want to sit where it’s noisy and the conversation can be superficial. Not tonight. Instead, my husband and I decide to sit at a table with Mary and Jane. Mary talks excitedly with us about a successful day at her art studio, leading workshops for children and parents. Mary is a retired French teacher, now an artist, whose creativity has inspired many in our community and beyond.At the age of seventy-two, she continues to embrace the children’s joy and her own. Martha and Bill are alone at a table next to us, talking intently.Their two boys, ages ten and four, are off playing somewhere. I know that these parents appreciate this time for conversation. Two drumming teachers live in the community. Some of their students will give a drumming recital after dinner. My book calls me home, though I am a bit wistful about leaving. I worried that my need for alone time wouldn’t feel acceptable in a cohousing community. But, in fact, it is nights like this when I remember that sometimes I can have my cake and eat it too. Collective, shared space brings the community together because it is our building, not yours or REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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mine.Tonight, my solitary spirit enjoys a visit to the warmth and camaraderie of friends in community.And there are many such opportunities to come out of myself at New View common meals.

The Joy of Ping-Pong “See you soon,” I say to Jim as he leaves the common house to go home. I sit on the bench to put on my boots and battle yet another New England snow. Nine-year old Aaron saunters by the stairs inside the common house. Many of us have just enjoyed a scrumptious brunch, lovingly prepared by David and Pam. Bagels and eggs—scrambled for some, omelets for others, with fillings of onion, peppers, mushroom, or cheese—have us satiated. But Aaron doesn’t seem thrilled. Brunch food does not excite him.“Hey Aaron, you look bored,” I say.“Yeah … ” he replies as he shuffles in the hallway.This brunch attracted mostly adults; Aaron is the lone child hanging around. His twin sisters are probably off somewhere, engaged in imaginary play. The fatigue of MS and its demands to pace myself made me think long and hard about having children, so Jim and I don’t have any of our own kids. But one of the things that attracted us to cohousing is the opportunity to have our neighbors’ children in our lives. Spontaneously, I ask Aaron,“Want to go downstairs with me and play some ping-pong?” Aaron’s face brightens and he says,“Yeah!”“Let’s go play,” I say emphatically, and off we go. “Are you any good?”Aaron asks me when we are down in the basement. I take off my sweater and we both pick up the small rackets.“Not bad,” I say and mean it, though I haven’t played for many years. I used to be fairly good at ping-pong, playing for hours as a youngster with my brother on our porch in the New York suburbs. But with poor coordination and unsteady legs from multiple sclerosis, I can’t guarantee my game any more. But I still love the sport. I hope I won’t lead Aaron or myself astray with my words of assurance. I don’t know if Aaron knows or understands about MS, but it doesn’t seem to matter. We spend a few minutes just hitting the ball to each other, checking to see if our games are compatible. My first shots are embarrassing. I either swing at the ball and miss completely or send it off the table without a bounce. I imagine that Aaron wonders what he has gotten himself into. Consistency isn’t his strength, either, but he does wield a nasty VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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spin, sending me shots that are sometimes impossible to return.As I warm up, my game improves. My swift, low serve returns to me. Pingpong is like riding a bicycle: some things you just never forget. Our rallies make it over the net only three or four times before we have to chase after the ball, but I am enjoying myself.Aaron’s bright countenance indicates that he is also. “Want to play a game?”Aaron asks.“Sure,” I reply.“Just remind me of the rules.”Aaron reviews these with me and we decide to play a game to twenty-one, alternating service after two serves.Aaron begins and wins his first two service points with ease as I miss the returns completely. My fast serve allows me to catch up and the game is tied. Relieved that Aaron won’t slaughter me, I relax. He stays one or two points ahead throughout the game. I might get one point from my serve, but when Aaron returns with that spin, I am lost. Even my older brother didn’t learn that trick when he was nine.The game ends with a win for Aaron. We are indeed a good match for each other, and I ask Aaron if he wants to try another. He says yes, and we agree to play this second game to just eleven. My stroke has found itself by this time, and I triumph at eleven to five, but not after returning any spins. Needing to pace myself due to the fatigue from MS, I don’t often engage in activities without thought and planning. But children and spontaneity came to me that morning.Although my legs felt sore and tired as I hobbled home, I knew my bed awaited me for a rest.When I entered our house, Jim was in his study at the computer. He turned to me and said,“You got involved in something.”“I sure did,” I replied.

Heroes, Villains, and Hopeless Hams: Kid Theater at New View Cohousing Franny Osman Children’s theater is not unique to cohousing, but as I read Franny Osman’s piece, I suspected that there may be a bit more spontaneity and imagination on cohousing stages than elsewhere. Franny’s amusing insights remind us that kids need mentoring— something that happens routinely and naturally at New View and in other cohousing communities. —D. W.

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I remember lobbying for a stage in the common house as New View Cohousing was being built. (Alas, the stage went the way of the meditation room and the swimming pool.) But I don’t remember ever dreaming of directing. My only drama experience had been in community theater and at camp, around age twelve. Soon after we moved into the cohousing neighborhood, however, I discovered that if I chose a play and scheduled a first meeting, people came—albeit mostly kids, but there was always a crowd. I share the director job with Becky, who, since age twelve, has been writing scripts for us. Once, Becky and Dina tried to direct a rendition of The Wizard of Oz with other neighborhood kids, but the play never opened. Its downfall, some of the kids said, was the lack of an adult to enforce the plan. I realized that my role wasn’t really director as much as present adult and enabler. I’m the one they come to when they have a sudden, uncontrollable desire for drama.

Dress rehearsal PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KOURÉ

Which is what four yearold Izzy did at a common meal a few months ago. His mother told me that he’d practiced and practiced the pig role in order to audition for the play we were preparing that month. Because we so easily assigned him the role, he never got to do the tryout, and he was disappointed. So I called Izzy over to the food counter, where I was piling my bowl with stew, and asked him to do his pig. Squeeeeeeek and snort. He did it perfectly, then trotted, self-satisfied, back to the kids’ room. Children perform regularly in the common house after dinner.They clink a glass, stand on a chair, and announce to the adults that there will be a play in the kids’ room.When the antsy actors can wait no longer, the adults pull themselves out of their chairs in the dining room and line VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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up along the wall in the kids’ room.There’s no shyness among the actors at these impromptu events.There’s often not a clear story line either—at least none the audience can ascertain.We clap, we laugh; they grin, they bow.Yet, the same kids become nervous for the “real” New View plays. Some kids have appeared in plays when they were ten or eleven, then disappeared forever as they got older, but Arielle is as committed as ever. She comes to me with scripts saying,“Let’s do this play,” and we codirect them.Arielle leads us in games she learned at school plays to help us develop our characters. In her enthusiasm, she talks faster than her mouth can form the words. I have to say,“Arielle, slow down! We want to hear what you’re saying.”Whereas scrawled notes in the margin of the script are enough for me to identify props and entrances,Arielle is much more professional, creating charts with columns for each scene and notations of who’s onstage and what sets or props we need. Dina, one of the older players who disappeared on me, played the schoolgirl in The Court of Queen Arithmetic, which we produced before we had a common house. I remember her catching me on the path by my house on her way up from the bus stop.“Do you think a plaid skirt will be alright for my costume?” By the time the next play was put on, Dina was an adolescent.“Is there an evil villain I can be?”After that, she never showed up for auditions. Instead, she began playing drums for a basement rock band, and later I only saw her in outrageous hairdos, teen-aging down the road with her boyfriend. The last time I saw Heather and Selena on a New View stage, they were eleven and performed a wonderful, spontaneous jazz dance for a group that had gathered for some other purpose in the common house. I seem to recall that one of those girls once left an audition in tears because she didn’t get the female main role. Used to the idea of cohousing solutions, I rewrote some of the males into females. (Queen Arithmetic was originally written as King Arithmetic.) Maura will only be in a play if she can be an animal. She doesn’t usually come to rehearsals, but come the performance day, she hints that she’s ready to participate and I create an animal character for her to take on—you can always have a cat run across the stage.

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Spotlight Recollections There are a couple of plays that stand out in my memory. The script for The Court of Queen Arithmetic came from a book of children’s plays.We fashioned curtains from sheets hung over the beams in Ann’s basement. I discovered how exciting it is to have curtains: peeking out, hiding behind them, entering with bravado. Curtains are a delight.At this point, we still hadn’t built the common house. Ellie was glad to have a big part in this play because she had recently been stung by a rejection from the town play.That was years ago now. Last year, Ellie had a main role in The Children’s Hour at her high school. I found a paperback children’s book with the title Ugh! in the common house one day, someone’s donation or loss. I loved it. It was a Cinderella story set in Stone Age times, anachronistically involving dinosaurs. In the story, the mistreated little brother invents a bicycle and becomes king.When Linda was planning her fiftieth birthday party for a midsummer’s evening (now I’m talking modern times), she asked for entertainment from neighbors. I offered to direct a little play and chose Ugh! Because I only work well under pressure, I waited until the day of the show to write the script.As I drove home from western Massachusetts with my daughter Ada and cohousing neighbor Rachel (sister of the playwright Arielle), the girls read Ugh! and wrote the script.When we got home at 3:00 P.M., I dashed to the computer to type it up. I printed a few copies and called a rehearsal for four o’clock.The mostly kid cast read through the play at the picnic table in the neighborhood center, chose parts, and planned costumes and hairdos.We dispersed to find props and Stone Age attire.At seven o’clock, we ate Linda’s birthday dinner in the common house, itchy with distraction. Meanwhile, my daughter Lori was whipping off a program at home, listing the characters with names such as Ugh, Ick, and Oy.At eight o’clock, dozens of Linda’s guests clumped on the small front porch and the kids performed the play on the walkway.Tina used egg whites to create silly spikes in her hair for her Ugh character. Maura said she liked being a dinosaur because she got to eat bread sticks. Children take their roles very seriously. Somehow, though, no matter how many rehearsals there are, the plays really only fall into place the day of the performance.This is a miracle I have seen repeated time and VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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again.The chaos at the dress rehearsal is frightening for uninitiated observers.Then the play gels in time for the performance, often an hour after that last rehearsal. I myself sink into a paralysis, where all I can do is read along with the script and have faith.At every turn of the plot, the smallest child steps onto stage at the right moment, unbidden.Actors remember lines they had forgotten two hours before.

Three stars are born. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KOURÉ

Why Do I Do It? When I think back on A Christmas Carol, I picture a window that the children looked out of as they awaited the arrival of their scripted sister. I can see the frosted window so clearly.Yet, there was no window; there was only a piece of masking tape on the floor to show the actors where to stand. I hope the audience’s imagination was as vivid as mine was.That hope is a refrain in my mind during and after plays, when the faces of my friends in the audience are bright with amusement. I always find myself wondering,“Does it hold together? Can they follow it? Do they somehow see the frosted window?”Then I remember that this is cohousing, where, throughout the long process of developing a community, they’ve seen the frosted window many times.

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Divorce Unites a Community Jane Saks, New View In most divorces, the bystanders take sides. Friends stand behind the one they feel is right—or wronged. Families redivide along family-of-origin lines. Imagine, if you will, a scene where the family is supported in their separation, one where the couple creates a vision of their disunion, one where no blame is placed. Such was the scene at New View, in Acton, Massachusetts.After six years as a cohousing community, we were experiencing our first divorce.And that is exactly how it felt—our divorce.Although it did not come as a surprise to most adults, it was very sad and distressing. Our family was divorcing. The news shook our roots as a community. It led many couples to reassess and perhaps strengthen their relationships. Norm and Mary have a young child who could not be taking this well. Other parents did not know what to tell their kids. Once told, children wondered aloud how their own families were doing. New View has a Process Committee. Its role is to facilitate communication and step in when things go wrong and to build and strengthen connections when things are going right.As a member of the Process Committee, I wondered if we should call a meeting in order to intervene in some way. The informal feedback I received was,“No, it’s too personal and doesn’t feel right.We can’t talk about them without them there and they surely wouldn’t want to discuss it in public.”Their closest friends felt very protective of them and their privacy.There was a lot of concern that community involvement would add to the burden Mary and Norm were experiencing. One person said,“If anyone wants to talk directly to Mary or Norm about how they can be helpful, that direct sort of contact makes sense.To talk about this in a group setting, however, runs the risk of breaking boundaries and becoming gossip.” Later, in talking to Mary and Norm directly, they were very moved by the potential of community support. I realized that they had been thinking on their own that there should be a meeting of some sort.Although Norm was planning on moving, both of them wanted him to feel comfortable remaining part of the community—coming to meals, visiting with his child, and continuing to participate in social and workday activiVISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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ties.To accomplish that, they thought community members needed to be comfortable with the arrangement.To be comfortable meant that we all needed to be able to talk about it openly. The Process Committee worked with the couple (they continued to collaborate and make decisions as a couple) to design the meeting.The meeting was for more than problem solving; it was a chance for us to share, care, and connect. The committee also designed a meeting in two parts, one for Mary and Norm to share what they felt comfortable sharing and to ask for what they needed, the other for the community to share the impact of the news on themselves, their families, and the community itself. The first part of the meeting was designed around three pieces. • They told the story of what was happening in their own words and without probing questions. This turned out to be the “party line”—the words they wanted us to use to describe what they were going through. • Mary and Norm presented their vision of how it would look if the near future went as well as they could imagine. They were asked to describe how they wanted their interface with the community to work. • The final piece was a brainstormed list of supports they wanted and needed and also what they didn’t want from the community. Wants tended to be requests for company and assistance with child care, homeowner tasks, and rides. They explicitly did not want lots of questions and requests for status updates. The second part of the meeting was for the rest of the community to talk about how the news of the divorce was affecting individuals, families, and what it meant for New View itself. It began with the question,“What thoughts and feelings has this change stirred up for you?” and included a discussion of,“What should we tell our kids?” Mary and Norm were surprised by what their event had triggered for other members of the community. The one-year update is that it appears the couple’s vision of continued comfortable interactions in the community has been realized.This has occurred in part because they interact in public with a great deal of warmth and consideration for each other.They continue to be welcomed in the community.They both attend community events REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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together comfortably, with or without their child. Mary’s neighbors continue to help her with child care and other chores. A big part of why this worked was because it was a cordial separation—both parties were able to model behaviors for the rest of the community.They were able to be in the same room together and discuss the situation themselves without blame.And, even in divorce, they shared a common vision. From this vantage point, the community came together around a couple’s separation in a way that enriched bonds and trust, modeled a mature handling of a difficult life event, and helped all grow.

D U WA M I S H C O H O U S I N G , S E AT T L E , WA S H I N GT O N

My Less-Than-Perfect Community Virginia Lore I was first attracted to this piece, which appeared in Cohousing Magazine, because of its title. Certainly, cohousing is not perfect! My decision to include the story was based on the honest reflections of an individual within a colorful description of a community. —D. W.

The truest thing I know about living in cohousing is that it’s tough.The next truest thing is that it’s worth it.The tough-to-worth-it ratio changes daily.When it’s high, such as three-to-one, I fantasize about living at another cohousing community—up north at Sharingwood, for example, where they have a huge greenbelt and they can let their kids out the door at dawn and start looking for them at dusk. Or at Winslow, the grandmother of Washington cohousing groups.They’ve been settled for so long that making decisions is as easy as drinking coffee in your pajamas. (Hey—it’s my fantasy.) My partner, Kevin, and I joined Duwamish in 1999.We were attracted to Duwamish for different reasons. I was attracted to the colorful and well-developed Web site and fell in love with the statement of values. Kevin, the more pragmatic of the two of us, liked the people and wanted a more workable lifestyle.We both liked the fact that so much of the work had already been done and that move-in would be in a year or VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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less. In July of 2000, we moved to the site in West Seattle, along with twenty-two other households, which ranged in size from one person to six people. Our neighborhood is a highly diverse suburban neighborhood only fifteen minutes from downtown by bus.The bus is filled with people from so many different ethnic backgrounds that no one language or culture dominates the foreground.Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, and Spanish are frequently spoken around us by our neighbors. The bus stop is on Sixteenth Street, just across from South Seattle Community College and just above Duwamish. Facing south from the bus stop, you will see the red, blue, and green houses nestled in a valley just to your right, like a village from a Disney set.A path runs through the middle of the two rows, widening for courtyards that are surrounded by gardens. If you were to visit us on a typical Saturday, you might see Andy working in the wood shop, or Eli and Lukas throwing a baseball back and forth—baseball is big here; Mariners caps and T-shirts are the most popular summer wear. Last week, you would have also seen James, Meg, and Nancy clearing out the catch basins so they’ll facilitate storm drainage more easily. Carole and Kurt were up on ladders, cleaning the muck out of gutters.Yesterday afternoon, you would have spotted Peter pushing a wheelbarrow full of wood chips to a garden site on the south end.We do a lot of community improvement. On any weekend day, you may see a gaggle of children spilling out of the common house, celebrating yet another birthday party. On almost any day, you can spot children on our path rollerblading, riding bikes, and playing with toys; running in groups; hiding under porches; and talking furtively into walkie-talkies. In the north courtyard, I like to sit on a bench surrounded by an elaborate flower garden, a labor of love by my next-door neighbor. From here, I can see his porch, a peaceful outdoor space with tastefully selected wooden furniture, flowerpots, and a hummingbird feeder. Next to it is our porch, littered with plastic riding toys, an exercise bike we can’t get rid of, and a nearly dead palm tree. One of our community values is diversity! Unlike more conventionally designed cohousing projects, we get a lot of people walking through our site.A zigzag path bisects the main pedestrian way that runs between the community college and the parkREINVENTING COMMUNITY

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ing lot on Seventeenth Street.As you can imagine, this has caused conflict.Although being open to the neighborhood is a stated community value for Duwamish, we are all in different places on whether to welcome or suspect strangers passing through. I’m on the extreme end of the spectrum, one of the most fearful people in the community. I’ve privately classified our neighborhood as “Risky Residential.”While it may be true that “a stranger’s just a friend you haven’t met,” one unseen “friend” I haven’t met yet, somewhere on the next block, likes to fire off his handgun on holidays.The police have chased suspects through our property—twice. We’ve talked about a fence, but we don’t want to be seen as unwelcoming.When I say “we’ve talked about a fence,” what I mean is that we’ve met and cried and haggled, and we still don’t have consensus on a fence design. One of my friends expressed her fear that a child in the community will be assaulted some day. For my part, I’m wary about letting any kid I’m watching get more than twenty yards away from me. One of the hardest things about living here is how unsafe it feels to me and how disappointed I am about that. If I step away from my fears and concentrate on our community features, I see many amenities. Our common house is spacious and light. It has a huge kitchen with a big, triangular butcher block in the center and a separate room for food storage.The Meals Team experiments with different working-eating-paying plans each quarter. The current plan calls for a “critical mass” of meals: four prepared meals, one take-out night, and one potluck each week. People can participate fully (cook two nights per month), half-time (one night per month), or on a meal-by-meal basis (thirty minutes of cleanup per meal eaten). On any meal night, you may find twelve to thirty residents dining here. Some folks here see eating together as a defining feature of cohousing and a big part of the reason they wanted to live here. Others either don’t find it that important or have trouble making one or more of the scheduled mealtimes. I’d feel better about cohousing in general if I ate more meals with others, but frankly, with a toddler and an infant, it’s often just easier to stay home and nosh. Our common house also has a multipurpose room, laundry facilities, bike and boat storage, a sunroom, and not one, but two playrooms.The upstairs playroom is baby friendly and has a large reading chair, while the larger downstairs playroom is more suitable for the rough games of VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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older kids. Some of my neighbors feel that our community is too focused on children.With nineteen kids among twenty-three households on 2.7 acres, it’s easy to see how they would feel that way: it’s all fun and games until someone loses an iris to a bicycle tire.The Grounds Committee is guiding us to define spaces specifically for children’s play and for adult relaxation.

Duwamish’s almost-perfect common house PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF VIRGINIA LORE

Kevin and I joined Duwamish as a child-free couple, but quickly added to the kid population. Penelope came five months after move-in, and the Duwamishites organized meals for us.When Elessar was born this summer, volunteers cared for Penelope, did laundry, and returned our library books for us. Knowing that we’re reluctant to ask for help, our friends foisted it on us. In a dozen small ways every day, I discover that, yes, cohousing is a great place to raise children. The big kids’ playroom has a trunk of dress-up clothes gifted to us by Puget Ridge Cohousing, just a few blocks away.We’ve shared brunches at their community and at ours.We’ve had a meeting to discuss how we could share resources. Duwamish has beer makers and a book club. Puget Ridge has coffee drinkers and a group that goes biking on weekends.We’ve talked about how our two communities could work REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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together for the good of all, but with all the work still hanging over us, we don’t have a lot of time to do the all the networking we’d like to. Two years past move-in here at Duwamish, we’re still dealing with lingering construction issues. It feels to me as though Puget Ridge is like the quiet, but attractive man who values his privacy while we’re like the busy professional single mom with three kids who can’t find room in her Filofax for one more commitment. I envy groups that seem more homogenous or seem to have more resources both in wisdom and in wealth. I envy older groups that have already weathered some of the transitions still ahead for us. Our group seems young to me—not in age (although we do have a large set of thirtysomethings), but in the experience of fully trusting each other.When asked how we resolve conflicts, I often joke,“We avoid them.”Avoidance is a much-maligned strategy, in my opinion.There’s something really effective about closing your eyes and making it all go away. But when you open your eyes, the conflicts are still there, so we have a Conflict Prevention and Resolution Team that works with the community in meetings to both teach us conflict resolution skills and do mediations.We have a Community Living Committee that has collected people’s “burning issues” and worked with the individuals to try to resolve them. Some of those issues—for example, other peoples’ pets— come to the larger group for policy decisions. Other things are resolved one-on-one or left until we have time to respond adequately.The whole community meets every three weeks and urgent business crams every agenda. There are other difficult things about living in cohousing.Two of the people I was closest to here moved, and I can’t quite get used to the place without them. Also, I’m often afraid of making someone angry or saying the wrong thing in meetings. I know this pressure comes from me, not from the group, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. In truth, I live among exceptional people—people who are out there fighting the good fight every day, not just in cohousing, but out in the world. I can’t think of one of my neighbors who is not exceptional in this way. Everyone here struggles to live his or her values with as much integrity as he or she can muster. One woman drives over the Cascade Mountains every week to spend three days being a full-time grandmother to her granddaughter.A single mother teaches special education and comes home to full-time parenting.Another single parent puts her .

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energy into neighborhood relations and keeps us close to our stated values.Among these stellar individuals around me, I often feel like the Queen of Slackers. If I ever were to move to a house in the middle of nowhere with a satellite dish on the roof and a television in every room, that would be why. So what makes living here worth it for me? Other than the frequent parties just a few yards from our door? I remember the big earthquake, when Penelope was three months old.The earth shook for more than a minute and the power went out.We all gathered on the path around Tom’s solar-powered radio and listened for news updates. I also think back to that day in September—9/11—when many of us came to the common house and grieved together.There was great solidarity and great comfort in those moments, the kind that instantly simplifies relationships and clarifies priorities. And then there are the smaller things. Deb took my kids this morning so that I could go to the book club discussion. Devora is picking up our groceries, and we’ll be joining March and José later today for a walk to the Chinese garden.Today, the tough-to-worth-it ratio may be more like one-to-three than three-to-one. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to join this community because of the pretty Web site, but the truth is that I wanted to join because I knew living here would challenge me. I saw myself drifting into a self-centered cocooned life amidst material comforts and unconsciousness.At Duwamish Cohousing, that will never happen.

S WA N ’ S M A R K E T C O H O U S I N G , OA K L A N D , C A L I F O R N I A

Bringing Life Back to an Urban Neighborhood Stella Tarnay, Former Editor of Cohousing Magazine Cohousing is not just for suburban and rural areas. This short tour of Swan’s Market Cohousing, in Oakland, California, is good evidence that a high-energy, urban location can more than meet the needs of its residents. —D. W.

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On a mild October day, developer Joshua Simon and I are sitting at the Metropolis Cafe, one of twelve businesses that have opened at Swan’s Market, in Oakland, California, in the past few years. Just steps away, on the second level, I’ve left my bags at Joani Blank’s place in Swan’s Market Cohousing, where I’m staying for a week.The market is an historic, earlytwentieth-century market hall, renovated and adapted to house a neighborhood food market, galleries, a children’s art museum, shops, a cafe, office space, affordable rental homes—and cohousing. Cohousing and a mixed-use project? Well, yes. In fact, Swan’s Market is one of a handful of cohousing communities with an associated commercial use. Nomad, Quayside Village, Marsh Commons,Arcadia Cohousing, and Pioneer Valley Cohousing all have complimentary uses, such as a corner store, professional office space, and even an historic theater. Swan’s Market Cohousing is the first to be part of a larger mixeduse project. It is a remarkable community in the midst of an urban transformation, part of an ambitious plan to bring back Oakland’s neglected downtown.

Swan’s Market Cohousing is located in a bustling part of Oakland. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF STELLA TARNAY

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The corner of Ninth Street and Washington is lively during lunch hour, with area workers and shoppers hanging out on the extended sidewalk.The Art Deco market, with its white brick exterior and terra cotta detailing, is a handsome building. Bright red and yellow banners announce the opening of new businesses along Ninth Street.The outdoor cafe tables are full. Joshua smiles benignly, if somewhat wearily, at the scene. He has just finished signing on the last restaurant for the building and raising a few extra hundred thousand dollars.As senior project manager for the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), the nonprofit developer of the $20 million project, Josh coordinated the Swan’s Market development process, managing public approvals, financing, leasing, and construction. Joshua is no stranger to cohousing. He has followed the cohousing movement since the 1980s, and, in 1996, he and his wife, Ruth, moved into Doyle Street Cohousing in neighboring Emeryville. Joshua considers cohousing part of Swan’s Market success story.“Before the cohousing residents came in, most policy makers were unsure that middle-class people would want to live in downtown Oakland.The cohousing residents helped prove to the city council and officials that bringing market-rate housing to downtown was a viable plan.”

Free to be Car-Free The cohousers are enthusiastic about their new downtown location, stepping easily into their new urbanite roles.“There are many things we can walk to now that we live in Swan’s Market that we couldn’t walk to before, like some really good restaurants, the fresh foods market right downstairs, good bread and cheese around the corner, an old-world deli, the best of Oakland coffee, and Chinatown,” says Joani.“It’s not just a convenience to be downtown, it’s a real pleasure.” Debby Kaplan is one of five Swan’s Market Cohousing residents who leave their cars in the garage to walk to work. In fact, Debby “rolls.” She gets to her job as executive director of the World Institute on Disability, five blocks away, in her wheelchair. She also frequents local grocery stores, drug stores, flower shops, and restaurants.Two other residents of Swan’s Market Cohousing who also have disabilities find the community and most of downtown Oakland very accessible. For those who ride public transportation, the Bay Area Rapid Transit REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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District (BART) subway system and dozens of bus lines are a two-block walk from Swan’s Market, and downtown San Francisco is just a twelveminute ride away. Joani counts seven Swan’s Market Cohousing residents who take the BART or local buses to work. “Old Oakland is where you used to park your car for conventions,” says Joshua. By the early 1990s, save for the Ninth Street Farmers’ Market on Fridays, Oakland’s historic downtown was an abandoned neighborhood. (In 1999, the unemployment rate in Old Oakland and its surrounding neighborhoods was 25 percent and the median household income was $7,620. EBALDC expects the Swan’s Market complex will bring 135 new jobs to the area.) On Friday mornings, Swan’s Court hosts a small crafts market and opens up onto the bustling farmers’ market along Ninth Street. It’s during those times that the potential of the courtyard and of Swan’s Market becomes most apparent. Recent Asian and Latin American immigrants mix with African-American residents from surrounding neighborhoods and newly arrived white residents in the friendly jostle for the best, freshest produce and fruit, pastries, flowers, and knickknacks.

Up the Coho Staircase Through a small gate off the central courtyard and up an outdoor staircase, the Swan’s Market walkway is reminiscent of historic European streets.The community’s twenty attached homes open directly onto the shared eighteen-foot-wide walkway with bay windows and small balconies projecting from the upper story above. In the center is the common house, which looks out over Swan’s Court.The building material mixes pale stucco with exposed structural trusses from the old building.These form a kind of geometric canopy over the space.The effect is of a Mediterranean village with an urban edge. Just six months after move-in, container shrubs, small trees, and potted flowers overflow in front of residents’ front doors. Community cats have taken up posts at strategic locations. The Swan’s Market Cohousing walkway is the kind of place where you’ll want to pause and hang out.The space feels protected, but not exclusive.As a newcomer to the community, I find plenty of reasons around me to start a casual conversation: a giant blooming begonia, the gorgeous diffused California light, the affiliation of the nearest feline VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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sunning himself on a lounge chair, or one of the techno-savvy residents trying out a new electronic toy. On my first afternoon walk, I run into Colleen, who is taking her new iMac laptop out for a spin on the Internet, using the group’s shared wireless high-speed connection, while little Ariela from across the way watches intently.

A Look Inside The design of Swan’s Market Cohousing reflects scrappy architectural ingenuity and a creative response to the peculiarities of the eighty-yearold building. Joshua observes,“The project had many constraints because of the market’s historic character and financing, but these also suggested a structure.” Site planning and overall design were largely left in the hands of the architectural firm. Project architect Peter Waller peeled back the roof of the old market building to expose the structural trusses and bring in light.The biggest design challenge came when the roof structure (actually three different roofs built over thirty years) had to be joined to the new walls of the cohousing units.After several proposals and much deliberation, the roof-to-unit problem was solved by exposing the joists at the back of the units, creating a loftlike aesthetic and opening up the roof for skylights. The homes at Swan’s Market Cohousing also have an open, airy feeling.The group had extensive opportunities to respond to unit designs and made suggestions for layout changes.“One of the successful changes we were able to make was to move almost all of the kitchens to the front of the units and to open up the staircases,” says Joani. From Joani’s kitchen window, I can see the cohousing world go by as I rinse dishes at the sink.All the homes at Swan’s Market Cohousing are twenty feet wide (along the old structural columns), and range in size from 675 to 1,500 square feet, with a variety of upper-floor treatments. Most are one and two bedroom; there are a few studio lofts and three-bedroom units.

A Common Place The Swan’s Market group worked closely with Kathryn McCamant on common house programming and design.The common house, like the REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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units, has an open, airy quality. It is the one space in the community that is suffused with light almost any time of day.The kitchen’s galley bar makes a convenient serving area and helps define the space. Six tables seat up to twenty-eight people. Swan’s Market Cohousing residents eat community dinners three times a week. On the Thursday night I joined them for dinner, they were serving spicy chili, salad, and European-style bread. Halfway through dinner, two bottles of wine fortuitously materialized on the galley counter. The common sitting area at Swan’s Market Cohousing is a modestsize alcove between the dining room and the walkway. Small-scale and flexible seems to be the overall approach of the spaces in Swan’s Market’s common house.The contemporary industrial materials give the building an urban feel.A glassed-in, carpeted children’s room to the right of the kitchen holds play equipment and toys. It’s easy to get downstairs to ground level by using either the elevator or staircase. Here I find the laundry room and the future guest room, exercise room, and workshop.As I peruse the piles of piping and insulation, I am reminded that Swan’s Market residents moved in just six months ago. On the ground level outside of the common house are the community’s mailboxes and entry to the garage.

Community and Security Security was a serious topic of conversation during the planning stages of Swan’s Market Cohousing. None of the group members wanted to live in a gated community, but they were aware that downtown Oakland was deserted after 6:00 P.M. and not considered a safe neighborhood.The group and their developer decided on a flexible gate system.Wroughtiron gates on Ninth Street at the courtyard entry are open during daytime and closed at night.The Tenth Street cohousing units have an additional separate gate that opens on an electronic key system.The rental-unit residents have an inner entry system with buzzers.“Individual members of the group had many different ideas about what it means to be safe in the city.We’re still dealing with some of these questions, like when do we leave the common house doors open and when are they locked?” says Debby Kaplan. Joani observes that just six months after moving in, the community feels safer than residents expected. Shops and offices continue to open VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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in the neighborhood and ninety-eight new condominiums across the street add more “eyes on the street.”

A Meeting Raines Cohen dashes by on his way to Marilyn Chin’s unit for a meeting of the Group Process Committee, recently formed to ease the transition from “construction and move-in craziness” to “living together and homeowners’ association mode.”A few minutes into the meeting, I join the four committee members around Marilyn’s kitchen table while they discuss the best night to hold the twice-monthly community meeting given all of the residents’ busy lives.The general consensus is that a relaxed Sunday afternoon meeting with a potluck to follow may be the most amenable choice. Other process topics that have come up recently are facilitation, nonhierarchical-management techniques, conflict-resolution training, and how to make the new homeowners’ association meetings effective. The Swan’s Market group remained very active during their four years of planning and construction.They focused their work through committees that focused on such topics as marketing, legal and finance, membership, community life, and design.They tapped into the database of people in the Bay area interested in cohousing—which had grown to 2,000 and more since the mid-1980s—as well as friends at the local Unitarian church and local public events. One of the most effective recruiting spots was the Sunday farmers’ market at Jack London Square, an early redevelopment project seven blocks to the south. There is mutual feeling that communication between the professionals and interaction between the group and their professional team was extraordinarily good. Katie, Joshua, and Peter were all friends from college days and knew each other’s working styles.“We have tremendous respect for each other, and in that kind of situation, you can really back each other up,” says Katie. Peter Waller says of their cohousing partners,“This was a very collaborative and sophisticated group.They recognized how hard we were working. In a lot of ways, the cohousing was one of the easiest parts of the project.”

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Back on the Walkway On the following Monday after dinner, as I pass the garden table between Raines’ and Harriet’s units, I happen upon Harriet and we sit down to chat. Harriet, who is a nurse, talks about the transition from living alone in a conventional condo development to life in cohousing. “After an intense day’s work, I would take my newspaper out to the back and have some downtime. Here on the terrace, when I pick up my newspaper and read it at the table, someone is bound to stop by and chat. I’ve discovered that when I want to be outside and just read, the best thing to do is to take my paper and go downstairs to Swan’s Court. I think we are all still learning how to mediate boundaries of community and self.”

Daily life at Swan’s Market Cohousing PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF STELLA TARNAY

As we stay to catch the last of the fading light, Raines once again dashes by, this time into his own unit. Our two-person conversation grows to three people and then four after Raines reemerges from his unit with two pints of gourmet ice cream.

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Affordable Housing The Swan’s Market group initially envisioned a diverse, mixed-income community of twenty-plus market-rate condominiums and twenty affordable rentals. Unfortunately, bank financing required physical separation. Specifically, lenders require a certain percentage of condominiums to be owner-occupied before they make their best loan rates available.A physically integrated mixed-income community would have meant that a number of the cohousing group members would not have qualified to buy their homes. The group explored many options to create connections with the affordable units through design, such as a bridge between the two communities and a shared mailbox area, none of which were incorporated in the end. Joani and Raines would like to see more interaction with the residents of the adjoining rental building, while other residents of the cohousing community are less inclined to reach out.

Sushi at Sunward PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

Children and Families About thirty-three people live in Swan’s Market Cohousing, ranging in age from one to seventy-plus.Three of the community’s residents are children, ages one, twelve, and fifteen. During the course of development, the group had five more families with young or school-age REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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children, but they dropped out. Joani thinks there are a number of reasons why families with children choose not to live in core cities. Among them are safety, lack of green space, and schools.“We were able to create a sense of safety and attractive community space, but in the end, they couldn’t make the school situation work.The public schools in Oakland just don’t cut it and these families couldn’t afford to send their kids to private schools.” (One of the families left early on to move to Muir Commons Cohousing, in Davis.) Kathryn McCamant thinks it is inevitable for families with children to be slower in moving to urban cohousing.“We had the same problem at Doyle Street in Emeryville, a semi-industrial urban area.At first, there were no kids. Now we have five, with another on the way.A healthy, functioning urban community eventually attracts families. Besides, many families discover that in a less toney town, such as Oakland or Emeryville, what they spend on private schools they will save on property taxes.”

Some Thoughts on Mixed-Use Development and Cohousing Swan’s Market Cohousing suggests a new model for developing cohousing as part of larger mixed-use developments.The Swan’s Market project demonstrates how cohousing can be part of a successful strategy to bring middle-income families downtown. Cohousing groups build strong bonds and social support through their community process, making it possible for members to imagine living in “marginal” neighborhoods. They can form the stable residential core of a healthy, diverse area.At the same time, a larger mixed-use project such as Swan’s Market provides important infrastructure for cohousing—shops to shop in, restaurants and cafes to frequent, and safety on the ground floor. Over my years of working and observing cohousing groups, I have found that we share an important characteristic: we are open to—no, we welcome—diversity. I have gone to countless meetings with cohousing group members who talk about how to bring in more diversity of background and income.At the same time, I have sadly watched as talented participants have had to leave groups because they can’t afford to buy a home. In the case of Swan’s Market Cohousing, their plan to create a mixed-income community was thwarted by an archaic lending structure. VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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Mixed-use, mixed-income projects that include cohousing (with enabling lending structures) are a helpful model for building diverse neighborhoods and for making cohousing accessible to community-minded families of modest means. If I were the planning director of an ailing urban area, I would be looking for incentives to encourage the growth of cohousing groups as a redevelopment strategy. If I were the mayor of a city and looking for ways to integrate affordable and market-rate housing in such a project, making inclusive mixed-income financing possible would be one of the places I would start. For me, as an urban planner and a community organizer, the willingness and enthusiasm of cohousing groups to be part of diverse, lively neighborhoods is the most hopeful sign of all.

TEMESCAL CREEK COHOUSING, OA K L A N D , C A L I F O R N I A There are now a handful of good examples of retrofit cohousing, and in a book titled Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods, coauthor Dan Chiras and I suggest that any existing neighborhood could adopt at least some of the principles of cohousing—maybe even investing in a cooperatively owned common house when a house on the block goes up for sale. —D. W.

A Different Kind of Fixer-Upper: Retrofit Cohousing Karen Hester We often joke that we are the fastest cohousing community ever formed. In March 1999, after only three months of meetings, a group of five families opened escrow on Temescal Creek Cohousing, a retrofit cohousing neighborhood in Oakland, California.We’re called a retrofit community because we transformed an existing neighborhood into a cohousing community rather than building from the ground up. Our vision was to create and live in a community that fosters harmony with each other, the larger community, and the environment. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Our first step in creating our neighborhood was to purchase three adjacent 1920s duplexes in North Oakland’s Temescal district as tenants-incommon from a sympathetic property owner.We later bought two adjacent houses on the block.The property is a one-mile walk from the metro transit system called BART, or the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, major bus routes, and several commercial streets.

Gathering at Temescal PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF KAREN HESTER

The Early Days Community member Diane Ohlsson and I negotiated directly with the owners.The deal included a clause allowing them to live in their old unit for six months while they remodeled a nearby home they had purchased. In the beginning,we had no common house, so we ate twice a week in each other’s houses for the first year.While this was a burden—not to mention a very tight squeeze—we accepted the challenges because we knew they were temporary.Then we purchased another single-family house adjacent to our community.The house had suffered a fire because of a careless renter and we convinced the owners that it was time to sell.We posted the announcement to friends and others interested in cohousing.An acquaintance of ours bought the property, adding muchneeded energy and indoor space to our community. VISITING FIVE COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

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The single-family house included a 600-square-foot office space that doubled as our temporary common house for the next three years.We cooked in our own homes, then brought the food to our common meals. The setup wasn’t ideal, but at least we had a common place to gather outside of our homes.After those three years, we were finally were ready to construct our beautiful 900-square-foot common house.

Taking a Leap Forward We hired the CoHousing Company to help develop a strategic plan for our community. Our challenge was to form a Condominium Association as we were designing and building a new common house.That way each unit would have its own separate mortgage and would own an equal share of the constructed common house. Kathryn McCamant also had the bright idea to build a nice unit above the common house and sell it for market rate, adding another member to our community and helping offset the costs of the condo conversion and the new construction. To finance construction, we used individual home equity lines of credit. (Our equity had soared along with Bay Area housing prices since we first bought in the neighborhood.) We spent more than a year obtaining the necessary permits from the Planning Department and the Planning Commission as well as obtaining an easement from a neighboring commercial property.We paid some Temescal Creek Cohousing residents $35 an hour to perform the work required to obtain the permits and to convert our ownership structure from tenants-in-common to condos. We got to know all our immediate neighbors by instigating block parties and other fun social events. Later, when we applied for a major variance to build right on the property line, those neighbors wrote letters of support, and one even showed up at the Planning Commission to speak on our behalf. Another challenge we faced was paring down all the stuff we had kept communally in a large garage, which we tore down in order to build the common house. Each household was given a storage space of four feet wide, five feet deep, and nine feet high.Amazingly, folks learned the meaning of trying to “live simply”—at least in our amount of stuff. We recycled many items, including little-used bikes, and hosted a big yard sale.

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Working through the Hard Times We struggled sometimes during the next year to agree on the details of the common house. Our hardest discussions were over the exterior finish (should it be board and batten or a more expensive stucco), exterior color, and whether or not to install solar energy. Eventually, we reached consensus, choosing a burnt-orange and yellow stucco with avocado metal railings.And we decided to install photovoltaics (solar panels to produce electricity) because we were committed to alternative energy and had watched other communities struggle for years over the issue after not installing it from the start. We finally chose a wonderful contractor who helped us complete our project on time (within nine months) and on budget.We spent a total of $488,000, including the cost of the condo conversion. Since we sold the new upstairs unit for $350,000, each family’s share totaled approximately $23,000. To cut costs, we didn’t hire the general contractor to do all the work. Instead, we paid one of our community residents who works in the trades to oversee subcontracting the stucco, painting, landscaping, and hardscape concrete work.We recommend this route as a way to reduce expenses if someone is willing to serve in this role and will be supported by others in the community.We also hired a landscape architect to help us with some drainage issues; we were glad we did because a creek runs underground nearby. Because we were living—and some of us working—on-site, there were days when we wondered if we could stand one more day of jackhammering. But in the end, we’re proud of the results, especially the green elements of our construction.We have blown-in cellulose insulation, an on-demand water heater for the new living unit, photovoltaics for the common house and the unit above, and an irrigation system.The common house includes our long-awaited kitchen and dining room, a sitting area, laundry, bathroom, and kid’s room.We’re glad we included some extras, such as acoustic treatment for sound in the dining room and a beautiful, two-color concrete hardscape where the kids love to ride their scooters and jump rope.

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More to Come— After a Well-Deserved Rest Our seven-unit retrofit community is taking a slight breather before we tackle most of phase two of our long-term plan to redo the pathways, build a new gate, add more landscaping, and install a solar-powered, guiltfree hot tub. In the meantime, we’re gratified by all of our curious friends and acquaintances who come to dinners and parties and exclaim over our “luck” to live in such a gorgeous urban retreat.The huge 100year-old oak tree, fig tree, and nice new sod, together with new perennial plants, give a feeling of an oasis in a busy neighborhood. After meeting twice a month for regular meetings, not to mention countless committee meetings we’ve had for years, we hope to cut back soon to meeting once a month for community business matters. But we often remind each other that had we been in a new-construction community, we’d probably just now be moving in. Instead, during these past five years, we’ve had the pleasure of living in the community while we create it—sharing meals and milestones and watching our kids grow up together.

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CHAPTER FIVE

G E T T I N G S TA RT E D : HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY I N O N E S H O RT D E C A D E O R L E S S My original interest in cohousing was related to sustainable architecture. By allowing future residents to take part in the design of the neighborhood and share the costs of green design, surely we could create super-efficient communities that others could learn from. Our neighborhood and other cohousing communities are, in fact, frequent recipients of home-building awards for efficiency and sustainability. But the longer I was involved in the community, the more I realized that “sticks and bricks” are just one dimension of cohousing. What makes cohousing truly unique and rewarding is the social dimension. The intergenerational aspect, for example, adds value to my life in a way I might never have experienced in another neighborhood. At one “Roast and Toast” for a few of our senior citizens, we celebrated the fifty-seven-year marriage between our neighbors John and Nadine. From family members and longtime friends, we heard hilarious episodes about their wedding, their many travels, and John’s psychiatric practice. Although John is legally blind and the couple is in their mid-eighties, they still regularly attend concerts and plays and travel to places as distant as Budapest. The

couple also actively participates in cooking common meals; we’ve seen John’s home-baked bread evolve to a professional level of excellence. At another party, to honor elder John Mackey’s life, we served popcorn and issued theater tickets for a slideshow John gave, mostly about his illustrious career at Kodak, where he helped invent the slide projector and perfect the copy machine. John’s last supper in our common house—the week before he died—was sauerkraut and corned beef, a meal he remembered from World War II days. (He was an infantryman in the Normandy invasion, an event that made the rest of his life essentially a gift). Educator Richard Kordesh observes that the bond between generations builds an attachment to history in the young and renews in the old their attachment to the future. I would add that elders are a repository of wisdom that any community can harvest. But if—as in a typical neighborhood—the elders remain cloistered in their houses, essentially living in the past, how can we hear from them? One of my favorite encounters with neighbors is when I tour the younger generation around the community garden, showing them what’s available for munching. For the past few years, Sungold cherry tomatoes and raspberries have been the kids’ primary interest, followed by earthworms—which kids always find a way to dig, dangle, and allow to desiccate. I remember one afternoon, though, when a few kids mistook a toxic plant for parsley in a playtime salad. A neighbor rang my doorbell, asking if the plant in her hand was hemlock, and I answered that it was. Although the kids spent half a day in the hospital undergoing tests, I was glad I’d been there to answer the door. Another time, I fell off a rapidly accelerating pickup truck and gashed the back of my head. A neighbor who is a nurse was on hand to inspect and dress the wound and send me off for stitches. These are the kind of events that build what sociologists call “social capital,” a form of wealth comprised of trust, networking, and fun. I’ve often imagined an aerial map of our neighborhood with lines drawn between the houses showing the social web that gets woven over time. This line is Claire, going to Ginny’s house to deliver the Sunday New York Times after she’s read it. That line is three-year-old Maggie, with an armload of toys, going to Katy’s REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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house for some serious fun. Those lines are hungry people following the sound of the dinner bell and the scent of grilled salmon to the common house. In the following stories about laying bricks together, teaching kids how to sew, and planting fig trees, it’s clear that one way to weave a strong social web is to relearn, together, how to use our hands. (Our American culture seems to be in a Great Forgetting Era concerning skills and crafts. I suspect that not knowing what to do with our hands is making us uneasy.) When you think about it, social capital is even more valuable than money, because the more social capital you “spend,” the more you have. —D. W.

Building Community— in More Ways Than One Bryan Bowen, Wild Sage, Boulder, Colorado

I’ve watched the nearby Wild Sage community form and try to fit two seemingly opposites together: the city-mandated need for affordable homes and the mission statement to be as sustainable as possible. Somehow it’s working, partly because Bryan Bowen and his architectural colleague Jim Logan designed such a great common house and neighborhood. —D. W.

I’m an architect whose passion is creating beautiful, sustainable design, so I was pretty excited when our firm was chosen to work on the Wild Sage Cohousing project. I didn’t realize as the project began that my wife and I would end up making Wild Sage our home. Our architectural team expected that working with future residents to codesign a community would be about as easy as herding cats, but we were up for the challenge.The constraints of the project were also pretty tight. Land and development costs are high in Boulder, and fourteen of the thirty-four homes were mandated by Boulder Housing Partners to be permanently affordable, including four to be built by the G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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Flatirons Habitat for Humanity. In addition, the community had a strong eco-ethic, which we satisfied in a way that kept the project affordable. In the process of codesigning Wild Sage, I got to know most of the people in the group and began to feel differently about this project than others that I work on. Stephen and Jade were architects at another good firm in town and had similar professional interests. Chris was engaging and compassionate—someone we could talk to easily right off the bat. Shari was a fellow professional working with the group who understood both my work life and private life and instantly became a friend. The social fabric became more closely knit when my sister Karen moved in with Shari as her roommate. Stephen, Jade, and I began doing projects together. Chris found a great opening at the environmental nonprofit organization where my wife, Dale, works. Some members dropped out, but more good people joined. People shifted—on paper— from one unit to another.As things began to materialize and the construction drawings were completed, a unit opened up that looked good to us and we decided to go for it. But when we showed up at the next group meeting, slightly late, we hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone that we had joined and had put money down on a unit. Annie, a very talented facilitator and community member, had safely steered the group through many lengthy meetings and was now bracing herself to handle my unexpected arrival.“Oh, Bryan, I didn’t know you were presenting tonight. I don’t have you on the agenda,” she said, looking a bit worried.We didn’t really have any choice but to confess right then to all thirty-something of them, with us standing at the entry at the front of the room, that we were there as new members. People stood up and applauded—all the fabulous folks I was working with. I can’t remember who it was, but someone commented that the community was so amazing that even one of their architects wanted to join in. It was proof that their project was on the road to success. As we sat down in the meeting, our new roles felt pretty good. I’d been traveling in this direction for much of my life. I’d grown up in the juniper-spotted New Mexican desert in a beautiful wood-framed solar house that was built to look like classic adobe. My childhood friends lived in similar houses—some houses were more authentically historic and some were farther out on the architectural spectrum, including “zomes” and organic shapes made of recycled steel parts or recycled lumber.There was always a feeling of cooperation in that community— REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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probably forged around the scarcity of water.The remoteness of the village also helped make it a very close community whose residents included Spanish land grant families, hippie commune dwellers, and eccentric individuals. When I went away to architecture school at Carnegie Mellon, I found that I didn’t want to be involved with skyscrapers or signature sports facilities (though I have done those too), but with a more populist building process that embraces the Earth and the immediate environment.That’s where the opportunity for social change seemed to be. Near the end of my student days, I ran across the newly published cohousing book by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, as a part of my research in urban ecology and socially progressive ecodesign. It seemed an ideal way to design sustainable communities that also address social issues.

Bryan Bowen loads salvaged solar equipment for the Wild Sage community.

I worked for a few years with an architectural firm in Utah, which was interviewed by Wasatch Cohousing for the role of designer. Coincidentally, I had joined the Wasatch group at about the same time, but I dropped out because I was broke. I was disappointed (and maybe a little jaded) when the firm’s principals chose not to pursue the project, but I came away with the idea that cohousing might actually be achievable. I moved to Boulder to get married and then found a job with Jim Logan, a guru of ecodesign and a great role model.Among other great projects, we began working with Wonderland Hill Development Company to design Wild Sage Cohousing.We knew the project would be G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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unconventional, like a lot of our previous work with local Buddhists, administrators of the Waldorf School, and environmental nonprofits. The work went well right from the start.The developer was engaged and operated from solid values, the community was expanding and flourishing, and our design work was meeting with success at just about all levels.We had a design grant from the Environmental Protection Agency through the Sustainable Futures Society, which helped us push the boundaries of sustainable design—not easy in the costly Boulder market, especially when a project includes affordable housing.We worked with the National Renewable Energy Lab, a world-class team of landscape architects; lighting designers; and a small band of energy nerds who helped us crunch design data to optimize building performance. It really felt like we were going to pull off an ecologically sound project under very difficult real-market conditions. At this point, I couldn’t help thinking about joining the community. My wife, Dale, was open to the idea, but she didn’t have the history with cohousing that I did.We decided we’d better go to an actual community meeting together to take a look.This was a big mistake.The meeting was one of the most contentious in the then short history of Wild Sage.The issue at hand was the potential presence of television in the common house.Whether to have it, where to put it, whether to control it with lock and key … These were questions that sparked strong feelings among some folks, which in turn sparked more strong feelings. It was exasperating and it went late into the night.When we left, Dale and I imagined having to routinely attend meetings like these.We decided we’d better wait and see. So that was that, for the time being. A year passed as Wild Sage progressed through the design process.Things were still going well and I was able to keep my outsider position as the architect and thus stay objective and credible (as credible as ever, anyway). But gradually,Wild Sage got back into our thoughts.And after we became members, it was marvelous as well as surprising to feel the immediate shift from being a professional to being truly one of the community, at home among friends. It felt instantaneous, but it was actually happening incrementally all along without me noticing. As I write this, we have three buildings framed (about 50 percent of the units), two more foundations poured, and we’re making our final selections for finishes, options, and upgrades. Dale and I are shifting our REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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lives in anticipation of the move-in: selling our house and temporarily moving into Shari’s house with my sister, where there’s lots of room since Shari recently moved south. I’m on-site almost every day and it’s a rewarding time for everyone—although the details and the meetings can be draining.We’re investigating group mortgages, creating community policies and homeowner codes—not the easiest of tasks. It’s been about three years now since the community had its first meeting, but within another year, we’ll all be moved in—finally! Now that I have my own architectural firm, I’m happily finding that an increasing number of people are interested in intentional community in its various forms. I’ve got several new communities on the drawing board in a few different states and I’m enjoying my relationships with other cohousing professionals. It may be true that cohousing is not for everyone, but Dale and I are glad to be a part of it.

Sage-ing, Not Aging, at Silver Sage: The Birth of an Elder Community Silvine Marbury Farnell, Silver Sage Village, Boulder, Colorado My husband, Stewart, and I first heard about Silver Sage Village—a cohousing community for active adults right in our hometown—in the Spiritual Eldering newsletter.This publication expresses the vision of Rabbi Reb Zalman, who inspired us with a wonderful book titled From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision for Growing Older. Even though we’ve been on a spiritual path for years, turning fifty was hard for both of us. I decided to attend a few Spiritual Eldering workshops with Reb Zalman and his talented wife, storyteller, singer, and workshop leader, Rebitzin Eve Ilsen. Eve’s guided visualization culminated in reading one’s own obituary and then seeing what steps can be taken to change it. It was transformative—I moved from clinging to a kind of teaching that really didn’t fit to a new beginning in my work life that leaves me more freedom to pursue my passion. I gave Reb Zalman’s book to Stew on his fifty-fifth birthday and it helped him believe that aging could mean growing; he wasn’t doomed to repeat his father’s hardening of the emotional arteries. He loved the idea of becoming one of the true elders, who, in Zalman’s words,“refuse to follow the well-trodden path marked ‘aging.’ G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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Instead they trailblaze unmarked paths.”They become “members of humanity’s vanguard,” by combining practices from contemplative traditions with breakthroughs in brain-mind research. Right on! We went to a few Silver Sage meetings—largely because the community had advertised in the newsletter—and discovered that Jim Leach, the developer of the project, had also read and loved Reb Zalman’s book. In fact, the book’s vision of sage-ing had inspired him to start Silver Sage. In spite of all this, we started out with a lot of reservations about cohousing in general and elder cohousing in particular.We didn’t want endless meetings.We weren’t at all sure how we felt about having other people around all the time since we’re both more or less introverts. We’re a long way from retirement, and, even if we had been ready to retire, we hated the idea of a retirement community—a bunch of old folks trying to keep themselves busy playing golf or, even worse, traveling in vans to Wal-Mart. So it was crucial to find out that in cohousing, your privately owned home is still your castle. Many of the people who move into cohousing are introverts too, and in this kind of “neighborhood on purpose,” neighbors respect each other’s need for privacy. Most of the people who have already joined Silver Sage are not retired—some are in their early fifties. And, very importantly, Silver Sage is going to be right next-door to Wild Sage Cohousing, an intergenerational community hoping to have close ties with us.They want us to be grandparent surrogates, if we feel like it—and I do, I do! So I began to see myself reading aloud to a group of kids every Saturday morning, the way one of our members, veteran cohouser Arthur Okner, has done. (He has already promised to share books with us, such as Curious George and Rotten Ralph.) And we began to get the idea that living in Silver Sage, right next-door to Wild Sage, is going to make it a lot easier to be real “elders of the tribe.” Reb Zalman talks a lot about learning how to mentor effectively, to share with the larger community the wisdom you’ve gained. In Silver Sage and the surrounding neighborhood, we’ll have a tribe! Not to mention that the common house is going to be a perfect place to give poetry performing workshops, my favorite way of sharing. I especially love the idea that we will be in the kind of neighborhood I remember from childhood, where people take care of each other. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Stew is especially impressed by the careful designing for accessibility that will enable us to stay there until, as Arthur puts it, we go to that great cohousing community in the sky. In charge of our own lives and sharing our lives—independent and interdependent. So we joined, even though we were still a little worried about all those meetings.

Designing Silver Sage, a community for elders PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JONATHAN CASTNER

What’s been happening ever since? Meetings. But the funny part is, meetings have turned out to be places where the spiritual angle starts to be real.We’ve learned from Annie Russell of Wonderland Hill Development Company (our developer) to use the Council Way.At the beginning and end of every meeting—and even in the middle, if things get hairy—we go around the group and give everyone a chance to speak. If you have the talking stick, everyone else just listens, and it’s amazing how powerful that can be.We give each other space and attention; we put aside the drive to have everyone “listen to me!”There’s more silence inside each of us, and more silence in the room.We find ourselves understanding and enjoying each other more, and looking for ways we can all be happy. Not that it’s always easy—sometimes the person with the talking stick has to say,“Hey, I’ve got the stick—my turn!” But that’s how we learn to ask for what we need, how to give each other what we need— spirituality in action.We also laugh a lot, and the spiritual teachers I hang out with say that’s one of the best ways to silence the chatter of the mind—one reason it feels so good. It’s true we’ve had one or two AFOGs (Another Bleeping OpportuG E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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nity for Growth), and there’s no doubt we’ll have more.We’re not nearly as alike as I thought we would be. Our spiritual practices range from going for walks to weeklong silent retreats—some of us even describe ourselves as atheists and aren’t particularly fond of the word “spiritual.” Our ideas about how we want to live don’t always match either.We’re human, and we each want to be sure we’re going to get what’s important to us, especially in the common house, the heart of the whole community.When we were working on the design for the common house, sometimes it seemed we were hopelessly at odds—but we now have the most beautiful design for a common house that has ever been created (except for yours, of course, if you live in cohousing). Because everyone had input on the design, we all have a sense of ownership in it. Two other books I’ve recently read have helped me understand and appreciate even more deeply what’s going on at Silver Sage. One is a book on nourishing spirituality in kids, Rachael Kessler’s The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character in School. She’s worked for years in the public schools and found that kids will naturally overcome the barriers that seem so high between them—barriers of race and class and clique—and will naturally come to feel the deeper level that connects us all if they just give each other space and attention.The Council Way is a big part of what they do. Then there’s Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness by Marc Ian Barasch. For three years, Barasch explored situations that nurture compassion, people who are outstandingly compassionate, and the science of what’s going on in the body when we are compassionate. He has very good news to tell about how natural and healthy compassion is for human beings—and how easy to cultivate.The most moving chapter for Stew and me was “The Beloved Community,” with its story of Nine-Twelve, the community of love that formed after 9/11. Disaster set people free to do what really makes us happy:“trying to outdo one another in the showing of love.” Barasch makes it obvious that choosing to live in a neighborhood where people support each other is choosing something we desperately need as human beings. He confirms our belief that cohousing is part of a larger spiritual movement that may yet save us from destroying ourselves and the planet. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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A week ago, we started a six-week workshop with a specialist in “conscious aging,” David Chernikoff, a colleague of Reb Zalman.We’re looking forward to actually practicing what Zalman lays out in his book: “harvesting” our lives, facing death and seeing what it has to teach us, and deepening our spiritual practice.As W. B.Yeats once remarked, aging is a drag,“unless soul claps its hands and sings.”

Reaching beyond Ourselves: Foster Parenting in Cohousing Laura Fitch, Pioneer Valley, Amherst, Massachusetts The idea of sharing the wealth of cohousing with others is very appealing. Yet, as Laura’s story about adopting foster children reveals, it’s not always as easy as we thought it would be. Fortunately, the phrase “it takes a village” is more than just rhetoric. —D. W.

We’ve been living with foster children in our house for nine months. In many ways, this experience has served to remind us just how supportive cohousing can be to those who live there and how far its influence can reach to improve the lives of people beyond our immediate neighborhood. I have to start at the beginning—the first decision. It was the week before Christmas and an e-mail message from my neighbor to our community read “Two children in Wildwood School need emergency placement in a foster home.” I tried to retrieve my senses and quickly delete the message, but I hesitated just a bit too long. I’d been looking for some way to act locally, especially with feeling so powerless about the world situation and an imminent war in Iraq. Little did I know that my husband, Lyons, had already read the message, picked up the phone, and called the school to get details on the children. We talked about it that night.There were lots of reasons not to do it: I run my own business and Lyons had recently started a new job, coaches soccer, attends town meeting, and chairs the community Buildings and Grounds Committee.We already had two kids sharing one room and we would have to dismantle our home office/sewing room to accommodate more. Let’s face it: we were already overcommitted, and G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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we live in a relatively small house. On the other hand, there were many reasons we thought we wanted to do this: we have so much wealth and there is so much need. I’m not talking about monetary wealth; I’m talking about cohousing.We have what everybody needs: community.And we have seen firsthand what our community can offer foster children.We have seen four former foster children adopted into our neighbors’ families and five others find a temporary haven here. While we struggled with this decision, I had an idea. I would post an e-mail to the community explaining that if enough neighbors committed to helping us in very concrete ways, then we would give ourselves permission to consider this. If the community did not step up to the plate for these children and for us, we would have to say no. I made a list of what I thought we would need: someone to meet the bus on Mondays so I could still take my ten-year-old son to piano lessons; adult babysitters on Tuesday nights so we could continue our own dance classes; and an evening out once a month.The responses were positive on all of these and something else too: neighbor Jamie offered to cook for our family once a week for as long as the kids lived with us. So, yes, it was, and we entered a new chapter in our lives—one without regrets, but endless surprises, adjustments, and difficult decisions. Imagine this: Daniel and Katrina walked into our lives on Christmas Eve with terror in their eyes and two garbage bags of clothing.We spent our first day together singing carols around the piano, wiping tears, and worrying about fair distribution of presents.We relabeled some of the gifts lovingly purchased for our own sons, and braced ourselves. When we first volunteered to take them in, the Department of Social Services (DSS) said it would be for two to three months. It wasn’t long before we knew otherwise, but since things were going smoothly and the community was shoring us up, we didn’t hesitate long before committing to keep them through the school year. Nine months later, we are still at it. It hasn’t been easy, but really, it hasn’t been all that hard either—thanks to cohousing. So what is it that makes cohousing such a good place to harbor foster children? Quite simply, it’s the neighbors—both young and old— and the trust and concern that cohousing offers. Besides the babysitting support and meals, our adult neighbors are there to listen when we need to blow off steam about our crazy new lives and to offer advice REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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when we ask.And the children just opened their arms and welcomed Daniel and Katrina in, taping a big welcome banner on our front door the very first night. We knew we had to establish boundaries early. I’m a stern individual so this comes naturally to me, but it was a sort of hell for Daniel and Katrina to have to adjust themselves to a whole new family culture. Cohousing helped.They could see firsthand how other parents set boundaries.They learned that many adults were looking after them and wouldn’t hesitate to show interest in them while reinforcing the boundaries we were setting. They learned that many families in cohousing had no televisions or limited television watching in ways they had never experienced.While they used to boast—to my horror—about how many R-rated movies they had seen, Katrina now points to the new-release shelf at the video store and says,“That wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Just one egg on Easter morning PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KOURÉ

It was only a few days after their arrival before Daniel abandoned his Game Boy in favor of playing with his new brothers and their friends. He soon realized that homework was something he could get help on from all the children in the neighborhood.And within a few weeks, we had established enough trust to give them the freedom of running freely around the community and within the common house, knowing that many caring eyes were helping us watch them. When we didn’t have the time or energy to drive Daniel and Katrina to activities that we knew would be good for them, we quickly found G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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parents of children with similar interests to help us.When Daniel outgrew his major behavioral problems, he blossomed into a mad scientistinventor.We were exasperated at the idea of setting aside time in our busy schedules to first help him build a bridge, then a go-cart, then a hovercraft.We didn’t want to stifle his creativity, but he was driving us crazy with his projects.We turned to neighbor, friend, and inventor John Fabel and he was glad to step in as a helper and mentor.The hovercraft was actually built! Five months into their stay with us, it became clear that Daniel and Katrina would not be reunited with their mom before summer.We were really worried and agonized for weeks over how we could care for them in the summer months while working full-time. Could we afford summer camps for four? Would we begin to resent the commitment and their presence in our home if we had to scale back our expectations for nice, relaxing summer family time? Could we live with ourselves if we passed them on like a load of dirty laundry? Truthfully, we missed our own children and our relatively flexible family of four. Again, we turned to the community and found the help we needed. Associate community members, Epi and Charlie Bodhi, living across town, wanted to live on campus this summer and agreed to stay in our house with Daniel and Katrina while the rest of us went on our longanticipated trip to Alaska. It was hard to explain to Daniel and Katrina why we weren’t taking them with us, but it was better than bumping them to another home (DSS could find no other homes in Amherst). Once Epi and Charlie agreed to this, they talked us back into it when we hesitated—they were really excited to be able to help and to get the opportunity to raise kids in cohousing, if only for two weeks. Another neighbor agreed to watch Daniel and Katrina on the weekdays that we hadn’t already set up camp. Everyone knew it would be damaging to bump them to another foster home. Our community had come to love our foster children and didn’t hesitate to say,“What can we do to help so you can keep them in the community for the summer?” They gave us the opportunity to take a much-needed break, and enough support to carry on after that. Halfway through the summer, reunification with their mother began. It had been months since Daniel and Katrina had screamed at us, thrown tantrums on the floor, attempted to run away, or even said that they hated living with us.They wrote us love notes and said that they wished REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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their mother could live in the community. It scared the children that they might lose us, but I think they worried even more about losing the community.They had heard about our fall kids’ day and retreat and they asked me almost daily if they would still be here for the next one.We had established a working relationship with their mom so I assured them that we would see them often and invite them to these events. But you learn quickly when foster parenting that there are no guarantees. Reunification with their mom was put on hold just before the next school year.What now? Our two-to-three month commitment was looking like a joke. Once again, neighbors stepped to the plate, primarily with Epi and Charlie offering regular weekend respite time for Daniel, who just needs more space and time than we can give him. While the tasks have been endless, and the sacrifices many, the rewards have outstripped them.We know we have done a good thing, not so much in bringing Daniel and Katrina into a safe, supportive home, but in sharing the wealth of our community with them.

The Sewing Lessons Julie Rodwell, Former Resident of Winslow, Bainbridge Island, Washington One day, my neighbor Thérèse asked me if I could babysit her four-yearold daughter, Nina, for an afternoon. I readily agreed and then began to rack my brains as to how I’d kept a four-year-old occupied when my own daughter, now sixteen, was little.Apart from getting to watch Toy Story—not something I would have rented for myself at the video store—this babysitting session miraculously opened a completely new chapter in my life as a cohouser. After the movie, I got out my sewing machine, my fabric supply, and my ribbons and lace. Nina and I designed, sewed, and stuffed a little, frilled pillow, which she proudly took home. Next weekend, there was Nina, tugging at my sleeve with two friends in tow.“Can we have another ‘sewing lesson’?” she asked. So that’s how it began.About once a month, I would post a sign in the common house saying “Sewing lesson at Julie’s, Saturday afternoon from 2:00 to 3:30.” Sometimes I had as many as nine kids, ages four to ten, in G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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my tiny bedroom. I kept all my supplies in two huge plastic bins and out it all came on my bed.The children each had very particular ideas of what they wanted to make. One day, Emily, wanted to make a stuffed cat. I asked her if she could draw a pattern and she said,“My dad does ‘connect the dots.’” She meant that I was to sketch a cat outline for her with dots and then she would fill it in.That became her pattern for a splendid stuffed cat in red plaid. Most legs were too short to reach the foot pedal on the sewing machine, and some kids were a bit intimidated by it, so they sat on my lap and pushed the fabric through while I pedaled, or else stood beside me and pedaled while I handled the fabric—an exercise in teamwork and coordination. Each kid had to wait for a turn with me at the sewing machine, and in between they were sorting fabric, drawing paper patterns, cutting out, stuffing pillows, trimming stray threads, and helping each other. Over a period of several years, they made doll blankets, pillows, drawstring bags, clothes for themselves, clothes for dolls, stuffed animals, and anything else they could dream up. One October,Theora and I made a Halloween witch out of fabric and pipe cleaners. One February, we all made frilly, heart-shaped pillows for our moms that had a little pocket on the front in which to put a love note. Mostly it was girls who turned up, but sometimes boys too. I knew this had paid off as a lasting experience for these kids when one day Samantha came up to me and said,“Julie, Julie, guess what? My dad has got out his sewing machine and we’re doing projects together!”

John’s Offer Jane Saks, New View, Acton, Massachusetts In cohousing, members share a lot.We give each other many things— some requested, some spontaneous—smiles, rides, warm and healthy meals, outgrown clothes and bikes, hugs. But a kidney? The barter system: Matt needs a keyboard. Judy has an extra one. Judy gives it to Matt because Judy trusts that when she needs something in the future, Matt or someone else will supply it.That’s what friends do for each other.They trade in future currency. In cohousing, it is no different. However, with strong connections, REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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more trust, and a bigger network, sometimes the items traded are more substantial. Stan’s kidneys aren’t working at all. John has an extra one— as does everyone—in a healthy body, so he decides to share it. It has even greater value to Stan. Their announcement of this fact was presented to the community in an understated fashion:“We’re planning to have some surgeons move one kidney from John to Stan.”The procedure was in reality much more complex than that. Both men had to have a variety of tests. Stan had to have his body made medically ready for the procedure over the course of many weeks.The transfer entailed major abdominal surgery for both of them, with some risks and some pain involved—and a lot of waiting. John said he made the offer in order to make a difference in Stan’s life. John didn’t want to be thought of as a hero, but to many of us, he was. Stan also seemed very relaxed about the upcoming surgery. I privately wondered if each of their wives was so blasé. New View has a Process Committee. Its role is to facilitate communication and step in when things go wrong and to strengthen connections when things are going right.As a member of the Process Committee and someone who relishes ceremonies, I wondered if we should hold some sort of event to wish them luck.As a psychologist, facilitator, and organizational consultant, I wondered how a less-than-successful surgical outcome might affect the community.As an individual who is pretty protective of her body parts, I wondered if I could be so brave. The Process Committee asked if the four players might be interested in such an event.The response was positive and enthusiastic. Each was interviewed to determine what they would find helpful.The event was designed as part sharing of information hopes, concerns, and requests for support, and part ceremony and blessing.The event was held for the entire community of more than twenty-four households and friends of New View.The goals were to share feelings and give each of the four key players any support they might need. The event was well received and appreciated by all. In the end, Stan’s body was never able to tolerate the surgery and accept the kidney.Yet, the meetings were still effective at opening a new type of conversation and allowing community members to rally around four people who were offering to share themselves.The event meant a great deal to each of the four players.“I have a great feeling of warmth and support from the whole community,” said several of them. G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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John’s wife still keeps the affirmation cards by her bed for whenever she needs a lift.“They remind me of what is good in me, the community, and the world.We should all receive such affirmations from each other often.This would be great for anyone, in cohousing or anywhere,” she said.

Burning Souls, Founders, and Maintainers: The Evolution of Muir Commons Rick Mockler, Muir Commons, Davis, California Rick is the current president of the Cohousing Association of the United States. He’s become so immersed in the aims of cohousing that he left a job he loved to become a cohousing promoter. In this piece, he delves into the history and sociology of his own neighborhood, analyzing what makes cohousing “tick.” —D. W.

Looking back now on the invasion of Muir Commons, I realize that I aided the little barbarians at a critical moment. Standing three feet tall with their dimples and colorful sun hats, they looked innocent enough, but they only fooled a few of us.Toddling, triking, and scootering their way down the central path, the hoard of pint-sized invaders permanently changed the community, and every community founder knew it. The founders had been there five years when we bought a house in August of 1996. My wife and I had a twenty-two-month-old daughter and we were enchanted with the place: native plants and grasses along walking paths, a small orchard and edible landscaping of peaches, cherries, kiwi, figs, almonds, grapes, and pomegranates, plus an organic garden. Located in the town of Davis, near Sacramento, California, it was a parent’s dream: a safe, nurturing environment with great schools nearby and lots of playmates on-site. What we didn’t realize was how the place we fell in love with was also in transition.Today, twelve years after move-in, only five of the original twenty-six founding households still live in the community.Although many cohousing communities are still too young to see it yet, even utopia evolves and changes. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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As the first developed cohousing community in the United States, Muir Commons has hosted visitors from around the world, showcasing our site plan, architecture, and operations. Less examined, however, is the evolution of our social community over time. Like the hothouse labs on the nearby University of California at Davis campus, Muir Commons has offered lessons for cohousers in the transition from community creation to long-term maintenance.

Photovoltaic panels on the common house— a solar legacy of the original “burning souls” of Muir Commons PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ERIC WAHL

Hard-Driving Entrepreneurs Something about Northern California encourages experimentation with social forms: we have a record number of intentional communities and a business sector that routinely spawns new technology companies. Although entrepreneurs regularly take new ideas, start up companies, then build and sell them, it took me a while to realize that this was also happening at Muir Commons.The social entrepreneurs who founded our community were moving on and a second generation of maintainers were replacing them. In the language of the cohousing movement, those entrepreneurs were the burning souls: their passion enabled the community to grow from dream to reality. For years after I moved in, I heard from old-timers G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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about the intensity of the early days—all the meetings, negotiation, and work. I assumed it was simply a necessary burden, but to founders such as Mary Menconi, who lived in the community for four years, the planning time was the fun part. Menconi, an environmental scientist for the California Environmental Protection Agency, loved “watching the idea take shape” and waxes on about the way “people behaved wonderfully toward one another” throughout the planning. David Hungerford was a doctoral student who moved on shortly after Menconi and concurs with her.Along with many of the founders, he reveled in the chance to plan and build a home and community. He describes himself and other founders as countercultural, self-sufficient, and very hardworking, perhaps even driven—type A hippies. For the core founders, the fact that cohousing had never before been built in the United States only added to its appeal.The founders tended to be very confident, mostly thirtysomethings, many of whom were working on their doctorates in environmental and related sciences. Throwing themselves into creating Muir Commons with the passion of a local biotech start-up, every minute was spent planning, designing, researching environmental construction, or lobbying the city council. At Muir Commons, the founders even did the landscaping themselves. Resident work crews dug, planted, and laid irrigation pipe for common areas and then began fences, patios, and plantings for their private yards.When they finished the landscaping, they quickly followed with building projects: a woodworking shop, bike sheds, and trellises. By the time the hot tub was completed in the fourth year, the founders who most needed it were already moving out. Jane McKendry, a single mother with two teenage daughters when she moved in and one of the few founders still living at Muir Commons, describes her relief the first time people didn’t jump up immediately after a common meal to return to work.“But then I realized I was sitting at a table of newcomers, not founders,” she says. Mariabruna Sirabella, who moved out after five years to remarry and live in Santa Cruz, describes the workload as “brutal.” Doing the work themselves was about more than saving money—it was a principle. Menconi describes the value of shared work as a means of promoting community.At the same time, however, she recalls her relief the first weekend she was off work-crew duty. Those of us in the second generation of Muir Commoners are easier REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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on ourselves and very open to hiring out chores—landscaping duties, common-house cleaning, building maintenance, you name it. Community General Meetings have been reduced from twice monthly to monthly and the only person who still considers them mandatory is a founder. We’re less purist today, but we’re also more likely to stick around. Half of us in the second generation have already stayed longer than most of the founders.

A peaceful afternoon in Harmony Village PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JACK LENZO

Perfectionism ran rampant in the early days. One resident caught resistance during design approval of a moderate-sized back patio because “it would cover up more earth.”This is a classic first-generation issue—it probably wouldn’t occur in Muir Commoners today. Nearly 80 percent of the founders grew up as firstborn or only children, a remarkable number that has moderated a bit over time.Another moderating influence, the influx of children, has distracted many of the type A personalities. Of course, with trees and shrubs grown in, we’re also less likely to notice or care about every detail in our neighbors’ yards. Experts in their respective fields, the core founders believed they G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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could figure almost anything out by themselves, a valuable if unrealistic trait. In describing their installation of a complex, sitewide irrigation system, founder Russ Fulk says with a grin,“We often didn’t know what we were doing.” Over time, this has mellowed.While the current group continues to boast plenty of talent, members today come from disciplines less inclined to charge ahead on their own: health, management, law, and teaching, for example. Nevertheless, the hardheadedness of the founders was essential. For every successful cohousing project around the country, there are a halfdozen that never make it past the potluck stage.The founders faced neighbor opposition, financing obstacles, and developer-assigned architects who hardly grasped the concept.Today, a cottage industry of cohousing professionals assist groups in the development process, but back then, people were figuring it out as they went along.As with many successful entrepreneurs, however, the very drive that enabled the founders to succeed may have doomed their chances of settling down and living in the community long-term. “Softer, a bit messier, and less sanitized,” is how Sirabella describes the community today, compared to when she lived there. She assures me that this is a compliment and notes the presence of children’s toys around the grounds as offering a lived-in feel.

Robert and Lianna’s favorite collections PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MARGARET GRAHAM

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Barbarians at the Gate Lots of good reasons are given for people moving on: growing families needing more space, people with new Ph.D.s leaving town for jobs, marriages to partners less enthralled with cohousing, and so forth.While it’s normal turnover for a college town, I just didn’t expect this kind of transience in a group where people obviously appreciated each others’ efforts to create something together. There were often deeper issues around vision and unmet needs.The competing visions might be described as ecotopian, quasi-intentional, spiritual, and family friendly.The ecotopian vision was of a community in tune with nature, using green-building materials, solar orientation, and organic and healthy food. Socially, while the group agreed it was not an “intentional community,” some founders were seeking something I’ll call quasi-intentional—especially deep and nurturing relationships if not a shared belief system.A handful was also hoping for a spiritual dimension, whether through yoga or some other discipline. Meanwhile, parents were looking for a safe and supportive environment for growing children.The success or failure of these visions has influenced who has left and who’s replaced them. While everyone seemed to embrace an environmental vision, there were many variations. Before the project was even completed, for example, some left because they were uncomfortable with the use of nonnatural building materials.While some founders envisioned all organic matter from pruning and leaves being shredded and composted on-site, that hasn’t happened. On the other hand, tight budgets sometimes aided the ecotopian agenda, such as construction without airconditioning or garbage disposals so as to conserve energy and encourage food composting. Over time, the community has added the solar panels that it couldn’t initially afford, but many have also added air-conditioning.We continue composting, but the vision of a large garden producing food for common meals has been trimmed back by more than half, giving way to a ping-pong table and fire pit.And the notion of banning the use of plastic in the neighborhood? You can’t navigate our main path today without dodging a Big Wheel or some other plastic, peddled plaything. The most frustrated founders were those seeking a closely bonded, quasi-intentional community and those envisioning a spiritual element. G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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Perhaps it was the intensity of all the business meetings and work crews, but the spiritual side never really came to fruition. In one telltale sign after move-in, Menconi recounts residents beginning to describe themselves as a “neighborhood” instead of a “community.”There have been efforts over the years to initiate more personal sharing, such as a women’s dream-discussion group and a dads’ group, but they haven’t gone anywhere. Perhaps they were just a bit too revealing for people that still value privacy. Our common house is a hub of activity, but the occasional classes in yoga, spirituality, and nonviolent communication are attended by only a handful of residents together with friends from the outside.

Nadine Lightburn reads to her husband, John, who’s legally blind but is still active in the garden, attends common meals, and participates in community governance.

According to Hungerford, Muir Commons was designed for children from the beginning, even if all the founders didn’t realize it. Complementing the community design, an elementary school was soon built across the street, along with a greenbelt and playground nearby, and eventually soccer fields and a swimming pool a couple blocks away. Outside families soon began discovering the safety and appeal of Muir Commons and competed for homes coming up for sale. Meanwhile, founders who had never before lived so close to children were beginning to have their intergenerational ideals tested. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Rhonda David handles inquiries from potential buyers and recalls community members suggesting that she discourage additional families with children so as to keep a balance between families and childless adults, but owners are free to sell to whomever they please and the market was clearly favoring young families. Another strategy was to create quiet areas for peaceful dining and sitting, but the decibel levels kept rising. Today, there are thirty-four children at Muir Commons, compared to twenty-four at move-in. I don’t know when the tipping point occurred exactly, but I’m guessing it was the year we moved in. Little things that parents view as learning experiences drove some of the childless adults crazy—picking wildflowers or fresh asparagus without permission, for example. One adult became so angry that she threatened to block a minor reprogramming of the site plan: the community had been offered an old play structure from a nearby school, but accepting it would exceed the designated children’s play area by three feet, cutting slightly into the then-generous garden area.The community accepted the gift, but the tension was obvious. One family at the center of this tension was the Hungerfords, who had children ages thirteen, ten, and seven. David and Jennifer increasingly found themselves negotiating with certain adults who liked children in principle, but subscribed to the “better seen and not heard” approach. Tension mounted until the Super Bowl of 1996, when organizers of a party in the common house announced that the event was for adults only.They weren’t simply corralling rambunctious preschoolers, but excluding all youth, period.As David Hungerford pointed out, his older sons were avid football fans and would be watching the game more closely than most of the adults. It was a little thing, but for the Hungerfords, it was the last straw, and they soon put their house up for sale. The Hungerfords were succeeded by a stream of young families, including ours. Shortly after our move-in, the Super Bowl party organizers sold their house and moved on.The little barbarians had conquered.

Reconciling Vision with Reality People attracted to cohousing are big on the vision thing, according to Ellen Orleans, the community-building coordinator for Wonderland Hill, a cohousing-development company based in Boulder, Colorado. Employing G E T T I N G S TA R T E D

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the Myers-Briggs type indicator on incoming residents,Wonderland has found cohousers to be off the charts in their “intuitive” orientation, a visionary category scarce in the general population but abundant among cohousers. Part of the challenge of cohousing is reconciling our grand vision with reality.When discussing utopia over flip-chart sessions, the future holds infinite possibility. Later on, design “charettes” (brainstorming sessions) and development budgets help clarify things a bit, but, after move-in, cohousing really comes into focus. Some folks realize that what they had hoped for isn’t going to happen. Meanwhile, outside visitors fall in love with a neighborhood that before had seemed too abstract. Moving in during the second generation as we did, you have the advantage of knowing exactly what you’re getting. Sometimes cohousers’ idealism just doesn’t mesh with reality.We share European cohousing’s distaste for cars, for example, and have located parking lots on the periphery of the community.The theory, which some Muir Commoners still espouse in principle if not practice, is that this encourages us to walk through the community, creating spontaneous interaction along the way. In practice, many residents have abandoned the parking lot to compete for street parking when it offers a shorter walk to their front door. Another example is the common meal menu. Everyone today accepts that meat will be served in the common house—the strident vegetarians have moved on.While we have clear guidelines on everything from chores to organics, we also accept that they will be disregarded from time to time.We don’t necessarily like it, but we deal with it. This willingness to accommodate comes more easily for some than others and reflects another aspect of our evolution: the personal growth and transformation of individual community members. Founders have recounted to me new skills they’ve learned—ranging from horticulture and woodworking to running a meeting—but they’ve also emphasized how they have learned to truly listen to others, to negotiate, and to trust the larger wisdom of the group.Those that have moved on speak wistfully of their time at Muir Commons and express a sense of a loss in their leaving.

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Transitions in Utopia While the turnover at Muir Commons is no greater than at other neighborhoods (about one-seventh of the American population moves every year), it still creates challenges. For departing families, departures have often been difficult for younger children. Mariabruna’s daughter, Gaia, was nine when she moved out with her mother and describes the experience as wrenching. She had lived in the community for five years and viewed the other kids as siblings. By the time they hit teenage years, however, kids’ interests and peer groups expand enough that the transition is smoother. For adults, the men have more often been the more reluctant partner to leave, seemingly because women are more inclined to develop additional social networks outside of cohousing. Given the small size of the homes at Muir Commons, it is actually remarkable that so many growing families have chosen to stay. Our 800and 1,180-square-foot homes might work for European cohousing, but they’re challenging for middle-class Americans with growing kids. City zoning constraints limit most additions to 370 square feet and remodels typically involve tearing off an entire wall and extending both the first and second floors, a costly and chaotic project with a modest payoff in new space. Nevertheless, five families have already done it and several more are developing plans.

Pioneer Village sunroom PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

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Every fall, our community celebrates its founding and remembers residents who have come and gone.We just held our twelfth anniversary weekend with a “bounce house,” games, and petting zoo for kids; a potluck with community neighbors and outside friends; an art show displaying local talent; and a candlelit dinner just for Muir Commoners. With the little barbarians being watched by babysitters, the adults reflected on our time together over upscale Chinese food and offered toasts for the burning souls who founded our community.We offered thanks for their building the community and then for moving out and selling us their homes! From the moment I moved into Muir Commons with my family, frankly, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.As a second-generation community member, however, I’m well aware that someday that could change—I don’t know what the community’s future holds, even as I delight in its life and evolution. If and when we move on, I’ll be grateful to have been part of a neighborhood where I’ll actually be missed when I leave.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MARGARET GRAHAM

CHAPTER SIX:

M OV I N G I N A N D M OV I N G O N Writes Trillium Hollow member Charles Maclean, “Few decisions affect the course of an individual’s or family’s life as profoundly as the decision to live in cohousing. Each new member significantly affects every other member.” And Rick Mockler of Muir Commons comments, “For every successful cohousing project around the country, there are a half-dozen that never make it past the potluck stage.” I’ll never forget my own final decision to live in cohousing. At a meeting with five other households, I decided to take a chance and commit several thousand dollars toward the purchase of the tenacre property that would become Harmony Village. The $300,000 price tag seemed like quite a gamble, since we didn’t yet have a guarantee from city government that the land could be developed. But we doggedly jumped through many planning and financial “hoops” and the dream began to take shape. As my house was being built, I kept sneaking out to the construction site after hours. I’d park my car next to one of the construction Dumpsters, chancing a flat tire from a bent nail in order to pull right up to the house. I knew there was a liability issue and that I wasn’t really supposed to be on-site, but I couldn’t help it. Looking out through those newly framed doors and windows

and climbing the roughed-in stairs as if I was climbing the mast of a sailing ship, I began to imagine what it would soon be like to live in this rural-feeling neighborhood adjacent to hundreds of acres of undeveloped open land that cut through Jefferson County like a belt of green (or, actually, brownish green in Colorado). At Harmony, the first image that really struck me was the remains of a deer carcass found right up near Illinois Street. Brown fur and a few white bones were the only leftovers from a mountain lion banquet. I loved the range of open space that connected Golden’s Table Mesa with the adjacent town’s Dinosaur Park and beyond. And I loved the proposed location of the garden, with its incredible vistas in all directions—Castle Rock Butte to the east; Lookout Mountain to the west; glimpses of the Flatirons in Boulder County to the north; and a shiny silver silo in the south that spoke of former dairy farming days.

Visitors to Harmony Village

Looking out under the moonlight from the second story of my nearly completed house, I caught sight of a cluster of coyotes foraging for mice just thirty yards away. A few minutes later, I heard them yipping for the first time—they must have gotten lucky. When I came out to the house the following week, five or six other future Harmony Villagers happened to be there too, scouting out the progress. We stood in front of Building One, looking over toward Jim Donahue’s house. Suddenly, we felt a living presence REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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behind us. Like a still, white kite, a great horned owl swooped directly over our heads and perched on Jim’s rooftop as if she was about to deliver a lecture. She looked at us wide-eyed for two or three minutes, shifting her weight from foot to foot, craning her neck—as if asking for our IDs—and ever-so-silently scolding us for making such a mess out of her hunting territory. —D. W.

Through the Looking Glass PattyMara Gourley, Tierra Nueva Cohousing, Oceano, California PattyMara Gourley kept a journal as her family moved into Tierra Nueva Cohousing, located on the central coast of California. She shared her thoughts, feelings, and observations with a national audience of e-mail Listserv subscribers, who received her postings with great interest. What great energy and aesthetic flair she has! Many cohousers find her transparent comments about moving in very similar to their own experiences. Like me, she seems to have concluded that when it comes to housekeeping, perfection is neither necessary nor possible. The Looking Glass Series, excerpted here, was printed in both Cohousing Magazine and Communities magazine. —D. W.

Month One August 3, 1998 Dear cohousing Listserv and friends, In a most celebratory mood, I am happy to announce that our escrow closed and was recorded Friday, July 31, just in the nick of time to avoid the dreaded capital gains tax. Needless to say, champagne and chocolate was plentiful on Friday night as we gathered to celebrate a ten-year journey for the group and seven years of participation by my family. We toasted and danced while a gang of coho kids played hide-and-seek outside in the twilight under a half-moon. Within the next four weeks, the other five families of phase one MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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will be closing their escrows and moving in as well, while construction steams ahead on the remaining twenty-one homes. My family will begin moving in within a few weeks and will experience living in a construction zone during the day, while enjoying the relative quiet at night as the only residents (for a limited time) on our five-acre site. I would like to submit short journal musings to the Listserv as my family steps through the looking glass and transitions into community living. I hope to continue this story until the end of the year, and possibly longer if energy permits. I can promise irregular entries that will offer a candid view of both the pros and cons of this crazy venture. I will begin with this observation: all through the design phase, my family participated in designing the three-bedroom units. As time went on and cost estimates ballooned, we found ourselves priced out, along with a few other families. As a response to our dilemma, a budget three-bedroom unit—with a narrower lot and smaller square footage—was created. This new design was affordable and we felt it worth the compromise to be able to stay in the community. Nonetheless, for me, this unit design has never seemed to be “mine.” However, when we gathered at our newly purchased home last night and began to uncork the champagne, I noticed a shift in my perception. As I looked around the room and saw my friends raising their glasses in a welcome home toast, I began to experience the alchemy of community in a new way. The architecture, with all its glitches and compromises and inadequacies, really did become less important than the energy of extended family that filled the room. I finally began to feel a tiny glimmer of hope that this condo could become a nourishing home for my family. Hopefully, this glimmer will grow. We’ll see. PattyMara Gourley

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August 5, 1998 Dear List, While our new home becomes less of a construction site, the surrounding homes are still very much under construction. Workers are hooking up hoses to our water spigot and plugs into our outdoor outlets. Both water and electricity are now under our name, so I am finding myself becoming oddly territorial. I ask workers, politely, to hook up to construction faucets and poles instead of ours and wonder what is happening to me? Before, when we would all wander through each other’s houses as they were being framed and roofed and drywalled, it was effortless and joyful. Now when I see families with kids going up and down our stairs, I find myself worrying about the sand on the new carpet and the fingerprints on the Navajo-white walls. This is not a comfortable feeling. These people are my friends, the kids part of my extended family, and I’m “angsting” over carpet and fingerprints? What is happening to me? Another fear: I am an artist who spends much more time in my studio (making a joyful mess of my own) than housecleaning my house. You could say that our current house has a relaxed feel to it, and I usually vacuum only when it’s our turn to host the potluck (not that often). So here we are, moving into a pristine condo, with the above-mentioned white walls, new flooring, and sparkling appliances. All the other houses will have the same white walls, new flooring, and sparkling appliances. My fear is that when everyone moves in within the next few months, it will become painfully obvious that ours is a family of slobs. And every time I visit a friend, who most likely will have small children and can still manage to keep that damn Amana sparkling white, I will notice the difference. Worse, everyone who comes to visit me will notice the difference. True, we will be rapidly making changes all over our homes with our individual styles, furnishings, paint color choices (our walls won’t be white for much longer), and perhaps the general maintenance will become less obvious. I probably won’t change my lifestyle to incorporate more housecleaning and less creative time in my studio, so it will have to become okay with me to not notice the differences and not worry about anyone else noticing either. The latest troubling discovery of my husband’s is that our MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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garages are built so that it is physically impossible to turn into them with one clean sweep of a turn. He is doing two- and three-point turns to get into our garage, and once in, there is so little clearance that he has to walk sideways to get out. And it’s empty now. What will it be like when we start filling it up with our stuff? PattyMara Gourley Tierra Nueva Cohousing, where the wolf is in the common house kitchen, with its splendid red knobs, surrounded by more than 100 hand-painted tiles. August 23, 1998 Hello List, I’m writing from the chaos of packing and moving. Tomorrow, the big moving truck will arrive to move us into our cohousing home. We’ll share a cell phone with our coho neighbors who moved in last week. And for a week, we’ll be the only two families on-site. Work has ground to a halt on the common house because moisture tests of the concrete slab have indicated that the slab is too damp (mysteriously so, since it was poured last fall) to lay the parquet flooring. Our flooring subcontractor refuses to warranty the parquet if it is installed on damp concrete, so the common house remains off-limits to us. So frustrating. Hopefully a solution will be hammered out and we can move on and in. Looking forward to watching the stars transit our new windows tomorrow night. My next post will be from the construction site by day, cohousing community by night. Cheers, PattyMara Gourley

Month Three October 12, 1998 Dear List, At long last, I have the time, energy, and clarity to continue writing about my recent move into Tierra Nueva. We’ve been here since August 22, about seven weeks. For the first four weeks, nobody had telephone service. Never have the phone installers been so warmly greeted than when they finally arrived to pull cable REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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and splice it for service for the four families living here. At this point, there are six families in residence. Our wet-slab issue that ground us to a halt until we made some flooring changes is now mostly resolved. We investigated dehumidifiers, sealers, and other flooring options and gave members their choice of solutions. At this time, the parquet wood floor in the common house has been replaced with tile and we’ll be doing the final walk-through in a couple of days. Not having access to our common house has been a cruel joke for those of us who have made the commitment to downsize our possessions and use common house facilities, such as the laundry room. But more importantly, it has been like we’ve been cut off from our heart center. For a time, the families living here were fenced out of the common house and the surrounding construction due to a liability issue with our contractor. Gradually, the fences have been coming down and soon enough the common house will be ours. To compensate for the lack of common cooking and dining, we formed a dinner club for all families in residence plus community members living within walking distance. It has been a joyful experiment. We decided that each family, on their chosen night (we average two, sometimes three nights per week), do all the planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning for everyone. It has been challenging for some to get the timing and quantity right, but for others it has been very successful. Living here has been wonderful. Most of my fears about housecleaning have dissolved. Yes, keeping my white Amana stove clean is challenging, but no one seems to be keeping score on who scrubs the burners to keep them shining. Some of the families are living on concrete floors until their slab dries and that makes for some interesting decor. All of us have boxes, overflow stuff, and assorted yard junk that seems to have nowhere yet to go, and nobody has begun landscaping. So it is a joyful jumble in our yards. We have had glorious weather so the evenings are still warm enough to eat outdoors. If one family is heading over to the pier to buy fresh fish off the boats, we all pitch in and buy together, then barbecue in one of our yards and eat communally. All of our outdoor tables are gathered together in one yard or another (this week, they are all in our yard) for the community MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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potlucks and fire circles. This is the nugget of my heart’s desire—to share food prep and eating together and sitting around a campfire— and it has been coming true over and over during the past seven weeks. We’ve begun discussing the hot topics of fences and pets. It is most interesting to see the differences of opinions being expressed by folks who live here and by those who don’t yet. Those who don’t live here seem to want to defend a nebulous cohousing ideal of no fences. Those who do live here are faced with the reality of pet and toddler needs, not to mention the need to hide outdoor stuff, such as recycling bins, garbage cans, wood piles, barbecues, bikes, and so forth. And then there is the whole issue of private outdoor space that those of us who live here know is of such great importance. So the discussions are ongoing and the Fence Committee has been unable to get the group’s consensus on a process for three meetings now. I am delighted by the transformations I see in our kids. Our son, Alex, now the oldest kid in our community (age fourteen) since his big sister left for college three weeks ago, has rejoined the human community and actually leaves his room and computer to play outside with the younger kids. They spend hours on the trampoline, the hammocks, and the continually changing ziplines and bike trails. The kids have taken over the lower orchard (a mature avocado grove) as their adventure playground. When kids of community members who don’t live here yet come over, they simply refuse to leave, it is so much fun to be here. Lots of communal child care is emerging, as well as shared creative ventures and trips to the beach, the dunes, and the movies. I hardly miss my lovely, old redwood cottage. Somehow, this condo, with all of its design compromises and construction glitches, has won my heart. The tiny kitchen with the addition of a custom pantry and a wonderful butcher-block cart works great. It’s kind of like living on a boat (which I have done) and I like it so much, I keep on inviting friends over for dinners every weekend. The walls are less white as I slowly paint and put up art. And once we got the knack of closing windows at night, we have begun to enjoy the benefits of passive solar heating. I’m off to bake a three-tiered cake for one of our community REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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members, who is celebrating her seventieth birthday tomorrow. Warmly, PattyMara Gourley October 23, 1998 Dear List, After eight weeks in residence here at Tierra Nueva, big lessons about living in community are bubbling up to the surface. When a new household arrives, we’ve established the pattern of cooking dinner for him/her/them during the moving chaos. A sort of welcome-home, put-your-feet-up-for-a-minute-and-relax gesture. This past week, three of us planned a dinner for two households, and since none of us had room to seat fifteen people in our individual homes, we naturally decided to use the upper deck of the common house. I made a point to invite the other residents so there would be no sense of exclusion. On the evening of the dinner, a committee meeting of several members took place on the lower deck of the common house. Some of these folks were residents; others were not. When they saw us making preparations to eat, they got ready for another wonderful meal together. To further complicate the situation, one of the residents, who we had invited earlier, arrived with her plate and silverware and announced to the committee, “There’s a dinner group tonight. Where are we eating?” We called her upstairs and up comes some of the committee, ready to eat. I was faced with the dilemma of telling the truth—we had prepared enough food for fifteen—or keeping quiet, trusting in the miracle of the loaves and fishes that there would be enough for all. I chose to tell the truth. One of the nonresident committee members turned around and went home, hurt and angry. Another stayed so that we could process what had happened and discuss the larger issue of when events occur in the common house, are they always open to everyone? We ended up encouraging the nonresidents to stay and eat with us after calling up the one who walked home. We had a good meal together, there was enough food for all, and the two new households felt welcomed. I realize that this is all part of the boundary work that seems to be one of my life issues. I tend to feel responsible for everyone’s MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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sense of belonging. I hope to learn how to set better boundaries and not feel the obligation to include everyone all the time. With clear communication, I hope that any of us can plan a meal or event that can be for some of us and not have hurt feelings from those of us not included. I wonder how other groups have responded to these issues? What kind of common house usage occurs at other cohousing communities and what policies seem to work for you? And how do you throw a private party in the midst of community? PattyMara Gourley Tierra Nueva Cohousing, where we are packing up for our seventh annual Big Sur campout up the coast. Hoping for clear skies and warm water at Sand Dollar Beach and long hours around the campfire under the stars.

Month Four November 23, 1998 Hello List and friends, Life is becoming less surreal for me as the reality of living here fills my life. There are now twelve households in residence. The common house is finally officially ours and we are no longer locked out by the contractors every night. Our dinner group is transforming into cooking teams and we are experimenting with cooking, serving, and accounting options. We figure we’ll try everything until something feels right. The stresses of moving in have revealed themselves in the disguise of the pet issue. It seems to happen in every community— we were warned and prepared for it to come up, and come up it did. Of the community members who are hot on the issue, there are the ones who have ’em and the ones who don’t. Dogs in particular are getting the bad rap, especially the ones who aren’t leashed. Feelings are running very deep. Old-time members are feeling personally hurt when their dogs are criticized or expected to conform to blanket rules. So we have decided to have a retreat next Sunday. Hopefully, we’ll use the process skills we’ve been practicing for so long to craft a win-win policy. Another hot issue is kids in the common house. We have a REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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sitting room next to our large dining room, as well as a library, living room, and adult room. The families with small children are raising the issue that to designate a room for adults only is not only restrictive to the parents of toddlers but also discriminates against children. We have not officially designated this room as adult-only, but some adults wish for it to be so. After a circle check at our last business meeting, we came up with a nifty win-win: the room will be called the Quiet Room and use of it will not be determined by age but by behavior. So story time around the fire, discussion groups, board games, cards, quiet reading, and even sing-alongs are encouraged, but when it revs up to rowdy, there’s our game room, kids room, mezzanine, and outdoor decks to spill into. Because we couldn’t decide on one day to celebrate the turkey holiday, we’ve come up with two feasts in order to accommodate different travel schedules and family commitments and give a chance for everyone to be present. Thanksgiving will be on Thursday and Giving Thanks on Saturday. I hope we can find time and uninhibited energy to dance up a storm at both gatherings. Dancing together is one activity that seems to plunge Tierra Nuevans into shyness so I hope to facilitate a loosening up and a general encouragement to all ages to shake our collective bootie. I’ll let you know if I succeed. PattyMara Gourley

Month Five December 25, 1998 Dear Cohousing-L members and friends, I just watched the Christmas sun set into the Pacific dunes from our new deck. All throughout the site and along the creek this morning there were monarch butterflies everywhere enjoying the warmth. It is very quiet here—of the sixteen families who have moved into our homes, most have traveled elsewhere to be with parents or extended families. A couple of the singles shared Christmas dinner at a local restaurant out on the patio above the ocean. On-site, the aromas of roasting and barbecuing turkeys filled the air as families gathered in their individual homes to share private Christmas dinners. MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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We celebrated as a community last Saturday night at the first annual Weird Food Cafe Dinner Dance. And dance we did under a disco ball to the eclectic musical tastes of various community members, ranging from Manhattan Transfer to Ella Fitzgerald to Talking Heads. It was a raging success. Candlelight and a huge tree were the decorations and it transformed our common house into a magical yule garden. The food was served in courses in different parts of the common house all through the evening to encourage people to stay late and dance in between courses. One of our single senior members described the event as “the best party I’ve been to in twenty-five years!” We were there until 3:00 A.M. Amid all the holiday cheer, what “warts” could possibly be surfacing? For one, we’ve been dealing with the dreaded pet issue. We hired an outside group facilitator last month to help us begin the process and spent four hours in a good first effort. What seemed to emerge was the notion that not all pets in our project need to be controlled by the same rules. There was a resistance by a longtime member to leash her elderly dog, who spends most of his day following her around or riding with her in her car. Each of the dog owners gave a verbal commitment to the group regarding their particular pets and it seemed to work to create different “rules” for different pets. But it was just a beginning. And I sensed that not all was said out loud. What seems to be happening is a growing sense of separation between the longtime members and those who have joined more recently. I think the short-timers feel that us long-timers expect special treatment because we have suffered in the trenches so long to develop this crazy adventure. We are immersed in a convoluted history that seems to defy explanation or chronological order, despite our best efforts to communicate everything we’ve been through. I am hoping that this division will dissolve with time, but I do see it clearly as an issue that divides us now, particularly when a newcomer opens up discussion on anything that was decided long ago, for example, regarding the placement of the future workshop or the location of the garden and the play areas. These locations were decided years ago and house sites were chosen based on proximity to each of the above amenities. So when a relatively new member or a group of new members REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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wants to talk about changing basic site-plan locations, it raises a lot of concerns. For the time being, things are still being discussed in committees so I expect that the general meetings will heat up by the middle of January. I’ll keep you posted. Solstice and Christmas blessings to all of you, PattyMara Gourley

Month Eleven July 31, 1999 Dear friends, Tomorrow, my family will mark a one-year anniversary—our mortgage closed on July 31 last year. I began writing my Looking Glass journal about this time last year as well, so it feels timely to add a bit more tonight. It’s a balmy summer evening with a rosy sunset lighting the dunes. It is utterly quiet here since so many families are off camping or vacationing. Common house meals are attended by most everyone, but numbers are relatively small, fifteen to thirty diners instead of the usual thirty-five to fifty. A few months ago, we decided as a community to reduce the number of business meetings from weekly to twice a month. What a luxury after seven years of weekly meetings! The result has been more well-attended meetings with tighter facilitation and more information being reported from all the working committees. In addition to these business meetings, we have initiated a monthly Community Life gathering on the second Sunday of the month. We’ve had two of these gatherings with great success. One of the most delightful aspects of being here has been to watch our landscaping take root and grow. Our private yards are finding very individual expressions, ranging from low-maintenance sand to lush, wild gardens to traditional lawns and decks. The common landscaping is particularly stunning since we have two ornamental horticulturists who led us through planting a gorgeous variety of perennials and native plants. We have an extensive culinary and medicinal herb garden as well as an organic veggie garden complete with a bean tepee the kids can crawl under and two large corn spirals. It is amazing to watch the garden expand as more beds get tilled and planted by various members. Along the common walkMOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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ways, the sunflowers are towering more than eight feet tall. I’m no longer feeling the surreal, through-the-looking-glass feeling that I did last year. Instead, I’m becoming familiar with the new patterns of proximity and privacy that are forming. The shine of the new is slowly being burnished to a comfortable luster and it feels just right. Warmly, PattyMara Gourley

Year Five April 17, 2003 Dear List, How is life at Tierra Nueva different than I thought it would be? After nearly five years of living here in the presence of twenty-eight households, it is so much quieter than I thought possible … and more private. My neighbors respect my work time, my personal space. I have to go out and seek company. Before moving in, I worried about my standard of housecleaning. What would they think about my choices, which almost always veer more toward working in my (messy) studio than cleaning the stove or vacuuming? It is so not an issue. Nobody cares. Nobody’s checking. We still talk on the phone! I had thought our proximity would cut down on the phone chatting. Not so. We spend less time in the hot tub together. Who knew—after all those discussions in countless meetings about hot tub etiquette? PattyMara “Go-Figure” Gourley

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How Can We Forget Move-in? Sharon Villines, Takoma Village, District of Columbia In this piece, Sharon Villines describes the challenges of moving into the neighborhood you’ve helped design. In October of 1996, I was the first person to move into Harmony Village. It was a trial-bywind: gusts of wind from the foothills were so severe (more than eighty miles an hour) the night I moved in that a skylight blew out of my new house and my cat lost his mind. Four days later, he went out and got eaten by either coyotes or great horned owls leaving me on my own to deal with the mud, dust, and construction of a village-in-progress. —D. W.

Before cohousing, I had moved more than fifty times. I was a master mover. I planned, packed, and labeled. I marked my “open first” boxes. I hand-carried my most important items: book, pillow, flashlight, and computer. I called ahead to turn on all the utilities. But trust me on this: nothing prepares you for moving into cohousing. Prior moves won’t prepare you for the piles of emptied, brokendown cardboard boxes that the recyclers forget to pick up and the melting snow converts to mush as ten or fifteen or twenty of your newest friends unpack, and unpack, and unpack for months and months. Nor the traffic jams on the stairs as you move in because the elevator can’t be used since the inspector hasn’t shown up. Nor the exhaustion that alternates first with elation and then the realization that the work is really just beginning. When our phase-one people moved in, there were still guard dogs behind the fence that divided the unfinished units from the finished. Our common “green” was still a sea of mud that washed over the cement in the piazza, used by some of us to enter our new homes.The moving trucks had to play musical chairs with bulldozers to get near the houses. But we had no choice other than to move into semicompleted units. Most of us had been in temporary housing for months, some living with relatives for more than a year since our move-in was delayed several times. I had been living in a sleeping porch for three months. As we tried to unpack, workers were in and out of units hourly, fixing and refixing problems that had been noted in the preclosing MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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inspections: windows that didn’t open or close, missing outlet covers, missing water pressure, leaking pipes, no heat (it was December), slanted floors.The fire alarms in each unit had intense flashing lights and earsplitting sirens that we experienced at least once a day as workers hit wires or walls. Sometimes the sprinklers went off too, causing floods in kitchens and bedrooms. People in phase two were no longer unhappy about their late arrival, even the ones living with relatives.

Gillian on the construction site at the emerging Sunward community PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

Almost as daunting as new construction is a brand-new address. New construction means “untested.”As the buyer, you test—appliances, soundproofing, furnace … A brand-new address means you must prove you exist.You can’t arrange for your mail to be forwarded six weeks before you move because you are not yet in anyone’s computer. In this age of computer-certified mailing addresses, no address is official until a supervisory-level United States Postal Service (USPS) employee has visited and approved the mailboxes. Since our common house was not completed, we weren’t allowed to use the mailboxes. I had been living with a temporary address for two years and desperately wanted stability, not just a P.O. Box. I wanted it enough to agree to accept the mail for twenty households for two weeks. I set up a bookcase with unit numbers on paper labels and convinced a supervisor to come and approve it. Once everyone heard that I was approved, the mail started rolling in. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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USPS, United Parcel Service, Federal Express, and all the rest became so familiar with my bookcase that the carriers just walked in without knocking as if I were the management office. Christmas came along with the common house still not finished.The number of deliveries doubled with the holidays and quadrupled as more people moved in. I had to add shelves and clear a space on the floor for packages.Two weeks became two months; twenty households became forty.

Takoma Village rising PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ERIC MENDELSOHN

Most units had no phones, or rather had no phones on half the days. Every time a company hooked up a new person, they unhooked all the others.They refused to come out and hook everyone up at the same time or to send the same installer each time.This went on for months, so I also became the message center, reporting who was online and who wasn’t and passing notes about who would be home late or early, and loaning my phone when it was working. Our whole project was essentially built twice, with things being torn out and redone because the contractor had used toxic substances instead of the specified nontoxic or had installed appliances that were not environmentally acceptable.We also had to adjust to some of these, such as the low-flow toilets. People were showing up at their neighbor’s doors at midnight asking to borrow a plunger, so I began stocking plungers.You could pick up your mail and buy a plunger at the same time! It’s nice to be remembering all of this as we prepare for our first wedding on the green. One of our firstborn babies, now twenty months old, will be serving as the flower girl as soon as I finish the roses for her basket. MOVING IN AND MOVING ON

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Stairway Common Meals, Cohousing-Style Julie Rodwell, Former Resident of Winslow, Bainbridge Island, Washington Who knows? Maybe one of cohousing’s greatest contributions will be its subtle infusion into the world outside our neighborhoodson-purpose. In the following story, Julie Rodwell applies what she learned in cohousing to a condominium community. —D. W.

Eating by candlelight at Pioneer Valley PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

After I moved out of Winslow Cohousing, where I’d lived since it was first occupied, I bought a condo in Bellevue nearer to my job. It had about fifty units with about eighty people—roughly the same population as Winslow, but with a much different set-up.The only common area was a tiny swimming pool, which was closed when I moved in (late October).There were two mailbox areas and parking the length of the buildings, which were configured in an L-shape. I rarely met my neighbors at the mailboxes or on the walkways. I did get to know a downstairs neighbor on my staircase—we had six units off our stairs. She and I, about the same age, began to say hi to each other as we passed. Let’s call her Mary. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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One day, Mary stopped me and began to complain vehemently about the neighbors next to me.They were Hispanic. She heard doors bang in the middle of the night, feet pounding on the stairs, and cars revving up and dashing off in the dark. She was convinced they must be dealing drugs and wanted to call the police. I said,“Mary, let’s wait and see.” I was already planning a “staircase dinner” so that the occupants of our six units could meet and share concerns. We held the dinner, hosted at my place. In the conversations that ensued between Mary and my next-door neighbors, she learned that, far from being drug dealers,Tina, a single mom, was an interpreter. She worked on-call for other Hispanics having babies or having surgery and similar life crises. She was called in, as some health programs require, to translate for these frightened immigrants. The change in Mary’s attitude on learning the real reason for the night disturbances was 180 degrees; later on, she told me she simply didn’t hear the coming and goings any more.And now (after I have moved out of that complex), she moved from the basement to my unit on the top floor and became Tina’s next-door neighbor—and best friend!

No men allowed (unless they bring dessert), at Heartwood PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MAC THOMSON

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Fearless John Mackey’s Last Days David Wann, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado John Mackey was a strong, quiet man who had decided not to have radiation treatments for the cancer that would soon kill him. Instead, he went fishing.

One of John’s fish that didn’t get away. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CRAIG MACKEY

I met him on our walkway, just coming back from a fishing trip to Alaska. He was pushing a wheelbarrow briskly down the walkway toward the common house and called to me,“Dave, do you eat fish?” I told him I was mostly a vegetarian, but that I love fish when it’s fresh and comes from unpolluted waters. “Here you go, then,” he said, handing me a frozen salmon fillet, with a smile of something bigger on his face.“My son and I caught some pretty good fish last week and I had some frozen and shipped back for the community. Do you think people will be interested in salmon and halibut steaks?” “You can count on it!” I said, gawking at the small mountain of freshly frozen fish piled up in John’s mobile fish market. I had the feeling, as we stood together on that bright fall day in front of the common house, that he was sharing much more than fish. I tried to express my admiration for that. In his last days, like something out of a novel, he and his family experienced together the abundance of sun and sky, the teeming of life in a wild ocean, and the splash of being. Generously, John had brought home a plateful of that experience for each of us. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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CHAPTER SEVEN

DA I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G One of my favorite books is Tolstoy’s War and Peace, partly because of its animated descriptions of daily life in nineteenthcentury Russia. While very few contributors in this anthology have the literary genius of Leo Tolstoy, nevertheless, we portray (I hope successfully) the agonies and ecstasies of daily life in cohousing activities, such as common meals, gardening with kids, and figuring out what’s art and what’s not. And though some conflicts may seem like wars, the tool of consensus inevitably turns swords into plowshares. At least for the moment. The German word klatsch means a “gathering characterized by informal conversation,” and in the world of cohousing, klatsches most frequently occur on walkways and common greens. As people walk to their houses from the parking lot, or from the common house where they’ve just picked up their mail, salutations quickly become conversations. So, on a typical weekday summer evening after dinner, two clusters of klatschers are present on the walkway, in addition to four Frisbee throwers, one of them completely inept; a beekeeper dressed in a white, masked suit (Wanda or Linda?) headed for the hives, holding a smoldering smoker device; two bicyclers returning from the Clear Creek bike trail; a senior approaching the common house in partnership with

a walker; and a kid chasing a dog that’s stolen his sneaker. Your neighborhood is a park! And as in any park, the population ebbs and flows. There are times when you are the only person in the park; the only person smelling lilac and honeysuckle blossoms and watching the sun set just north of Lookout Mountain. And the only person currently available to snitch mint chocolate cookie ice cream, leftover from last night’s meal, from the common house freezer. As darkness deepens, you hear the cats being called home with a bell or a spoon clanked inside of a coffee cup. A few tireless skateboarders continue to roll up and down the walkway, even though it’s nearly pitch-black. (Have they put sonar on skateboards now?) Another day draws to a close in cohousing.

Front porch concert at Heartwood PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MAC THOMSON

In this chapter, nine different authors share stories about such things as cooking for fifty, gardening with kids, and figuring out what’s art and what’s not in common areas. One author describes how it feels to have a baby in a cohousing neighborhood and another explains how community work gets done in Takoma Village. These are the daily doings of a cohousing neighborhood—the activities that create neighborhood culture. The annual garage sale, for example, is a great indicator of Harmony Village culture. Su’s story (following) captures the goofiness of trying to hang onto useless and redundant stuff when, since REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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many of our homes are comparatively small, you really don’t have the space to store it. It’s true that there are seven garages in our community of twenty-seven homes, but most are co-owned with other neighbors. And those families that do have palatial garage space (a two-car garage!) don’t really come out ahead in the game of Stuff, because after their garages are bulging with racks and stacks of stuff, they still don’t have any storage space. (A telling postulate of our times is “space attracts stuff.”) There are several things I find especially endearing about the neighborhood garage sale. One is that it’s a kind of sporting event. Throughout the day, neighbors drift by and ask what the “score” is. We’re interested because we each have stake in it. The proceeds from the garage sales usually fund some sort of community activity or enhancement, whether it’s a margarita party with live music or three peach trees for the orchard. The other thing I like is that the sale always takes place in a row of temporarily vacated carports, which gives it a distinctive market feel, like the covered stalls of a Mexican mercado. —D. W.

Half-Man, a Styrofoam Mannequin, Disappears at the Harmony Village Garage Sale Su Niedringhaus, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado In general, I’m certain there’s less stuff per capita at Harmony Village than the national average. And much of the vintage stuff that ends up on our garage sale bargain tables has already had multiple lifetimes. For example, when I go out to dinner or a play, I sometimes wear a hand-me-down dress shirt once owned by Macon, a dapper-though-now-departed neighbor. From nutcrackers to gaspowered weed whackers, much of the merchandise that we annually convert to cash instead of trash has been well borrowed and bartered. As a general rule, any semivaluable stuff that’s bound at last for the landfill gets a “curtain call” by the concrete wall across from the Dumpster. (A general store of last resort: “Does anybody want D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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this?”) The other day I shrewdly scavenged four plastic tabletops (and threw away the legs) before anyone else could see what perfect flats they were for starting vegetable seedlings in. And this morning, I witnessed the dramatic rescue of a spindly umbrella tree, mercifully given a second (or third) chance—probably another six and a half weeks in Edee’s living-room jungle. At Harmony, our relationship with stuff often seems more like a carnival than a competition. —D. W.

Half-man finds a home.

A garage sale can be much more than the hauling out of unwanted treasures that hibernate in our basements.As we found out this summer, a garage sale can mean mutual mission and teamwork, creativity, appreciation of diverse gifts, and a whole bunch of muscle-straining labor. In fact, the words “community” and “garage sale” could be thought of as near synonyms. Our fun began one Friday late in June with the rumbling of overloaded carts on the walk, all headed toward the west parking lot. One bystander noted a virtual cloud of smoke hovering over the Lohre residence, so intense was the activity from that home. It was happening.The villagers were bringing forth their stuff. But let’s face it, creation is usually a somewhat messy affair, and the emergence of all these parts gathering together in hopes of becoming a whole was not painless. Initial set-up challenges included the sagging clothes poles, the near sale of Nancy S.’s personal cell phone to a community member who knew a good deal when he saw it, and carport lights that stubbornly refused to illuminate Karlene’s efforts as set designer the night before. But it still came off: before we went to bed, tables were filled and goods were categorized by a small crew of shopREINVENTING COMMUNITY

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keeper trainees. Julia R. and Sue papered Golden with Marilyn’s graphically correct sale signs (the little drawings looked just like our Santa Fe–style houses). Everyone worked up an appetite, so we dined together on Mediterranean takeout, then returned to ground zero and did the finishing touches.The highlight of the evening, as nearly anyone would tell you, was T. J. ’s appearance in Phil’s custom-designed, blast-from-thepast red, white, and blue ski suit! T. J. accommodated his many admirers and properly displayed the suit with all the poise and skill of a J. C. Penney’s male model. The stage was set and a dozen or more sleepy villagers drifted off to their own homes, eagerly anticipating the big day. Dawn came early for the enthusiastic first shift: just after 5:00 A.M., Marilyn and John M. arrived to provide early-morning security.Their first issue dealt with the mysterious appearance of a box of unmarked clothes.Where did they come from? Did they somehow contain a sinister, symbolic message or one of Madonna’s halter tops? The mystery hung dark and heavy … till Marilyn finally cut through the intrigue and dumped the contents on the sale table unceremoniously: merchandise. As light filled the sky, neighbors of the village gathered in the lot, coffee cups and toast in hand.Village fashion took on many forms that morning, but runaway standouts included Karlene and Edee wearing complementary gypsy getups with scarves, Ken in a Rastafarian golfer’s tam and tie-dye socks, and, of course, the ever-changing wardrobe of the Styrofoam half-man (the bottom half). Every few minutes, he’d display a different pair of shorts, shoes, or skirt.When the half-man sold, we felt like we were losing a friend, but on the other hand, we were gaining a dollar and a half. John M. stationed himself at the entrance and manned parking control. Equipped with Liann’s lifelike cash register,Wendy positioned herself at the checkout table, while the younger generation—Ben,Will, and Max—ran the skateboard ramp benefit corner, where sports equipment and beverages were offered.Their peers, Lisi,Arlo, Dylan, and Lou, wheeled out their first batch of cookies and custom-crafted jewelry, converting a PF Flyer wagon and a piece of plywood into a display counter. Saoirse made sure all item arrangements met rigorous feng-shui standards.Various others stepped onto the set and the sale began.A steady trickle of customers arrived and descended upon treasures such as Phil’s mother’s rabbit-fur muff, Macon’s pocketknife (which six-yearD A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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old Dylan grabbed), Joe’s collection of dusty, pre–WWII military transmission equipment, a velvet stole of Ginny M.’s (Karlene got this treasure), Phil’s Dad’s military uniforms, and Nancy’s mother’s paintings. The rest of the asphalt showroom was filled with bargain-priced sports equipment, clothes, baby goods, books, videos, luggage, kitchenware, and a comfortable blue chair and ottoman that almost everyone spent at least a few minutes lounging in. Edee was named Salesperson of the Century—meeting and greeting all comers like a carnival barker. John M. was recognized as a guy who helped move things. His motto: “Everyone leaves with something, even if we have to give it to you.” Marilyn displayed considerable talent in “pricing things to sell,” though a salewide variable pricing system was already in operation. (“How much do you want to pay?”) Favorite customers included a woman who dragged away one of Joe’s transmission units without even knowing what it was, another who purchased more than eighty of Rick H.’s classic record albums, and, of course, any and all who left with something in their hands.The most unlikely sale of the day was the vibrating seat pad with no power cord and, thus, no vibration.After an “increase-the-signage” trip into Golden, business picked up.And in the end, the whole adventure was deemed a success, grossing around $600 for the community, and lots of laughs, too.

Cooking for Fifty: Crisis or Opportunity? Elizabeth Stevenson, Southside Cohousing, Sacramento, California

Liz Stevenson is realistic about the limitations of common meals and even cohousing in general. After twelve years in residence, she still finds “ample reason to question my distant decision to move to cohousing. It’s like democracy: it’s the worst way to live, except for all the others.” In this entertaining, tongue-in-cheek piece, she offers hardearned insights about cooking for a crowd. Personally, I’ve gone from feeling intimidated by the prospect of cooking common meals to trusting that if the team uses good ingredients and has a good REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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recipe, we can make it work—that is, if we give ourselves enough time and if everyone on the team comes through. A common meal tests the tensile strength of a team, as well as its commitment to flavorful (or at least edible), healthy food. In cohousing, people seem to be very aware of Slow Food and the fact that diet directly affects personal vitality. In effect, that good food can deliver a good mood. —D. W.

Arguably, the common meal is the centerpiece of life in cohousing. There’s a reason that the Last Supper is so powerful an image and why breaking bread with someone is a way to mend fences or make a business deal.The fundamental act of nourishing oneself breaks down barriers between people and allows them to truly know one another. Eating together in the common house is about hospitality, friendship, and community.After all, the Latin root of the word “companion” literally means “with bread.” Good hospitality dictates that we make food that everyone can eat, within reason.You would do no less in your own home, which is what the common house is, after all.This is the very reason that cooking for your community is such a treacherous enterprise. On a fundamental level, food is love. Caring for another human being means feeding them, whether it’s the obvious mother and child, the first date, the potluck, or the common meal. People expect that their nutritional needs will be taken care of. But let’s face it, cohousers aren’t your average group of citizens. Some groups have mostly vegetarians and some have several people on diets that avoid what others think of as basic staples. So how do you feed between thirty and fifty people on various diets after you get home from work and before 6:00 P.M.? Very carefully.With a stout and open heart, a thick skin, patience, and lots of practice. At first, we were nervous, defensive, and flailing about. It seemed to take several hours to clean up after every meal and we were always exhausted. Just making a shopping list was a daunting task. How much salad will fifty people eat? It depends. If you have several dishes, not much, maybe three heads of lettuce. If you’re just having spaghetti, better get five heads. It’s the same with everything you cook, and the only way to know is D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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to make mistakes. Mistakes annoy people. Mistakes mean that people go home hungry or that you have way more rice than the stuff that is supposed to go on top. Mistakes mean that people feel hurt that you haven’t met their needs.

Mother’s Day brunch, cooked partly by Sunward dads PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

Everyone comes into cohousing with a set of expectations that they might not even know they have. For some people, running out of food is a hugely embarrassing faux pas, whereas others just can’t stand the thought of throwing food away. Until you start living with cooking for a crowd, you might not know that you really can’t stand the thought of fifty people critiquing your cooking. Or you may find out that the accolades for a job well-done are more rewarding than you ever thought possible. Some types of people are better suited to cooking together than others. People tend to fall into categories and one needs to find out what types they want to cook with in order to maintain their sanity. The licker must taste everything he cooks and doesn’t mind sticking a finger in the food to do so.Afterward, he carefully wipes his hands on the same cloth every time, so no big deal, right? The yo-yo pledges to cook and clean and be the perfect team player. But there’s always something pressing that must be done right away and she’ll be right back—in two hours, when all her online banking, phone calls, and extra work that she brought home is done. But she’ll do all the cleaning, honest—just after she finishes up her sewing. The slacker just wants to make a meal in the fastest time humanly possible, with the least amount of work. She buys frozen lasagnas, prepackaged salads, and bread at Costco, then throws it on a plate and REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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wants accolades for how delicious it is. The gourmet is everyone’s favorite cook—unless you’re on his team. The opposite of the slacker, the gourmet wants the meal to be a feast every time.The gourmet has no children living at home and needs no sleep.The gourmet stays up cooking until 3:00 A.M. the night before the meal and adds new courses fifteen minutes before the meal is supposed to be served because he got a great deal on a case of artichokes on his way home from work. So what if people have to wait for dinner? It’s worth it. Then there’s the ascetic.Americans eat too much, they lack selfdiscipline, and the ascetic is just the person to set them straight. He mandates one-half of one chicken breast per person, when there is protein available at all. His preferred meal to serve is gazpacho and bread. Go easy on the bread, you pig! One slice per person. If you act fast, you can have a cookie after dinner made with no sugar and plenty of whole grains. One cookie. Everyone goes home and eats frozen pizzas an hour after dinner. Subcategories of this type include the pious vegan and the delicate palate. Neither of these types believes in seasoning, for some reason. Diners, too, have their quirks. One needs to figure out which of these types are going to be at any given meal and plan accordingly. The bait and switch. So you decide to cook a meal with meat. Not wanting to leave out the vegetarians, you also plan a main course for them. Looking at the sign-up sheet, you make proportions according to who has signed up. But at the meal, all the meat sauce is gone and the veggie sauce goes begging.What’s up? The not-really-a-vegetarian has struck again.There may be several of them; it’s hard to tell.They don’t advertise.They are vegetarians, unless the meat just smells too good today.Aw, heck, it’s just chicken.The next time you cook, you make less veggie stuff.You run out, and they are indignant. The baby resents the children getting special food—food that tastes good, not the dill- and rice vinegar–marinated tofu they’re giving the grown-ups. She may sneak a fish stick, or pretend she didn’t see the sign that says “Kids Only,” or she may just ask the cooks if she can have some kids’ food.The smart cooks always make extra kids’ food.You never can have too many fish sticks. The waster is so hungry, he needs to eat a lot of food, and he can’t wait to get seconds, so he piles it on. He takes one bite of everything, D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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then blissfully throws the rest in the trash.Those who didn’t get any will just have to act faster next time. His parents are deep in meaningful conversation and oblivious to his actions.A subtype of the waster is the rowdy. Her parents, too, are meaningfully occupied and don’t notice that she is eating with her hands and going back for thirds on the dessert before anyone else has finished their meals. The special diet.This person has a diet that is impossible for the novice to satisfy. She doesn’t eat refined sugar because it’s bad for you, maple syrup because it’s cooked, and honey because the bees are enslaved and oppressed, but she complains bitterly when there’s no dessert for her after you advertised apple pie.A subtype of this group is the diet experimenter. She can’t understand why you have trouble making food for her. Her diet is simple. It just changes every month or so. She’s not on the Zone diet anymore; now it’s wheat- and dairy-free. And don’t forget to read every single label of everything you buy to make sure it’s on her diet. Next month: raw food only. One of the things that new communities always have plenty of is food disasters. It seems that no amount of wisdom from those who have gone before can help avoid this one. It’s just as well. It makes for some funny moments, and you never forget the lessons learned.And really, there’s no better time to make really awful food as when everyone else is making it too. People are much more forgiving when their own recent catastrophes are fresh in everyone’s minds. Early on, my team cooked onion soup. Suzanne was in charge of it and it smelled great.The dining room was abuzz, but after everyone got their food, the dining room got quiet.As I went to sit down, I noticed that the soup bowls sat undisturbed. I sipped the soup: it was like tasting a salt lick.The solution to a too-salty soup is to add potatoes, which we did for the next meal, and the leftover soup was delicious.Too bad nobody was willing to even try it, despite our assurances that it was no longer too salty.We ended up throwing it all out.We learned that when you are doubling a recipe, don’t double the salt. One dinner that I was particularly looking forward to was sloppy joes made by a team famous for doing a good job.As soon as I walked in the common house, I knew I was in for a disappointment: it smelled like burned sauce.We all struggled through the burned vegetarian sloppy joes and thanked the cooks afterward.We learned to buy thick-bottomed pots. We encourage but don’t require cooking a vegetarian alternative for REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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every meal. Some meals don’t have one, but most do.We also often cook a separate meal for kids, and special foods for special diets.We have vegetarians, vegans, non–beef eaters, people who can’t eat wheat, dairy, or other grains, picky kids, no-sugar diets, and so on. We’ve been doing this a long time. Some meals are just naturally good for almost everyone.As you go along, you learn what’s easy and healthy.You have meals that don’t turn out so well or aren’t worth the effort that went into them.We’ve had many members who were afraid to cook at first, but who came to love it. It’s very different from cooking at home, and it can be a lot more rewarding.When you cook at home, the recipients can be less than gracious.We make it a point to thank the cooks after every meal, and it makes a huge difference.And to earn praise, we try hard to please everyone. We have a list where people sign up for meals. On the list, by each family’s name, there’s a space where their dietary preferences are printed. So on every list, right by my family’s name, it says,“no dairy or gluten.” (Don wanted to have “no honey from enslaved bees” next to his, but I told him it wouldn’t fit on the page.) On the meal menu posted with each meal there are choices at the bottom that indicate what’s available. Right by “vegetarian” the cooks can circle either “yes,”“no,” or “on request.”The other options are wheat-free, dairy-free, and kids’ food. Almost every meal has the option of getting what you want by request, but some meals are not well suited to a particular diet, so people choose not to sign up for that night.

Uncommonly Great Meals We’ve had many discussions about food. It’s an ongoing process. Living in community is far different than thinking about living in community. Once you move in, you may find that what you thought was vitally important is not, and vice versa. You may think that with all these different styles of cooking, picky eaters, and other roadblocks, it would be impossible to cook a decent meal that everyone likes.You’d be wrong. It’s not only possible, but it can be fun and deeply satisfying to cook for a whole community. More often than not I find this to be the case. I’m even disappointed if fewer than thirty people sign up for a meal.This is why. A truly great meal is everything that’s good about cohousing. It’s not D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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too hard to make, but it’s something that people won’t usually do for themselves. It could be as simple as a pasta sauce made from scratch or grilled fresh fish.You relieve people of the hassle of cooking alone at home after a long day, and the kids and adults get to socialize instead. A meal that goes off really well might go something like this: you’re a member of the cook team who is home during the day or can leave work early on that day.You do the shopping and some of the cooking the night before.As the day progresses, various cooking team members drop in or out of the process as their schedules allow. People come into the common house and do laundry or pick up their mail, smell what’s cooking, and stop by to chat. Much of the daily business of making decisions in cohousing gets done during these times of opportunity to chat casually about things, but it’s mostly just fun to have so many opportunities to schmooze. Your children set the tables when they get home from school.This is another opportunity to talk, and you find out what happened at school that day.Your kids like helping with part of the community work, though sometimes they pretend they don’t and complain,“Mom I always have to set the tables!”

Food co-op delivery day PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

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Show Time! When it is nearly mealtime, people start drifting in.You’re still frantically rolling the last of fifty individual vegetarian meatballs in your hands. (Note to self: next time, it’s going to be textured vegetable protein in the sauce instead.) Most have had time to catch up with their families before dinner and some will see their spouses and children for the first time that day at dinner.They spend time they normally would have committed to hasty dinner preparations relaxing with friends and family. (Okay, so it isn’t always relaxing. I wish I had a buck for every time I saw a kid arguing,“But my hands are clean!” while holding up grimy paws that would make a miner blanch.) Today, it’s obvious that you aren’t going to make the six o’clock deadline.“We have to caramelize those onions for the burgers,” David insists, five minutes before six. (See the description of the gourmet, above.) “David, nobody cares about that—let’s focus on toasting the almonds,” counters Susan.You muse, longingly, about McDonald’s. Paul offers to help get the food on the buffet and get out serving utensils. Pam regales people in the sitting room with tales of retail madness from her summer job. Dinner is finally ready; it’s time to ring the bell. Carl, age six, rings the cowbell, which May donated years ago, to let people know dinner is served.And, yes, people do start salivating when you ring the bell. Some people always sit in the same place and others move around every time.You sit with one person, then move to other tables when people start leaving.You end up eating with several different people at one meal; thus, your conversation about refinancing is balanced with a discussion of the relative merits of Brainiac versus Trivial Pursuit.The children are finished eating quickly and run off to the kids’ room or outside to play. By seven o’clock, one table will have all the diners who are left, chatting into the evening. On their way home, people stop by to thank you for the delicious meal. The parents of small children then gather them up and go home for the bedtime routine.The rest decide to play bridge and put up a table in the sitting room. One person who wants to play bridge sends her husband home with the kids and stays to play.Your cooking teammates finish up the cleaning without you, since you did more of the prep work.You toss the linens in the washing machine.The next person who goes to use the washer puts the linens in the dryer, and tomorrow, D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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Christina will fold them and put them away. On your way home, kitchen scraps for compost, trash, and recycling are put in their respective places and the day of cooking is over.You’re tired, full, and satisfied, and you go home to relax.

Art at RoseWind: Joy and Ruckus Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind, Port Townsend, Washington I’m guessing that the neighborhood culture of RoseWind can only really be understood in person. How can we expect to appreciate the subtlety and nuance of plywood dolphins and poetic metal flamingoes unless we are standing right in front of them? Still, Lynn does a pretty good job of walking us through a community gallery that has become a museum/community. —D. W.

Metal coyotes in the daisies, plywood swimmers diving under the lawn, and a pump house sporting an eight-foot octopus.What’s going on? A lot more than meets the eye. Here at RoseWind Cohousing, in Port Townsend,Washington, art in our common areas is both a delight and a bone of contention.

Dry-land dolphins PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ALEXA NADEAU

Pets? Parenting? Pesticides? None of these are big issues here. But just mention our guerrilla art happenings and you’ll spark a hot debate. To outsiders, RoseWind seems very artistic.Visitors invariably comment REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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on how creative, unique, and interesting our common spaces are.“I was struck by the amount of creativity, beauty, commitment, and intention that has obviously gone into envisioning, creating, and maintaining RoseWind,” wrote Carolyn, a visitor from Seattle.“The common house is quite magical.The main impression one gets is that no corners were cut, no effort was spared, and tons of artistic inspiration was poured into every detail of the building. … The energy flows through the building in a way that uplifts the spirit to a place of pure delight.” On the front porch of our common house, rustic tree trunks form columns, polished granite tiles line windowsills, and the railings at the north end have whimsical cutouts in the vertical slats—even recognizable silhouettes of certain residents. Up under the porch gable, a big triangular mural includes a photo collage of RoseWind members standing in our central field, surrounded by a painting of our homes and land, the deer and coyotes, and parts of our historic,Victorian seaport town, along with the surrounding waters, boats, and marine life.A lead artist collaborated with half a dozen other members to produce this unique portrait of RoseWind and its surroundings. Step inside the common house and you’re greeted with brightyellow benches with hand-painted red flowers in an entrance hall of warm orange with the imprints of cedar boughs pressed into the plaster. The Rastra-block building material and Structolite plaster are shaped into arches, niches, and other special features. One of our woodworking hobbyists crafted handsome coatracks with wood from his old orchard. A little “cat door” (actually a well-used shortcut to the kids’ room) is edged with tiny handprints in the plaster.Another member’s graceful ikebana flower arrangements appear in a spotlighted niche. On either side of the hearth in the dining room, green, blue, and amber bottle ends embedded in the walls glow with light from outside. One bathroom has a rotating display of a member’s quilted fiber-art hangings; the other has a bright and entertaining mural,“The Secret Life of Birds.”The children, too, have embellished the common house, with paintings on the cupboard doors in the playroom. Out on the grassy commons, you never know what you’ll see. First, a fish tail appeared, as if diving below the lawn. Soon, it was joined by a dolphin fin, and then more fins.Then, whole dolphins started “breaking the surface,” even leaping clear of the grass. Each day, we look to see what’s going to appear, or disappear, next.A troupe of itinerant pink D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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flamingoes entertained us a few years ago, standing guard over a newly seeded lawn, then mysteriously migrating over to peer into the common house windows.After inspiring one member to write a Shakespeareanstyle sonnet about them, they then appeared at people’s front doors on May Day, delivering poems and flowers. Although all this participation and diversity may sound idyllic, we’ve learned that nothing involving forty people is simple.An essential challenge of community living is balancing the desires of individuals with the needs of the whole group.There’s a tension between structure and spontaneity. Structure sees value in having guidelines within which people can “freely” exercise their creativity and impulses in ways less likely to upset others. Spontaneity says that’s not free enough and wants minimal rules, calling for “trust” and more openness to the unknown.At RoseWind, a major place this issue pops up is around the use of art in the common spaces.Why might this be? We are not a cohousing community especially for artists.The whole town of Port Townsend is rather “artsy,” with many music and theater productions, writers’ and painters’ groups, open-mike nights, dances, markets, and fairs. So it’s not unusual, for example, that a young RoseWind fellow with a crew cut races giant mud trucks, has a job running heavy equipment, and also works alongside his wife crafting delicate glass beads. Port Townsend is full of people who work conventional jobs during the week and also write poetry, play guitar, or dress up as dust bunnies for the local All-Species Ball. Most RoseWind members, including those who are keen to exhibit in the common house and along the paths, have their principal training and experience in nonart fields, such as teaching, carpentry, counseling, business, computers, farming, cooking, medical work, kayak design, or midwifery.At the same time, a number have taken Artist’s Way workshops or other classes in awakening creativity and are actively pursuing art-and-craft projects. Some in the community are like others in this eclectic small town— interested in being more imaginative and less conventional than the mainstream. Port Townsend has vigorously resisted the incursion of WalMarts and Rite Aids and other chain stores in favor of our homegrown, local businesses. Seasonal parades and dances are a feast of creative costuming. Our colorful Kinetic Skulpture races bring out zany contraptions built of old bikes, Styrofoam, glitter, and fantasy.The grand prize is REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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given to the vehicle that finishes in the exact middle of the pack! Individual houses at RoseWind (and around town) sport driftwood railings, carvings on rafters, tails, mosaics on walls, and other imaginative details. It’s a statement of individuality, a setting apart from look-alike buildings and décor, a chance to indulge in whimsy or oddity. One might call it a political act. So at RoseWind, we have a bunch of people with ordinary occupations, some with artistic hobbies that are becoming a significant part of their self-expression. In addition, there are people who want to step outside the usual as a statement of freedom from conventionality. Others don’t “make” art, but either cheer it on or wonder if their own artistic taste can be accommodated as well. Consensus decision making works great for a pet policy or annual budget, but how do we deal with differing preferences for the look of our common spaces? We’ve wrestled for years with matters of taste. In decorating our common house, we ended up delegating decisions, with individuals or small groups responsible for paint colors, furniture, and finish details. In earlier years, such as when we did the mosaics for our pump house, whoever showed up got to participate in on-the-spot planning. Some art on the commons just happened, with various grumbling and appreciation and opinions. A more drastic response happened some years later, when a creative volunteer carpenter, while working on the front of the common house porch, proudly added a large, black raven with crystal eyes, along with bright-blue boards and white leaping salmon.All hell broke loose! Reactions ranged from,“How dare you!” to “That’s fabulous!”The carpenter was fine with taking it down if there was no consensus to keep it, but then others insisted they wouldn’t allow it to come down. Hearing of plans to remove it, one fellow stated,“I find this decision much more offensive than an artist’s spontaneous gift to the community and I recoil at the idea of art by committee!” Haiku was composed: Ghost Salmon now gone. Where have they exiled you? And will you return? A mythic story was made up and circulated that ended with Raven “journeying as a messenger between the peoples who had separated D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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themselves into opposing groups. Raven flew to a very high and prominent place … to remind the quarreling people of all the good things that life and the Earth had bestowed, now a symbol to all to respect and care for one another. … ” Reactions weren’t all creative. Our struggle with such issues has degenerated in some cases to name-calling and people of varying opinions have felt personally attacked. People who didn’t like a particular piece of art were labeled as being “against art,” or “against color,”“fearful,” or as being critics, cops, or other authority figures. Flaming e-mails got broadcast and people found themselves in opposing camps, which is really rare here. We’ve been glad to have good facilitators and some tried-and-true process tools, yet there have been hurt feelings. One of our more prolific contributors of artwork has spoken of feeling “a sense of exhaustion and defeat, beaten down by discussion.” First agitated and angry, and now depressed and worn out, this member is disinclined to make further offerings of commons art. In time, it will probably pass, but we’d all be happier if it never came to this. Currently, we’re evolving guidelines to avoid such emotional intensity and make peace between members who love to embellish the commons with their wooden or metal creations and those who don’t always care for what they see there. A recent discussion explored people’s underlying fears. On one end of the spectrum were members who felt proud of their newfound ability to create works of art and felt vulnerable to criticism.They explained that any guidelines or process for regulating art in the common spaces could make them feel “policed” or “stymied and stifled.”Art wants to be unfettered, provocative at times, free. Other art advocates included those who feared that our common spaces would be barren, bland, institutional beige, or sterile.As one member put it,“I find ‘neutral’ to be just as offensive as some of you find ‘vivid’! I can understand that having something bold, colorful, whimsical can offend some folks—why can’t they seem to accept that not having these things offends me?” At the other end of the spectrum were those who feared tacky clutter, valued clear, open spaces, and worried that without some rules and guidelines, we’d end up again with upsets, grudges, and taking sides when some people didn’t like what appeared. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Philosophically, we looked at the concept of shared spaces. If the common house is an extension of our living rooms and the commons an extension of our yards, does that mean we can do what we like there since it is ours? Or does it mean that we have to constrain what we do because it also belongs to others? Points of view ranged from “This is my property.What right do you have to put your stuff on it?” to seeing the joint spaces as places where we could celebrate our diversity, show our trust for each other, and broaden our horizons. After several group discussions, we created a proposal “to encourage, share, and enjoy member art at RoseWind while maintaining harmony among those with differing preferences.” (If an art project goes up that causes serious concerns regarding safety or appropriateness rather than artistic value, facilitation can be called upon to mediate.This hasn’t been needed though.) A time window is being proposed for commons art: anyone can install almost anything for a certain number of months, by the end of which they’d take it down or need group agreement to leave it for longer. Debate and wordsmithery continue. Time will tell whether this proposal gets adopted, and—like everything else in the group process—it will surely evolve over time. Maybe someday I’ll get used to the weird concrete critter on top of the toolshed. In the meantime, gaily painted birdhouses perch on poles, the plywood dolphins have been disappearing since the advent of a plywood shark, and a grinning frog dangles a leg lazily over our garden gate.

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Growing a Garden, Growing a Community Jenise Aminoff, Cambridge Cohousing, Cambridge, Massachusetts One of my greatest pleasures as a gardener in Harmony Village is watching kids graze for berries and mystery items, such as peanuts. (“Peanuts grow under the ground?!”) My front “lawn” is a patch of strawberries the kids love to forage in, and, even if I don’t get a single berry in a given summer, I still harvest the fact that I’m helping create memories of an edible landscape. —D. W.

I may physically be in my living room in early March, but in my mind, I’m in the community garden in July. I’m standing on the garden path closest to my front door. On my left, cherry tomatoes run rampant into the basil patch.A Lillian, yellow, heirloom tomato separates the basil from the stand of deep-green pepper plants.They almost hide the tiny stand of tomatillos near the end of the row, and then, another tomato, a Brandywine, and a lone eggplant that didn’t quite fit into the eggplant bed. On my right, a stand of peas, plump and green, then a swath of spinach, and another tomato, this one an Early Girl. My hands make contact with the plants in various ways: weeding, pruning, and harvesting. My meditation ends in the herb garden, among fragrant sage, oregano, and lovage, where I rub the leaves with my fingers and bring the scent to my nose.

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There’s still snow on the ground and, although spring is in sight, planting season is still far, far off here at Cambridge Cohousing.Which means, of course, that it’s time to begin planning what we’ll be planting.Time to flip through catalogs and order seeds.Time to convince members of our community to adopt a crop and maintain it throughout the long summer. This is the second year that I’ll serve as the veggie garden coordinator. I made many a mistake last year that I’ve hopefully learned from.This REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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year, I’m determined to build community support for the garden, especially among the kids. The Monday before St. Patrick’s Day, the traditional day to begin spring planting of peas and other cold-hardy crops, I pack up charts, index cards, and crayons and lug them down the path to the common house. I set up the charts in the living room, just as the pizza shows up for our Monday night pizza/potluck common meal. Despite the pizza, several of the kids are intrigued by the charts, one showing last year’s garden, the other a blank garden diagram with only the perennial plantings, such as strawberries, written in. But I think they’re actually more interested in the index cards and crayons, which I brought as a deliberate lure. After the meal, I’m delighted to find six kids clustered around the fireplace and the charts. I ask them,“What did you like last year? What didn’t you like? What new crops should we plant?”They all have opinions:“More sugar snap peas.”“Bigger pumpkins.”“No, smaller pumpkins.” “More basil.”Twelve-year-old Abigail happily volunteers to take responsibility for the basil plot, if someone will water it while she’s at camp. I pull Joe—the herb garden czar—aside and ask him if he can cover it. He agrees. I realize later that I should have gotten Abigail to commit to watering the herb garden while he’s away on vacation in June.

Bob Paulson’s stuccoed raised beds at Harmony

More kid opinions are coming in with zeal now.“More potatoes.” “Purple carrots, they’re so weird!” Gradually, we begin filling up the chart, writing down the names of crops on the index cards and taping D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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them onto their beds.We rearrange frequently—the beans can’t go there, they were there last year.We need to move the root crops, since nematodes (pesty little worms) chewed them last year.We’ll try an ambitious three sisters planting of corn, beans, and pumpkins in the only bed big enough to plant six-feet by six-feet rows of corn. The twins, Nellie and Matilda, want flowers: snapdragons and pansies and those pink-and-white flowers whose name they can’t remember: cleomes.There’s a flower plot already set aside for Ileana, but I get a sudden burst of inspiration. Snapdragons are beneficial insect attractors. Why not scatter them throughout the garden to benefit all the crops? The kids love this plan. By now, the adults are starting to finish up their dinners and wander through the living room on their way home.They begin adding their own opinions.“Plant marigolds, too,” suggests Bill, to repel both nematodes and squirrels.“And could we have some Brussels sprouts?” Diane comes by to request more beans. Sarah says she’ll tend the eggplants again. Peg wants to know if we’ll plant normal orange carrots, too, please. The kids have all escaped to the rec room, and gradually the adults gather them up and head home.As they all drift away, I suddenly find that the chart is full.All the crops have been selected and put in their places.This year’s theme seems to be “more”—more of the crops we like, less experimenting with crops we don’t use as much. It means less variety, but also easier planting and maintenance. I like this plan, especially since almost none of it was my idea.

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For me, gardening has always been a social occasion. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where my Grandpa and Grandma Sanchez still run a small five-acre farm where he raises cattle, grows alfalfa to feed them, and tends a small but prolific garden. In nearby Arizona, my Grandpa and Grandma Bushman owned a thirty-two-acre cattle ranch. Though they gave up cattle long ago, Grandpa Bushman continued to tend his garden right up to the season before his death. Like a devious little bee, I cross-pollinated their gardens, insisting after one summer with Grandpa Bushman that Grandpa Sanchez should grow rhubarb.To this day, it remains a family favorite in pies with wild raspberries. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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I spent many a summer at the Bushman Turkey Springs Ranch and every spare moment at the Sanchez Farm, where my family would gather for the large jobs, such as plowing, sowing, harvesting, and baling. Grandpa Sanchez made sure to include everyone, especially his grandchildren, by giving us special jobs. My brother developed an early skill with the tractor, and by the age of eleven, he was driving it alone. My job was to plant the corn, dropping the precise three kernels in each little hole my grandfather dug.To this day, he calls me and says that the corn won’t grow unless I come plant it for him. A very clever man, he knew how to build confidence in his children, giving us simple tasks we could handle and later point to with pride. And there was the additional joy of working together as a family, sharing the burdens, telling stories of past harvests, bringing the surplus crops to market.This is the gardening experience I want here at Cambridge. It’s the experience I want to pass on to the kids.

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In late March, I’m ready with peat pots, homemade soil-less seed-starter mix, seeds, spray bottle, and a seed rack with adjustable fluorescent lights kindly donated by Rowena, another avid gardener who’ll be away for most of April and unable to take advantage of her own equipment. At 4:00 P.M., my husband and I lug all the equipment down to the common house, where I set up shop on the patio outside the dining room. Despite the fact that it’s a rather cold day in the low forties, threeyear-old Ryan and the twins, Nellie and Matilda, show up clamoring to plant before I’m even done pulling out all the paraphernalia. Ryan’s favorite color is pink and he insists on planting only pink flowers: snapdragons, zinnias, and bachelor buttons.The twins are more eclectic and try to plant one of everything.We’ve nearly planted one entire flat when Ryan has to go home. The temperature is falling rapidly.With the help of the twins’ mother, Linda, I move the project into the dining room. Kids begin arriving for the pizza/potluck and I lure them over by scattering the seed packets on the floor. Marisa and Ethan dig in; snapdragons are their favorites, too, though they also plant nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, pansies, and zinnias. Just as I send them to wash their hands, Civry D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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shows up, followed by Abigail and Tommy. I’m delighted to see some of the older children getting involved, too.There’s only time for each of them to plant two pots before the pizza arrives.

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The first garden I planted by myself washed out with the first rain.The backyard of our rented townhouse in Somerville was a complete wasteland.An enormous ailanthus tree dominated the yard; most of the grass beneath it had died.The rosebushes planted along the fences had become wild brambles.The hedge had not been trimmed in years.And the right rear corner of the yard was a tangled mess of weeds and vines. I tackled that back corner first, and underneath the weeds, the vines, the fallen branches, and the enormous sprawl of rose canes, I found amazingly rich humus from years of leaves left to rot where they fell.

Cambridge rain forest PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JENISE AMINOFF

I plowed that soil into rows and planted seedlings from sets. But I had grown up gardening in the clay-based soil of the Rio Grande basin, with infrequent, light rains. By contrast, this soil was loose, acidic, full of small rocks, and sandy. Our first April downpour tore apart my neat rows REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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and destroyed most of my onion and celery crops. Only the tomatoes thrived that year, growing more than six feet tall! I turned to my friends for help, but, to my deep surprise, none of them had ever worked in a garden. My husband was completely floored the first time I grew something from seed. No one I knew could help me figure out what I was doing wrong and how I could fix it. Even worse, no one was interested in helping me out.They graciously took my excess zucchini and cucumbers, but not one of my friends, not even those living in the adjoining townhouse with whom we shared the yard, was remotely interested in gardening with me. For the first time, I became a solitary gardener, and I liked it very little. I felt lonely and unappreciated.While I got nice compliments from people about my ongoing war to tame the yard, I had no one with whom to discuss the fine details of gardening, compare notes, and exchange seeds. I resented the housemates that ate my produce without lifting a finger to grow it. So I subscribed to Organic Gardening, learned about raised beds, soil testing, and compost. I made raised beds out of scrap lumber, compost bins out of discarded palates, and I pruned and planted and tilled and reseeded and trained. By the time we moved out of the townhouse, the lawn was just thickening up, the roses and a concord grapevine were trained onto the fences, I’d unearthed and weeded out an old patio, and I had five productive raised beds producing excellent homegrown produce.All this I happily abandoned to move into cohousing.

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My friend Limin, a neighbor from across the street, joins us for dinner. She also has a large garden and wants to coordinate ordering plants, gathering mulch, and exchanging vegetables.After dinner, we move into the living room, where I set up my charts again and wait for the coho adults to mosey over. Much to my disappointment, very few adults show up, only those who’ve already agreed to adopt plots and want to confirm plans. Limin sees my discomfort and deftly distracts me with catalogs and tales of hardy New Zealand spinach. Then, just as I’m packing up to leave, Norma pops out of the mailroom to say that she’d like to take on a couple of plots.To my knowledge, she’s never contributed to the garden before. Looking over my chart, I D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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realize that this leaves only four plots unattended, and I know two people who’ll likely take on a plot each. My faith in my community restored, I head home happy, visions of sugar snap peas dancing in my head.

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My husband and I had heard of cohousing right around the time we moved into that Somerville townhouse.We’d been struggling with the problem of how to raise children and simultaneously pursue our careers.We had approached some friends with the idea of buying houses together, sharing the backyards, and taking turns providing childcare. One of them sent us the cohousing book by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett and we were instantly hooked.We attended a meeting of every cohousing group in the Boston area and finally committed to one. Two years later, convinced that the project would never be built— and even if it were, we wouldn’t want to live there—my husband and I left the group.We were burnt out, exhausted from painful arguments with people we had grown to care about deeply. On the very same day we left, a townhouse similar to the one we’d planned to build was put up for sale at Cambridge Cohousing. Daunted both by the process of joining another cohousing group and by the high price, we ignored it. But just before we left on a much-needed vacation, we decided to go to an open house out of curiosity. I had missed previous tours of Cambridge Cohousing and I wanted to see what a completed cohousing community looked like.As we toured the house, sunlight streaming through its windows into large, airy spaces, we turned to each other, both trying to restrain our excitement, and said,“This is exactly what we want.” I think that the zucchini was what really sold me.We wandered out of the house, a bit stunned, and only five steps away was the community vegetable garden, as large as our entire yard: chard, spinach, a dense thicket of tomatoes, all under a graceful, venerable silver maple tree.As we wandered down the path, we ran into some residents who chatted with us amiably. One of them—I think it was Jesse—reached down, picked an enormous zucchini, and handed it to me.They had a bumper crop, he explained, more than they knew what to do with. My own zucchini had been invaded and destroyed by black ants, so this enorREINVENTING COMMUNITY

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mous green vegetable was a precious and much-appreciated gift. Even better, here was the community of gardeners I had been craving, working together for common benefit. We swore not to talk about the house during our vacation in Italy, but in the last days, on the train back to Milan, we couldn’t help ourselves.We discussed long and hard the pros and cons of the house, and in the end, we came up with the following criteria: we definitely wanted to live in the Boston area, we definitely wanted to live in cohousing, and we wanted to buy as soon as possible. Only one house fit all of our criteria.When we returned to Boston, we discovered that the owners, desperate to move out by the end of the summer, had dropped their price. Suddenly, we could afford the house.Three weeks later, we bought it. Even before we had finished unpacking, I waded into the garden, staking up tomatoes, weeding, harvesting, and feeling great about our decision. It felt like I had come home at last.

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Despite a late March warm-up, it snowed again on April Fool’s Day. Nevertheless, we’ve started digging out the garden paths and preparing the beds for planting. My garlic, planted last fall, has sprouted through its thick layer of mulch. Rowena has planted the peas, I’ve planted the broccoli, and I’ll soon add the Brussels sprouts and the mesclun greens that will yield gourmet salad like they serve in Italy and France. Indoors, I’m planting tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, and peppers, and I’ve passed on other seeds to other planters. Limin and I will make a bulk order of nasturtiums, excellent beneficial attractors and tasty in salads, too. I’ve ordered more beanpoles and, with considerable difficulty, even managed to find purple carrots for the kids. Already, the kids are wandering out to the garden, asking about what I’ve planted and where the corn will go and when the strawberries will be ready. I love showing them the signs that the earth is awakening: an earthworm, the new leaves of a daisy. Someday soon I hope to have children of my own to teach these things to. I’ll bring them out to the garden, show them the joy of getting dirty, and let them graze on strawberries and peas with their peers in this community of gardeners.

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How the Work Gets Done Sharon Villines, Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington, D.C.

From my own ten years of cohousing experience, I’ll guess that the conversation about how the work is accomplished in common areas is never over. Pay someone to do the work? Let people do what they love? Require a certain number of hours a month from everyone or require them to pay the hourly equivalent? At Takoma Village, they seem to have a found a satisfactory solution—but wait until another, unforeseen task comes up. —D. W.

From the moment I heard about cohousing, I was ready to move in. I was living in Manhattan in a condominium and saw it as a perfect kind of community—if only we all knew each other and were managing the building cooperatively. I’d grown up in extended families, living in neighborhoods that had been stable since the Depression. Cohousing seemed like the perfect way to combine the two. My only hesitation came after reading discussions on the cohousing e-mail Listserv, where thoughts about unevenly shared work seemed to dominate all other topics. Specifically, many comments were about keeping the common house clean. Cohousing residents wanted the common house to be fully used but didn’t want to clean up after other users or live with their messes. For me, the idea of a perpetually cluttered, shabby common house was a deal breaker.The common house was the heart of cohousing. It represented Grandma’s house, where everyone went for Sunday dinner and afterward the children ran around playing in the garden while the adults talked and made ice cream on the porch. But without Grandma, would there be dinner? Or ice cream? Or playing? Who would manage the cleaning? Obviously, I overcame my concern or I wouldn’t be writing this. I’ve now lived in cohousing for four years, and although we do have our problems, having a clean common house has never been a problem.We have others (don’t get me started!) but this is not one of them. Enough of us share the same concept of “clean” to maintain an acceptable norm and we’ve come up with a workable system for getting the work done. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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Individuals who have a personal commitment strong enough to overcome group inhibitions and inertia do the work. The nursery got organized and furnished because Nancy, Jean, and Betsy, parents of young children, did it.They set rules about use, furnished it with toys and equipment, and took responsibility for reminding parents not to leave dirty diapers in the trash. The compost pile happened because Sandra set up the system and distributed instructions.

Community wood-splitting at Pioneer Valley PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

The landscaping got done because Don loved the work and organized helpers without waiting for permission. He addressed concerns, but he didn’t wait for consensus or volunteers before he started weeding and planting. Fortunately, his standards are higher than most of ours, so there have been few objections to his choices. Our sidewalks are very clean because Bob has taken this on as something he can do well and that everyone appreciates. M. J. is a gold mine since she has the skills and temperament to organize group purchases. Before we moved in, she organized 10 percent discounts on our washers and dryers. Now she’s coordinating screen door discounts, a more contentious issue since the doors will be so visible. She organized the twenty-three households who wanted doors to agree on a common design, got architectural approval, announced the decision to check for further objections, and arranged the purchases and installation. Herb did the same thing with the purchase of blinds for our windows, but I think he also vowed to never do it again. D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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We don’t currently have a person who is willing or able to be a driving force in the kitchen, so we don’t have a well-coordinated, three– meals–a–week schedule the way many communities do.The office has a full set of mostly working machines, including a state-of-the-art computer and printer that is connected to all the units, but the ink cartridges, toners, paper, and repeatedly broken copiers need an office manager.

Learning skills from a neighbor during a workday PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

On the other hand, the common house as a whole is clean because Jim was willing to organize the cleaning.We agreed on “clean,” but we had no agreement on actual cleaning. Some wanted to have a list of jobs that they could do whenever it was convenient; others wanted to clean together at a scheduled time. Some didn’t even want a list of jobs; they wanted to trust that everyone would just do what needed to be done when it needed doing. Others wanted to outsource all routine maintenance. Since Jim was willing to organize the work and believed that a set time was the best alternative, he said that was the way it would be done. No one would be forbidden to mop floors or clean bathrooms anytime they were in the mood, but the common house would be cleaned every two weeks on Saturday morning from 10:00 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. There was grumbling about dictators, lack of consensus, and rigidity that took months to calm down, but in the meantime, the common house was clean. Every two weeks, a team of six to eight adults plus a few children work like busy bees through a standard list of prioritized tasks. On weeks when fewer people show up, the low-priority tasks don’t get done, but if extra people show up, the cleaning goes into high gear.To mop the floor, they pick up all the tables and chairs and take REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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them out of the dining room. One week, I looked over the balcony to see all the common house furniture in our piazza.Another week, all the rugs were sitting in the sun being scrubbed and hosed down. Rather than worrying that our common house will be cluttered and dirty, I now worry that everything will wear out from cleaning!

Takoma Village landscaping during a workday PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ERIC MENDELSOHN

The satisfaction that everyone feels about having a clean common house and the good feelings the cleaners have about their interactions with each other while cleaning have proven over time that having a regularly scheduled work group is best for completing repeated, well-defined tasks. In addition to commitment, moving forward with a task in cohousing often requires personal chutzpa. I spend a few minutes several times a week picking up clutter and straightening furniture and sofa pillows in the common house.While it is now recognized as a “job,” no one gave me permission to do this. I started because I believe a messy space just gets messier and a clean space sets a standard that others unconsciously absorb.When things get too bad, I send out e-mails on how I will address them.“Dishes left from last week’s potluck are on the beverage counter. Those still there on Monday go on the Take It Or Leave It Table” (our version of a thrift shop). “Social capital,” a sociological term for the ability and commitment of group members to work well together, is essential in cohousing.We have forty-three households sharing the costs of community amenities D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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such as green space, a group kitchen and dining room, laundry room, exercise room, music room, office, workshop space, hot tub, gardens, and parking. In a commercially viable condominium, these would require the financial support of 400 households.This difference has to be offset with resident labor or our monthly fees would be much greater than those of comparable condominiums. It is a great relief when a person settles into a job that seems to fit their temperament, that they enjoy doing, and that we need done. Herb does the nightly security check of the common house doors and windows, an important task since about half our units are accessible via these doors. Herb’s paranoia level is higher than most, so he inspects all the doors and windows on three floors each night. Before Herb took over, our e-mail list was clogged with reports on who was or was not checking what. It was a huge job requiring seven people plus back-ups. Now the job is done in less than half an hour a day. One way or another, the work does get done.When I begin feeling desperate, usually about how long a process takes, I remember that in cohousing, more than any other place I have lived, things do get done, eventually.

Building the brick piazza at Sunward PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

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Let Cohousing Put You in the Driver’s Seat Mary Kraus, Pioneer Valley Cohousing, Amherst, Massachusetts This little tale first appeared in Cohousing Magazine. When I asked Mary’s permission to use it in the book, she wrote back, “My office is now in the ‘home-office building’ at our community, so I have a 600-foot walking commute to work rather than a three-mile bike or bus ride. My version of rush hour is running into numerous neighbors on the way to the office and being delayed by the conversations.” A nice problem to have! —D. W.

I’ve often accused myself of having what I like to call “car denial.” It’s true.As an environmental type, I don’t really like the idea that to get from point A to point B, I use a vehicle that spews nasty stuff into the air. I sometimes like to forget that I own such a monster, and, in fact, since I’ve moved into cohousing, that’s been easier since I’m three miles from my office and on a bus line. One Thursday afternoon, I drove up to Greenfield on business. It so happened that I also needed to return to Greenfield the next morning. Around five o’clock, after the day’s business was complete, I was in the office of one of my cohousing neighbors, Laura.“Too bad we can’t carpool home together,” she said. “Oh, well, we can,” I said, seeing a fortuitous opportunity for good company and reduced pollution. I said,“I need to come back to Greenfield in the morning, so I’ll just leave my car here and take the bus up tomorrow.”And so we rode home together. An hour or so later, I was in my kitchen, getting ready to go to a gathering I’d planned to attend that evening.“Now, let’s see, I guess I’ll go down to the common house and buy some leftovers from yesterday’s meal, then head off to Pelham. … Wait! I don’t have my car here!” The stuck feeling lasted less than a minute. I looked out my window to the other houses in the surrounding community to see whose lights were on and thought,“Now who would feel okay about loaning out their car?” First, I tried Karen and Ernie across the way from me. Sure enough, Karen handed me the keys, so I headed down to the common house for D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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my quick dinner of leftovers, and on the way I ran into Tina.“You won’t believe this,Tina,” I said.“I forgot I was going out again tonight and left my car up in Greenfield.”“Oh, you can borrow ours,” she offered. I thanked her but explained that I was all set. A little later, I climbed in Karen and Ernie’s car, found the ignition, and turned the key. … Nothing happened.The battery seemed to be dead. I ran up to Karen, explained that the car was having problems, said thanks anyway, and ran off to Tina’s house. I had left myself plenty of time, but now I was afraid I might be late.Tina wasn’t there. I went next door to Laura’s house.At least she knew the first half of my story, having given me the ride home, and who was over there having dinner? Tina! I began to explain my new situation and got two offers of car keys before the words were even out of my mouth. I took Laura’s.“Three cars at my disposal within the space of less than an hour!” I mused.“I seem to be surrounded by generous friends.”

It Takes a Village to Raise a Mother Elaine Marshall Fawcett, Former Member of Cascadia Commons, Portland, Oregon It’s not hard to tell that Elaine is a writer. There’s a literary sparkle in this soul-searching yet humorous piece about motherhood and cohousing. Though Elaine’s family recently moved to a larger house out of cohousing, she often returns to Cascadia for meals, writing groups, and general hanging out. —D. W.

This summer, my friend Claire and I were sitting on the grass at the park, talking, while our three-year-old daughters played.When the two girls began throwing cedar mulch at each other, I asked my daughter to stop. “Why can’t they throw mulch?” my friend Claire asked.“It’s not going to hurt anyone, is it?” She was right, but I knew that back at the cohousing community, throwing mulch would ruffle some feathers. Even though we weren’t there, I was parenting for the community, to keep things consistent for my daughter, and that’s when I knew cohousing had gotten into my blood. It hasn’t been easy evolving into a “communitarian”— REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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those moms on Oprah complaining about their lonely lives don’t know how easy they have it. Busting out of my cocoon is hard work sometimes, especially since I have children. When I first learned about cohousing on the Internet, I was living in a rural village in the Swiss Alps. It may sound ideal, but it was one of the most numbing periods of my life. I was the new mother of a baby in an expensive country where the stores always seemed closed, where it almost always rained, and where, because of the language barrier, my hardworking husband was my only source of adult conversation. Every morning when I woke up, I promised myself I only had to make it until the end of the day without collapsing into depression. I did this for almost two years. Which is why when the chance came to live at Cascadia Commons when we returned to the States, I all but held a gun up to my husband’s head to make it happen. I was pregnant with my second child while my firstborn was charging, horns down, through her twos.The cohousing Web sites and Listservs offered me a lonely mother’s Utopia: in cohousing, the children run around together in a safe, car-free environment, giving moms a breather.There’s ample opportunity for casual conversation with (English-speaking!) neighbors, and arranging free child care with a neighbor is usually a breeze.All of that, and so much more, are true. I have lived in cohousing for slightly less than a year and on most days—such as when my daughter runs off to a neighbor’s, leaving my house blissfully silent, or when somebody takes the baby so I can clean, or when I’m hanging out on a porch commiserating with other mothers while the kids play—I can’t imagine living any other way. But the cohousing literature doesn’t warn of the pitfalls and challenges.There have been times that I have put my head in my arms and wished I could turn back the clock to the day we signed the escrow papers and run pell-mell from this strangling experiment into the comfortable cocoon of a suburban tract home.We moved to Cascadia just as my daughter hit two-and-a-half and I was navigating stormy, uncharted territory in the world of discipline—in front of more than thirty watchful neighbors (or at least I think they’re watchful when I’m feeling bewildered and insecure). I also learned, to my occasional consternation, that when my child would spend ample time at other people’s houses, I had no control over how much television she watched, how much sugar she ate, or the fact that she would pick up D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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phrases such as,“I’m too fat” or “Shut up.”And, of course, the more people you live among, the more opportunities your child has to embarrass you. When someone is having a bad cohousing day, they use the word “fishbowl.”To me, cohousing communities seem like a modern-day version of the covered wagons circled up—to get to our cars, the common house, or the trash dump, we walk past each other’s porches and in full view of the rest of the community. For the most part, this is a good thing since bumping into one another and chatting is what makes community living fun. But there are days when, say, my three-year-old is screaming and writhing maniacally, I would rather not pass by almost two dozen occupied residences on my way home. Or other days, when, for example, I’m in the throes of hard labor and practically breaking windows with my screams, I would rather not be wheeled to the ambulance past all my neighbor’s houses. Cohousing presented an interesting birth scenario for us, especially since we planned on a home birth. Like all the natural birth stories I read, my birth was going to be this quiet, intimate experience with my husband and my daughter. I had a healthy pregnancy and then went into what felt like a normal labor.Then I hit transition, that stage right before the baby is born, where snakes grow out of women’s heads, and I started to scream.And scream.And scream. My daughter woke up to find me in the guest room, which was eerily lit with candles, leaning over a birthing ball and screaming bloody murder. She ran back to the bedroom and quivered under the blankets until my husband called our neighbor Pat at 3:00 A.M. to whisk her away.A short while later, my birth attendant was at my side coaching me through one birthing position after another, as if she were flipping through the pages of The Joy of Labor as we tried to get my ten-pound stuck baby unstuck. Early in labor, I felt the baby turn “sunny-side up” and knew I might be in for a difficult but doable labor, but when it was evident after many hours that no progress was being made, I threw in the towel and my husband called the hospital. The problem was, I couldn’t seem to stop screaming as blinding pain kept running me over like a stampeding herd of buffaloes on fire. Going to the hospital meant traveling a 100-foot stretch of sidewalk from our front door to the waiting ambulance on a Wednesday morning. I suggested we sneak around the back of the house through the wetlands to another street to be picked up, but was promptly vetoed.The REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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bemused paramedics waited until a contraction was over to get me on my way, but the contractions were coming too fast and I screamed all the way down the sidewalk. My upstairs neighbor, Judith, a labor-anddelivery nurse, assured me later that no one heard me. Even Minnette, my next-door neighbor, said she heard no screaming during the night. This leads me to believe that I am either unbelievably lucky or that my neighbors, wishing to preserve my dignity, are unbelievably kind.

Baby Raina bonds with a neighbor. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ELAINE FAWCETT

Even though the birth went differently than planned (except for the part where I brought home a perfect baby girl), living in cohousing soothed so many postpartum psychological wounds. Judith listened patiently and attentively as I replayed the scenario endlessly, searching for what might have led to a C-section. My neighbors organized and brought us a hearty meal every night for more than a week and took my toddler off for playdates.And my baby kept warm under a quilt of squares made by different members of the community. My birth experience left me feeling humiliated, defeated, and beaten, but the warmth and acceptance of my neighbors lifted me through it. I raised my first child through infancy in almost total isolation, but my new baby already has a surrogate “grammie” and a couple of “aunties.” Soon after birth, she was lighting up with recognition whenever they came around.When she hears the children playing in the living room during a community meal in the common house, she squawks like a stranded nestling until I or one of her aunties reunites her with the flock. As an only child, it is both warming and fascinating for me to ponder how growing up in community will shape my children. The shaping will come easily for them—the children here seem right at home in a community setting. For those of us like myself, however, who grew up as a suburban latchkey kid, getting used to group dynamics can D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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be a little bumpy.With so many generations and parenting styles in the mix, sometimes we moms have a lot to endure. I can’t stand it when people test my daughter on her numbers, colors, or letters, and yet, this seems to be the way many adults interacts with children. (Imagine someone saying to you,“Hello Jane. Can you tell me the square root of fortynine today?”) I bristle when my child is corrected in my presence or is told not to do something that I allow, such as riding her bike barefoot or eating something that fell on the floor. For the most part, thankfully, we moms are all on the same page when it comes to things such as television, sugar consumption, or supervision. Niggling differences, however, exist. Our family weaned itself off television (although I confess to occasionally popping a children’s DVD into my laptop), but my visions of a television-free childhood for my daughter vanished once we moved into cohousing.Watching movies at other kids’ houses is one of her favorite activities. For me, it’s not the movie content that bothers me so much as the passivity television induces.Another mom isn’t bothered by television itself, but carefully screens content and doesn’t allow her daughter to watch a vetoed movie at another house, and she’s pretty irked if it happens anyway. Our after school–care cooperative was especially complicated by the former tenants of one household where bad sitcoms, computer games, and junk food were available every day. Naturally, the older kids were drawn to zombie-out there. Concerted efforts by that day’s caregiver were successful at pulling the kids into other activities … sometimes. Raising a sugarfree child in community, or at least in our community, is like trying to put Winnie the Pooh on a diet while at a honey farm. I feel justified giving the kids something sweet when it’s the only sweet thing my daughter has had that day—then the tribe will move on to the next mom’s house for a repeat scenario, cheeky little devils.The nonparents know how to make friends with a child, of course—with Popsicles, fruit drinks, or chocolate-covered ice cream bars.The worst was our “progressive” Christmas party last year during which the party roamed from house to house and decadent desserts were the main course at almost every stop. By the fifth house, my daughter, sufficiently gorged, spit her mouthful of chewed M&Ms into the candy bowl in front of the entire party.We were new to the community and that wasn’t exactly the first impression I was after. My neighbor Sonja and I talked about putting out a request to the REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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community to not feed the kids sugar, but quickly concluded that would be quixotic. Plus, while they may get too much sugar on some days, on other days they can forage for strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, snap peas, green beans, and cherry tomatoes to their hearts content, right on our property. When it comes to supervising our kids, we cohousing moms may feel like cohousing was designed just for us. Getting used to keeping tabs on my kid at first, though, was like looking after a caffeine-addicted ferret. Community rules—um, I mean policies—say young children need supervision at all times when outdoors. Dutifully, I sat each day on the edge of a neighbor’s concrete porch holding my newborn until my butt went numb so I could watch my daughter on the common play structure. (Sadly, the common area is out of view of my kitchen window). Or I followed her hither and thither, all the while pleading uselessly for her to come play at home. Meanwhile, cooking, cleaning, and resting all went neglected. I went so far as to convince my husband to build a swing set in our tiny backyard to entice her to stay home, but around that time, I simply gave up and cut her loose to roam with the pack without me.“Let her go, she’ll be fine!” said the other moms who had agreed on the rule in the first place, and they were right.As my daughter sheds the remains of her babyhood, I have had to let her go, and because I live in cohousing, I can do that more fully than my suburban neighbors up the street can with their children. My child doesn’t have to play in the street, be confined alone to a fenced-in backyard, or have me arrange playdates for her.When she’s running with the tribe of six- to ten-year-olds, I know that the other adults will keep an eye on them, if for no other reason than to shoo them out of their gardens or coax them out of trees. All in all, on most days, I feel blessed to be raising my children in cohousing. It couldn’t be better for children, and happy children make for happy mamas. In fact, the single moms here kvetch that their children spend more time running with the gang than at home with their moms. (I’m a stay-at-home mom—you won’t hear me making that complaint.) Other days have me muttering,“What a royal pain in the butt” under my breath. On those days, I want to trade my two-bedroom condo for a large, secluded tract home where I don’t risk hearing a complaint or being asked to do something I don’t want to do whenever I walk to check my mail or take out the garbage. But I am growing up D A I LY L I F E I N C O H O U S I N G

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and learning such useful things as how to maintain affection for someone else’s child who’s bugging me, how to say no when someone wants me to say yes, or how to let community life rewrite the rules of motherhood.There are no modern-day Dr. Spocks penning pithy books on mothering in community. It’s like learning to skydive while in freefall: we’re figuring it out on the fly. The other night, while I was chatting with neighbors, I let my daughter get a little too hungry and a little too tired before getting her home. She went off like a time bomb and I ran with the double stroller to get her and my baby home; my husband was out of town. Shakily, I got my three-year-old indoors as she blistered my ears with screams and thrashed like an angry shark accidentally pulled onboard a fishing boat. My infant was still strapped into the stroller outside and I panicked that she’d be terrified alone in the dark.“How am I expected to handle this alone?” I whimpered as I wrapped myself tightly around my daughter to subdue her rage.When she calmed a little, I raced outside to get my baby before the cougars or wolverines beat me to it, and there stood my neighbor Lauri, who isn’t even a mom, holding my baby and swaying her back and forth. That’s when I realized I’m not expected to handle this alone and that conventional mothering flies in the face of nature. I realized that motherhood is too big a job for one person to handle and I need this small group of people, warts and all, that I call community.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

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Watch any group of people who share the same space—whether it’s a construction crew, dance troupe, or a chousing community— and you’ll see the gradual creation of culture, whether it’s intentional or not. “The way we do it” becomes familiar to each person as the group gradually takes on a collective identity. The culture of any cohousing neighborhood develops piece by piece, as a certain activity or celebration becomes a tradition or as the group survives a crisis. For example, when eight homes and the common house were burned to the ground at EcoVillage, in Ithaca, New York, you can bet that event became part of the community culture. After a certain recipe is served and savored a number of times, it becomes a cohousing group’s favorite common meal, getting larger attendance than any other; it becomes a tradition. After the first snowstorm of the season, a group tunes up its snow-shoveling procedures to make sure elderly neighbors’ sidewalks are shoveled first. And when a neighbor wins some major award or takes an admirable stand in local politics, that, too, becomes a thread in the neighborhood culture because “she’s one of us.” Some neighborhoods ski, camp, or bicycle together and others

have annual retreats, as in Laura Fitch’s story. Yet, while Pioneer Valley seems unanimous in their enthusiasm for the annual retreat, there are sometimes differences of opinion about the nature of celebrations, traditions, and rituals. For example, one writer on the national Listserv commented that when he facilitates a group, he always has an opening exercise or activity—a spirit-lifting, fun game that sparks peoples’ enthusiasm and gets them doing something together. However, another cohouser responded that she loathes these exercises and finds them to be a bad way to focus people on issues. “Different strokes for different folks” is particularly true in cohousing, where individuality is well respected. However, there’s the additional challenge of syncopating the strokes without squelching individuality in order to make sure the community is rowing in the same direction. This requires a culture with a flexible, expandable membrane, able to accommodate individual skills, opinions, and passions without sidetracking the group’s guiding mission. All cohousers will agree that after the hard work of creating and maintaining a neighborhood, we deserve to celebrate a little. At Harmony Village, we’ve had some very memorable weddings, birth blessings, progressive dinners, photograph parties, gatherings, garden parties, and other fiestas. Some of the most memorable occasions are simply spontaneous gatherings on the walkway or common green when someone has big news or when spring supercharges everyone’s energy. Someone says, “I was just going to have a glass of wine, do you want to join me?” and, within half an hour, six or seven neighbors are sharing stories at the tables in front of the common house. As a neighborhood culture becomes richer and more resilient, the individuals in it have access to a wider network of skills, friends, and experience. They feel part of something larger than themselves. If the group continues to create memories and traditions and enhances its natural and physical assets, it’s anybody’s guess how long it will endure as a neighborhood. As an over-the-top gardener who’s helped shape the community garden, I hope the garden and orchard will remain thriving elements of the neighborhood culture for centuries. In that time frame, we’ll learn what varieties grow best here and even develop our own varieties. We’ll REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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create harvest festivals, maybe Harmony Chardonnay, educational opportunities, and, most importantly, a garden soil that teems with life and health. Since our neighborhood is designed for cooperative living and since the houses are well built, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Harmony community garden is still thriving five to six generations from now. In the year 2155, someone may say, “We’ve had water rights in our watershed for at least 150 years, and as far back as anyone can remember, we’ve been selling pesto, salsa, Cheshire Catnip, and horseradish sauce at the local farmers’ market.” When a neighborhood becomes a culture, individuals still come and go, though less rapidly than in conventional neighborhoods. But, like a well-designed ship, the culture remains intact, gliding into the future with its own identity. —D. W.

Yee-haw! PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WONDERLAND HILL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

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The Annual Retreat Is Here! Laura Fitch, Pioneer Valley, Amherst, Massachusetts It’s Friday evening of our annual retreat and the anticipation mounts. We’ve dusted off our candle lanterns and we wait by the door, listening for the drum.The steady rhythmic beat penetrates the night, originating in the common house and working its way up the path. Someone lights the candles of the small group huddled in front of the first house.Then they move along, stopping at each cluster of neighbors to light more candles.

Dawn over Pioneer Valley PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE APRIL

The procession grows in size and we join it midway around the loop back to the common house. Other than the drum, this is supposed to be a silent ritual, but the children whisper and run excitedly to the front of the “parade.” By the time we reach the courtyard, close to 100 candles flicker in the darkness.We enter the common house and form a circle in the great room. So begins another Fall Retreat Weekend, the community event of the year. After a few words and songs, the opening ritual ends and the slide show begins.We quickly line up the chairs, and the children race for the floor pillows and couches; everyone is eager to see their own faces on the big screen. REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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The retreat celebrates each year we live together in cohousing, and the slide show competes with the Saturday night talent show as the high point of the weekend.We’ve seen Janice and Mike and Rebecca scouring the community for last-minute shots.We’ve spent the year imploring them to run and get their cameras at each community event that we knew warranted documentation.To be honest, we’ve each worried that we would be the only one left out of the show.The adults wax nostalgic about the first slide show that launched this tradition. It all started with Janice early in our cohousing history.With thirtytwo households, it was a daunting prospect for a shy woman to try to get to know everyone. Janice had the idea that if she took a picture of each and every one of us, she could make the connections she wanted. Her vision included sharing her pictures in a slide show for our second annual retreat. She certainly didn’t expect a standing ovation, and I can still see her covering her face in embarrassment when we applauded her—but it wasn’t just her we were applauding, it was also ourselves. She’d given us a view of ourselves and we looked great! There were pictures of us playing, working, and eating together. There were pictures of children of all ages taking care of each other.We were young and old, smiling into the camera, looking for all the world like we loved each other, took care of our community, and even had time to goof around.And there was Tommy—my Tommy—four months old, sitting in the grass with a big straw hat.We could all see that our village was doing its job in raising him to be what he would ultimately be: a happy child, now seven years of age. Each subsequent slide show has documented his and everyone’s growth. Over the years, the slide show has grown from a single carousel put to the music of one song (“Give Yourself to Love”) to a digitally enhanced show with many songs—funny, sad, and thoughtful—created by a team of photographers. It has truly become something to look forward to all year long as a celebration of our love of each other, our beautiful land, our growing children, and our accomplishments. The No Talent Show usually includes a range of talent from none to professional, with highlights such as The Cohettes, who sang “Additions” last year to the tune of Fiddler on the Roof’s “Tradition”—a spoof on the many changes and additions that have happened over the years and our somewhat controversial “design-review process.” Cross-dressing is a festivity that’s growing in number of participants every year—both men C R E AT I N G A N E I G H B O R H O O D C U LT U R E

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and women. It’s always good for a laugh. Dancing is part of the No Talent Show every year too.The audience dances along with eleven-year-old Jara Nachbar and her friends performing the “Macarena,” and this year, we saw some fancy moves by the women and teen girls taking Latin dancing classes. Our retreat has grown, not diminished, in importance over the years. Typically, almost every household participates for most of the weekend, unlike our monthly meetings that rarely attract more than about thirty participants. Like a holiday, the retreat happens at the same time each year—the first weekend in November—and we are reminded of this enough in advance to keep the weekend open.The retreat is how we celebrate ourselves and our accomplishments and how we continue to define our community and our vision in a renewing way. Nothing short of a funeral or a wedding would be important enough to keep me away.

Celebrating a Wedding at Greyrock Commons Renate G. Justin, Greyrock Commons, Fort Collins, Colorado What greater proof of community can there be than neighbors celebrating the great moments of their lives right in the neighborhood? For a few hours, everything seems bigger than life, and, even when things go back to normal, they are never really quite the same. —D. W.

Explosive joy at Greyrock! The community resembles an animated village of elves helping in Santa’s workshop, or an ant heap, with people running in all directions.The day is unusually gray and cold, causing many apprehensive glances skyward. Is the rain—or snow—going to hold off? This is the first wedding day this community has shared— we’ve had births, a death, but no wedding. Two or three months ago, in one of our business meetings, our friends Bob and Marilyn announced their intention to get married in the common house on this day.The place where we endlessly meet together to come to consensus on such issues as should we have chickens? (yes) and should we construct more garages? (no) will now become the place REINVENTING COMMUNITY

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where two people reached a very intimate consensus, celebrated by the community. Today, everyone participates in preparing the wedding.The walks are swept, and as soon as one neighbor puts down the broom, the groom himself picks it up to perfect the job.The planters that will decorate the porch of the common house are set in place and the garlands tied up.Three days ago, the women and children in the community had a party and made wreaths and garlands for the ceremony. Two very talented women in the neighborhood are in charge of preparing the food for the wedding.A message is sent out over our community Listserv:“We need platters,” and magically they appear in the common house kitchen.A call for round porch tables results in a flurry of activity as they are set up in the common house dining room to accommodate the 100 expected guests, community members, and the families and close friends of the bride and groom.The decorating committee feels the need for a curtain to divide the kitchen from the dining area. Immediately, the children gather brightly colored leaves from the small trees we planted four years ago around the village green, and the grandmothers sit down with needle and thread and sew the leaves onto the burlap divider.The four little daughters of the cooks get underfoot and one of our teenagers volunteers to look after them until the ceremony starts.All help; no one is left out. As the hour of three approaches, we see for the first time that the men actually own ties, and the women, high heels! The little ones proudly display their Sunday suits and dresses. Some of the men help outside guests find parking places and soon the congregation assembles on the common house porch, most of us wearing our ski jackets and hiding long johns beneath our skirts. Last-minute installation of propane heaters does not warm us, but the spirit of the crowd and the good humor does.We all feel sorry for the bride, who, in her bronze-colored silk skirt and blouse (no coat!), shivers but survives. The littlest children, wearing wreaths they made, bring the garlands. Two of our neighbors, gifted musicians, play the fiddle and flute.All of us feel proud that we were able to transform our common house porch into a sacred space. Buddhists, Jews, and agnostics all share in the happy occasion, as do Asian, white, and black people.As a group we’ve bonded, and visitors feel welcome in the spiritual community that envelops us this cold afternoon.A poem from the thirteenth-century poet Rumi is read: C R E AT I N G A N E I G H B O R H O O D C U LT U R E

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May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day in paradise. May this marriage be a sign of compassion, a seal of happiness here and hereafter. As soon as the rings are exchanged, we escape into the warmth of the common house—a festive, transformed area we hardly recognize, beautifully decorated with gourds, grasses, and tall, multicolored sunflowers.The food delights the eye as well as the taste buds.Toast follows toast, and the mood is one of celebration, not only of the wedding, but of our being together.We were strangers five years ago, but we are valued and loved friends now.

Bob and Marilyn exchange vows and rings. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NANCY DALE

The only tenet for cohousing is that we will not exclude anyone who wishes to live here, who seeks community.We have no beliefs that we have to accept; we only have to respect each other and our various talents. Dancing and singing lasts into the evening. Meanwhile, those of us a bit too old and stiff to twirl and bow help clean up.The out-of-town guests return with their hosts to the community homes in which they have been invited to stay.At the end of the evening, we feel very close to our neighbors and friends, we have celebrated the newlyweds and our own connectedness, our coming and joining together in a community.

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Winter Solstice: Warm and Cold Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood, Snohomish County, Washington; Sandy Thompson, Heartwood, Bayfield, Colorado; Saorise Charis-Graves, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado

Rob Sandelin’s Story It is the season of shadows, the lowest sun of the year, the shortest day. All is quiet in the woods, as if the place were asleep for the winter. But life still stirs. Under the drifts of fallen alder and maple leaves, the tiny cobwebs of mycelia, the main part of the mushroom, expand each day; the many white branches secreting enzymes that will dissolve nitrogen and other nutrients and pull them into the surrounding trees.The trees trade photosynthetic sugar to the mushrooms wrapped around their root tips, and in exchange, the mushrooms send nutrients, freshly decomposed, back to the tree. A lone deer wanders through our woods, nibbling on the dainty lichens that the windstorms of winter have dropped.This time of year is the only time the upper-branch lichen gardens are available. Lichens seem to be a favorite winter food of the deer; the forest trails are fresh with tracks. This is the time of elfish gardens.Tiny mosses send out miniature palm tree–like caps, and at the base of trees, you might find tiny, brightorange mushrooms—most likely Hygrocybe—that are like tiny ornaments against the fuzzy moss. On a stump, you can find witches butter, an odd, gelatinous squiggle of orange. In the darkest part of the forest, where the trees are close and nothing green grows, look for dead man’s fingers—tiny, black fingers with white tips reaching out of the ground. The winter stillness is complete, the wind sighs through the trees, and a few needles rain down, followed by the twirling helicopters of the hemlock seeds, the final few remnants shaken out of their cones.Then the stillness is broken by the “dee dee dee” of a merry band of chickadees that enliven the forest with their acrobatics.They are part of a wave of birds that passes by, joined in this avian cleanup crew by tiny, tinkly voiced kinglets and a brown creeper. In the distance, a resident C R E AT I N G A N E I G H B O R H O O D C U LT U R E

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pileated woodpecker, the largest of its kind in North America, proclaims its connection to this forest, and the clear “kewww” of the flicker adds to the thin, winter chorus.A Douglas squirrel scampers out to see what all the noise is about, then drops down to a lower branch and carefully scouts the forest before hopping over a fallen log or two to grab a cone from its fall harvest stash. The quiet world of the winter forest resumes its slow, sleepy pace, drifting languidly in and out of activity.As darkness descends, a small group of humans with candles enters the darkness and starts a small fire. They mumble strange tones, laugh, sing a tune, then depart.The flying squirrels cock their heads at the odd smell of candle and fire smoke, then go back to their nighttime business.The world of nature, so alive and vibrant, even in these dark, wet, and cold days, remains unknown by the humans who claim ownership.

Sandy Thompson’s Story It was 5:30 P.M. Children and adults scurried through the snow in the semidarkness on their way to the yurt in the woods.There was excitement and anticipation in the air.As I entered the yurt, it was dark except for candlelight, and it was quiet, even though it was filled with kids sitting in chairs circled around a spiral made of evergreens dotted with crystals, shells, and other sparkling items. In the center was a woman dressed in white, seated by a tall candle.When everyone was seated, a flute started to play, and one child at a time walked the spiral with an unlit candle in hand. When they approached the angel, their candle was lit, and then they walked outward with the light.They carefully set the candle down somewhere along the spiral to light the way for others. It was quiet except for the flute and the fire in the woodstove softly crackling.The faces around the spiral were filled with wonder.After everyone (including the adults) had a chance to walk to the center and return with the light, we all walked in the cold and darkness (except for the amazing moon) out of the woods and into the warm common house for a potluck.The potluck was followed by a solstice story told in the hearth room and a program of poems and songs put on by the children of Heartwood Homeschool Co-op.

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Saorise Charis-Graves’s Story Leaving the palindrome year of 2002 and bridging into our sixth year in Harmony Village, we created options. No “one-size-fits-all.”We’ve learned. Some of us want to dress up in fancy clothes and dance the night away. Some of us want thoughtful discussion of the larger issues in our lives and in the world. Some of us want the challenge of a 1,000-piece puzzle with two primary colors, one that is black, and an image that dares us with soft subtlety. We even created options in our rituals. On the solstice, a few of us walked our labyrinth in the light and warmth of day.We could see each other’s eyes, see the mesas and the foothills that surround us, see the trees reminding us of the wisdom of dormancy in the cold and dark.We celebrated the turning of the solar year, the return of the light, and were glad for the comfort of warm words and warm hands to hold our intentions for the coming year.We walked the circuits of the labyrinth, mindful of the energy of an almost-full moon, and we shared tears for the recent loss of one of our elders. His eighty-four-year-old widow walked with us because it was daytime, because it was warm enough for her to do so.And we were glad to be with her, to acknowledge that some seeds require a period of cold and dark to germinate.We are germinating remembrance and spending the time we have wisely.

Winter solstice labyrinth walk

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On New Year’s Eve, we lit up the labyrinth with paper-bag luminarias, a traditional decoration for Southwestern-style festivities.A crew of us assembled paper bags, sand, and tea lights. I added lanterns at each of the four directions and placed objects on the center stone to represent the directions, following teachings from Native Americans and other indigenous people. Eleven signed up, including me. I planned for eighteen participants.Twenty people showed up. Our labyrinth welcomed them all.As I explained the meaning of the directions and the objects in the center, fireworks erupted behind the mesa to the east. It was midnight, and it was perfect. Bundled in furry hats and mittens, long garments sweeping the ground, one sparkling skirt winking beneath a cuddly coat, the figures entered and turned with the circuits of the labyrinth and breathed as they placed their feet carefully on the uneven terrain, negotiating the narrow path marked by fistsized river rocks. I stood just outside the entrance, drumming in support of the walkers.At the center, each person took time to gather the objects that had been left for them, meditated on their meaning, and stood in a circle of silence for several minutes before walking out, retracing the circuit by which they had entered.At a turnaround point near the outside, each one stopped to leave an artifact of their personal intention in the care of the Ancestor Tree, an old and leafless sentinel of all that has come before us on this land. On the threshold of a new beginning, we blessed and released what we are ready to leave behind, we honored the wisdom and insight with which we have been gifted in the past year, we acknowledged what we will be creating in the time before us, and we reminded ourselves to balance the weightiness of our lives with the nurturing presence of fun and humor.

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Dancing Our Story PattyMara Gourley, Tierra Nueva, Oceano, California We close the book with PattyMara’s notes about an anniversary celebration in her community—and her friend’s remarkable photograph of it. What I like in this piece is the feeling that each community may continue to improve and evolve. It will be interesting to see what the next few decades will bring! —D. W.

We celebrated our fifth anniversary with a weekend of events.We kicked off the weekend with Friday Night Live, a variety/talent show that opened with the autumn equinox play “Persephone Returns!”The great turning of the year that we are marking with our equinox and solstice performances is a fine metaphor for our children growing up and our community maturing. Saturday morning, we gathered for a “fishbowl,” which gave each of us a chance to reveal what we liked about living here and how we would like to improve upon it:“It would be better if… .” (I scribed all the “better ifs” on a white pad and came up with forty-seven ideas for enhancing our community life.) The children were the first to sit in the center of the circle and speak, while the rest of us listened with deep attention.“It would be better if we had a tree house,” were Max’s first words, and he had complete consensus from the rest of the kids.When the kids were finished, we cycled through other small groups. Many provocative issues emerged, including work participation, parenting, and the needs of elders.A few hackles were raised, some tears shed, and hearts opened. On Sunday, I led an activity called Dancing Our Story out on the village green.After assembling everyone in a giant circle, we called out, “1988!” the year of the very first slide show gathering.The founding families walked to the center and joined hands to form a serpentine line.Then I called out the successive years. One by one, each household joined the dance in the order they had joined the community.The founding families slowly formed a spiral, growing closer and closer with each year. The newest member, an out-of-state person who hasn’t moved in C R E AT I N G A N E I G H B O R H O O D C U LT U R E

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yet, remarked,“In the twenty-four hours I’ve been at Tierra Nueva, what impresses me most is your dedication to one another.You may not like everyone or get along with everyone, but you are dedicated to each other’s well-being.” I’m too close to see this. From inside the looking glass of the community, I need to hear these observations from someone new, someone still outside and looking in, to reflect back to me how we are doing.After nearly ten years of dreaming up this wild adventure and five years of living here, I hear Tierra Nueva speaking through our newest neighbor.We are dedicated to one another.

Dancing our story at Tierra Nueva PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MAGDY FARAHAT

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RESOURCES

The Cohousing Association of the United States c/o WHDC 4676 Broadway, Second Floor Boulder, CO 80304 www.cohousing.org [email protected] (e-mail Listserv for ongoing conversations and information regarding cohousing)

Books Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. Kathryn McCamant, Charles Durrett, and Ellen Hertzman. Berkeley, Calif.:Ten Speed Press, 1993. Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities. Diana Leafe Christian. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2002. Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People. Hildur Jackson and Karen Svensson. Devon, United Kingdom: Green Books, 2002.

Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities. Jan Martin Bang. Edingburgh, United Kingdom: Floris Books, 2005. Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way. Jim Diers. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living. Charles Durrett. Berkeley, Calif.:Ten Speed Press, 2005. Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods. Dan Chiras and David Wann. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Press, 2003. Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model. Graham Meltzer, Ph.D.Victoria, British Columbia:Trafford Publishing, 2005. The Cohousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community. Chris ScottHanson and Kelly ScottHanson. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2004. The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to Sustainable Practices. Sarah James and Torbjörn Lahti. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishing, 2004. Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and Their Governments. Mark Roseland. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishing, 1998.

Pamphlet “Head, Heart, and Hands: Lessons in Community Building.” Shari Leach, Wonderland Hill Development Company.Available from whdc.com.

DVD Designing a Great Neighborhood: Behind the Scenes at Holiday. David Wann. 54 min.Available on DVD from Sustainable Futures Society (www.sustainablecolorado.org) as well as Bullfrog Films (www.bullfrog films.com).

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CONTRIBUTORS

Jenise Aminoff is a freelance writer who lives, works, plays, sings, and gardens at Cambridge Cohousing, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband,Alex, and daughter,Annelise. Bryan Bowen lives in Wild Sage Cohousing, in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Dale, and son, Elijah. Bowen is an architect who explores how we can live and work while treading more lightly upon our Earth in beautiful, healthy environments. He can be reached at 303-443-3629 or [email protected]. Brian Burke has been spearheading recycling projects, including job site recycling during Quayside’s construction (51 percent diversion from landfill; highest in the region) and producing compost for our urban organic gardens.This is a fine counterpart for his work teaching and performing whirling dervish meditation. His Web site is www.geocities.com/open_secret_arts.

Saoirse Charis-Graves lives in Harmony Village Cohousing, in Golden, Colorado, and plays at being an eclectic woman of passion and soul. She is a retired school psychologist, part-time computer geek, sometimewriter-poet-singer-dancer, and lover of islands and spiritual depth of any flavor.

Marilyn paints on her Harmony Village porch.

Steve Einstein lived for many years on a kibbutz before compromising and moving to Two Acre Wood Cohousing, in Sebastopol, California, with his wife, Karen, and two children, Koby and Elsa. He is a hospice nurse who enjoys excessive newspaper reading, hanging around a fire pit, latenight ping-pong in the common house, and the company of his cohousing neighbors. Silvine Marbury Farnell is a retired literature professor who lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband, Stewart, making money by freelance copyediting and pursuing her passion for leading people deeper into poetry in every way she can think of. She can be reached at [email protected]. Elaine Marshall Fawcett is the mother of two, a homeschooler, and a freelance writer. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Her family outgrew their small dwelling at Cascadia Commons Cohousing, in Portland, and moved a couple of miles away to a regular house in a regular neighborhood. She still comes to Cascadia for meals, writing groups, and general hanging out.

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Laura Fitch is a principal with Kraus-Fitch Architects, Inc., a firm specializing in cohousing and ecological design.The company was named one of the top ten green-building firms of 2005 by Natural Homes and Gardens magazine. She is a resident of Pioneer Valley Cohousing, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the first cohousing community to be completed on the East Coast. She has worked with numerous cohousing communities nationwide. Edee Gail is a writer, musician, performing artist, ecological activist, actress, and adventurer. She lives in Harmony Village Cohousing, in Golden, Colorado. She traveled around the world by herself twice while working for an airline and continues to travel while performing her onewoman show,“More Than Music.” She can be reached at [email protected]. PattyMara Gourley paints silk, fuses glass, and throws pots at DolphinSmile Studio in Halcyon, California, a short walk from her home in the Tierra Nueva Cohousing community, in Oceano.The farm that borders her studio and home is now pesticide-free, providing succulent vegetables, glorious berries, and luminous flowers to all of its surrounding neighbors (who are no longer at risk!). Katharine Gregory has worked as a teacher and an editor and enjoys writing fiction and nonfiction in her home office. She has lived at Greyrock Commons, in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband, daughter, and various pets since 1996. Karen Hester is an events organizer who maintains an e-mail list for folks interested in retrofit cohousing in the East Bay Area. (To subscribe, please visit her Web site: www.hesternet.net/.) Active in her community, Hester organizes local street fairs and is helping to renovate a nearby arts center called Studio One, which is run by the City of Oakland. Renate G. Justin lives in Greyrock Commons, in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is a retired family physician who writes essays for both professional and lay journals. Community living has been a passion as well as a joy for her since early childhood.

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Grace Kim is an architect and cofounder of Schemata Workshop, an architectural collaborative in Seattle,Washington. She received a grant from the University of Washington to research cohousing in Denmark during the fall of 2004. Mary Kraus is a principal with Kraus-Fitch Architects, Inc., a firm specializing in cohousing and ecological design.The company was named one of the top ten green-building firms of 2005 by Natural Homes and Gardens magazine. She has worked with twenty communities nationally, using a consensus-based participatory-design process. She has been living at Pioneer Valley Cohousing, in Amherst, Massachusetts, since its completion in 1994. Jim Leach is the president of Wonderland Hill Development Company, the largest developer of cohousing communities in the country. He recently made the decision to live in cohousing and is a member and the developer of Silver Sage Village, in Boulder, Colorado. Leach and Wonderland’s philosophy is “Sustainability through Community.” www.whdc.com. Virginia Lore is a mother of two and writes about counterculture, personal authenticity, and alternative lifestyles. She has had her work published in Communities, The Cohousing Journal, and in Sacred Stones (an anthology edited by Maril Crabtree).You can also find more of her work at www.mysticsavage.com. Her email address is [email protected]. Charles B. Maclean, Ph.D., is a founding member of Trillium Hollow Cohousing, in Portland, Oregon. He is the founder and chief committed listener of Philanthropy Now.

Grant McCormick is a resident and founding member of Sonora Cohousing, in Tucson,Arizona. He works as a campus planner at the University of Arizona and has a professional background in geographic information systems, landscape architecture, and urban planning.

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Graham Meltzer, Ph.D., is an architect, scholar, and architectural photographer who consults, researches, and lectures in the fields of environmental and social architecture, communal housing, and communalism. He is the author of Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model and is published widely in architectural and sociological journals. Rick Mockler is the current president of the Cohousing Association of the United States and a resident of Muir Commons Cohousing community. He works with Wonderland Hill Development Company to promote cohousing and can be reached at [email protected]. Lynn Nadeau has been part of RoseWind Cohousing, in Port Townsend, Washington, since 1989 and is a supporting member of the nascent Port Townsend EcoVillage project.A peace and social justice activist, Nadeau has a particular interest in the Middle East. She can be reached via the contact link at www.rosewind.org. Su Niedringhaus married into cohousing and Harmony Village almost three years ago. She works as a theatre artist and educator and uses innovative theatre techniques to explore human interaction and problem solving. Niedringhaus indulges in music and amateur anthropology.

Garage-raising at Sunward PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL MCINTYRE

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Ellen Orleans is a creative writing teacher and the author of five books of queer humor and social commentary.A Quaker Universalist, she’s currently writing a performance piece about Colorado’s nuclear missiles. When not photographing Wild Sage’s pet population or reorganizing the common house refrigerator, Orleans is often off birding, hiking, or watching waterfalls. She can be reached at [email protected]. Franny Osman writes and drives kids around in Acton, Massachusetts, though she is working to create a local bus service to lessen the latter. She loves living in New View Cohousing with her husband, three kids, and dog.

Duet PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DALE CRANDALL-BEAR

Julie Rodwell is a former member of Winslow Cohousing who continues to promote community wherever she goes. Jane Saks is a management consultant, group facilitator, and occasionally a photographer, artist, and writer. She lives and laughs with her daughter in New View Cohousing community.The two like to travel together to exotic lands. Rob Sandelin lives with family and friends at the Sharingwood Cohousing community, in Snohomish County,Washington.You can reach him at [email protected].

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Dana Snyder-Grant is a social worker and a freelance writer. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1981. Snyder-Grant lives at New View Cohousing, in Acton, Massachusetts. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Elizabeth Stevenson is a founding member of one of the oldest cohousing communities in North America, Southside Park Cohousing, in Sacramento, California, and still finds ample reason to question her sanity for that long-ago decision. She and her husband have two children, of whom she is sure will thank her later. She teaches computer graphics programs in the computer lab of her local community college. Stella Tarnay is an urban planner and a writer based in Washington, D.C. From 2000 to 2002, she was the editor of CoHousing Magazine. Mac Thomson lives with his wife, Sandy, and children, Helen,Al, and Joe, in Heartwood Cohousing where he enjoys adventures in nature, sports of all kinds, photography, family life, and community. Sandy Thomson lives and plays at Heartwood Cohousing, in southwest Colorado, with her husband, Mac, and their three kids. Her passions include homeschooling, gardening, belly dancing, hiking, rafting, watching snow fall, and community. She can be reached at sandy@heartwood cohousing.com Sharon Villines is editor and publisher of Building Community: A Newsletter on Coops, Condos, Cohousing, and Other New Neighborhoods, which is designed to help communities self-manage their facilities, convert buildings to communities, and develop inclusive, transparent governance systems. She lives in Takoma Village Cohousing, in Washington, D.C.

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David Wann is a writer, editor, filmmaker, and speaker about sustainable lifestyles. His books include Affluenza, Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods, and The Zen of Gardening in the High and Arid West. Documentaries about reinventing community include Designing a Great Neighborhood, Creating Communities That Work, Smart Growth, Placemakers, and Building Livable Communities. He can be reached at 303-216-1281.

Betsy explains how it will look in Takoma Village. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ERIC MENDELSOHN

Deborah Warshaw, once a landscape architect, is now a high school teacher in Fort Collins, Colorado, at PIONEER School for Expeditionary Learning. She lives with her husband, John, and two daughters, Maya and Hannah, at Greyrock Cohousing community, where she gardens—when she has the time. Matt Worswick of Synergy Design specializes in energy-efficient and environmentally responsible residential design. He has designed or codesigned six cohousing communities in Colorado and is a founding member and “burning soul in residence” at the award-winning Harmony Village. He can be reached at 303-278-1880 or Matt@synergydesign co.com.

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