‘Cohousing’--Modern Twist to ‘60s Dream

The first thing you notice is the cars. There aren’t any. At least not anywhere in sight. In a culture that worships its automobiles, the residents of Tierra Nueva have banished theirs to the perimeter of this fledgling village, leaving little room for garages, carports or even roads to clutter their five-acre rural enclave.

The next thing you notice is the children. There are lots of them. They are everywhere--scampering through the vegetable patch in the rain, wrestling in a nearby playroom, and helping set the dinner tables for a few dozen residents who regularly eat together.

Here amid the avocado orchards and strawberry fields of the Central Coast is the latest incarnation of a movement called “cohousing,” a concept that has spread with impressive determination to far-flung spots across the country over the last seven years and has attracted the recent endorsement of policymakers in Washington, D.C.

In about 50 self-styled villages created throughout North America--and dozens more in the works--proponents have sought to reestablish what they see as a lost sense of community by acquiring enough land to design and build their own neighborhoods from the ground up.

The homeowners typically enter into a loose-knit partnership to erect a few dozen stand-alone or duplex units that they parcel out among themselves. But the hub of each community is a large common house where residents can dine together a few times a week, leave their children in a play area or unwind in the library. Residents often are bound by a strong thread of ecological interests, with gardening, composting, off-site retreats and the like.

There are the inevitable drawbacks, of course. Making even the most basic decisions--like what color to paint the common house or whether to put a pool table in a recreation room--can take forever in a community committed to leaderless government by consensus. And residents admit that they do risk losing some privacy in a place where everybody knows your name.

But many say that the negatives are outweighed by the comfort of not having to worry about what to make the kids for dinner every night, or being able to borrow the neighbor’s car.

“A lot of the more mundane things in life are taken care of so we can enjoy life,” said Lloyd Walzer, a 35-year-old schoolteacher who has helped in the years-long development of the Oceano project, just south of San Luis Obispo, and plans to move into the complex soon with his wife and three children. “It mitigates the stresses.”

A New Spin on Commune Concept

If it all sounds like an alternative lifestyle for the 21st century family, it is designed to be. It amounts to a cross between life in a campus dorm and a commune. But “commune” is a word cohousing advocates like to avoid when explaining the concept to often skeptical outsiders.

“That conjures up Charles Manson or Jonestown. We don’t want to associate ourselves with that,” said Franb Ricceri, 40, one of the founders of the Oceano cohousing complex, who moved into the community with his wife and two children in September. “It’s not like the ‘60s. We’re reinventing the whole thing.”

Organizers are billing the Oceano complex, known as Tierra Nueva--or “New Land”--as the first cohousing community in Southern California. The claim is a bit of a geographical stretch, but the enthusiasm reflects the expansion of the concept beyond its California roots in the Bay Area and Northern California in the early 1990s.

Originating in Denmark in the 1970s, the cohousing movement has given rise to conferences, newsletters and associations across the United States. Organizers say the number of communities nationwide has doubled in the last year, and there are another 150 cohousing projects under development in 37 states.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has even taken notice. In a competition for innovation in home-building, co-housing communities in California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts and New York won six of the government’s 63 awards earlier this year.

“We think it’s an exciting and a healthy movement,” said Xavier de Souza Briggs, HUD’s deputy assistant secretary for policy development and research. “It’s interesting that it’s not only a cooperative housing movement, but it also happens to dovetail with environmental and energy-efficiency aims, and those are things we encourage.”

There may never come a time, Briggs acknowledged, when Americans are willing to give up altogether the stereotypical dream of the big, single-family home and the white picket fence.

But more and more, “people are thinking outside the box,” he said. “People want a wider set of choices, they want more sustainable living, they want to interact with neighbors, and tied to this is a sense of community lost. Cohousing is among the best expressions of the effort to recapture that. . . . It’s definitely a sub-market that’s growing.”

Cohousing communities have often started with a small group of friends looking for a different way of life. Private consultants have entered the field in the last few years, helping to guide the core group in finding ways to identify a site for construction and to finance, design and ultimately attract new members to their would-be neighborhood.

The concept has been a tough sell in places such as Los Angeles, where high real estate prices and a population always on the move have slowed its acceptance, said Lois Arkin, who has worked for years to promote social and environmental awareness through an “eco-village” she created in her Central Wilshire neighborhood.

The eco-village has made progress of late with the cohousing concept and is working to retrofit a 40-unit building in which residents can purchase homes in the next few years that will feature common living areas, potluck dinners and community gardening.

“People are interested in simplifying their lives,” Arkin said.

Development of the $4-million Oceano complex was anything but simple.

In fact, the community was one of the slowest cohousing projects in the country to be completed. It started nearly 10 years ago, after Ricceri saw a slide show on co-housing and began working with some friends to see if they could make it work.

A few families worked for the first few years on the project, struggling to find a site for the community, finance it and decide who would ultimately live there.

The big break came a few years ago when an elderly woman in the Oceano area learned of the group’s perseverance and agreed to donate five rural acres valued at more than half a million dollars.

Gurdun Grell’s motives in donating the land were simple. “They need it, and I had it,” she said. She was impressed by the group’s dedication to maintaining the area’s rural flavor. “I only want to do something good for the land. I love the trees and the hillside, and I want to see it left for the future,” she said.

Despite concerns raised by nearby homeowners, the plan jelled from there. Notices were put out through the cohousing network, meetings were held, and a Colorado consultant was brought in to help with development and construction. Eventually, homeowners were lined up for all but one of the 27 homes at the complex, which sold for $145,000 to $210,000 each.

All are equipped with kitchen, laundry and living areas.

About half the homeowners have moved into the newly completed complex over the last few months, with the rest expected by early next year as finishing touches are completed. Many have already known each other for years. Group dinners have started--everyone gets a turn at cooking and cleaning--and some homeowners spent one recent morning spreading mulch on the hillsides.

While homeowners say they have been inspired by the spirit of cooperation in matters such as cooking and cleaning, there have been a few minor skirmishes, particularly over two sensitive issues--the regulation of pets and where fences should be built.

But residents say they are intent on adhering to a guiding principle of cohousing: that in the nonhierarchical group, no decisions will be made without full agreement from everyone. If full agreement and compromise cannot be reached, they say, no decision will be made. That can make the decision-making process agonizingly slow at times, members say, but as one remarked: “It’s real democracy in action.”

Many of the homeowners have moved to the San Luis Obispo area solely because of the cohousing community after learning about it through word of mouth, in cohousing newsletters and advertisements, or by attending community meetings. They consider themselves “refugees” from places such as Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area and even Florida, where they say congestion, the cost of living and dislocation from their communities prompted them to seek a simpler and better way of life.

Extended Families

Ken Helphant, a 76-year-old psychologist, and his wife, Nancy, relocated from San Diego and just moved his in-laws from upstate New York into a unit next to theirs.

When he was growing up in New Jersey, Helphant said, “I remember my neighbors were my best friends.” In San Diego, “I knew one of my neighbors and the rest maybe I waved to, but there was no real connection. That’s what we’re trying to establish here.”

A case in point, Ricceri said, came when his car broke down recently. He figured he would have to rent a car to get to work at a mental-health program he manages, but a neighbor quickly offered to let him take his car instead. “It’s all about living in a community,” he said.

Tierra Nueva is a decidedly varied community, with a broad spectrum of ages, religions and interests. There are Christians, Jews and Sikhs. There are grandparents, new parents and bachelors. There are teachers, Peace Corps graduates, writers, a postal worker, a nuclear chemist, and even an audio expert who has analyzed the Nixon White House tapes.

One common theme, however, is a concern for things ecological.

In designing their homes, residents had the walls made with solar paneling to reduce heating needs. They outfitted the homes with four phone lines and other wiring to promote telecommuting. When they cut down avocado trees to build their homes, they used the wood to make kitchen tables. And they have big plans for the vegetable garden out back.

“I was extremely skeptical when I first heard about it,” admitted Michael Kaplan, 38, a TV writer with a wife and two young children. “It just ran counter to what I grew up with--the notion that you get yourself a nice house, maintain your privacy, and your neighbors are just the luck of the draw.

“But I’ve really warmed up to it,” he said. “I think of it as an intentional neighborhood. We’re building shared spaces, and we’re trying to make it work.”