Building a community, from the ground up
Frank and Stephanie Ricceri and Rich and Cecilia Lobdill, founding members of Tierra Nueva Cohousing in Oceano, Calif., learned that it takes more than just desire to build a community from the ground up.
Like other co-housing enthusiasts, the couples, who met in college, wanted to live in a community where they could share meals, life events and child-rearing with friends but weren’t sure how to go about it.
After attending a slide presentation by American co-housing pioneers Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett in 1988, it took 10 years and several failed land deals before their dreams were realized.
Key to their success was hiring Jim Leach, an experienced Boulder, Colo., co-housing developer. Leach became their partner in the enterprise, helping them solve the legal, financial and political obstacles they struggled with for years.
“Next to the difficulty of finding land, the biggest challenge in co-housing is being able to come together successfully as a community,” Leach said.
Participants must learn the art of consensus building, usually with a facilitator familiar with the communication process. Decisions about land sites, architecture, finances and cohesiveness as a community are all vital to the success of the project, Leach said.
Co-housing experts recommend a series of steps to help create a community:
* Attend a co-housing workshop to learn about the philosophy and feasibility of such a project.
* Start putting money aside to pay for feasibility studies, the design phase and developers’ costs, which can run as high as $30,000.
* Look for a site on which to build the community. This process is especially hard in Southern California, experts say, because vacant land is scarce. Hire a co-housing company to help. Some California co-housing communities are “in-fill” projects, i.e., converted industrial or commercial space.
* Hire an experienced co-housing developer to guide the project through the political, marketing, financial and other steps that often bog down the process.
* Get participants together for workshops to determine what they want for their community. Meet with a facilitator trained in consensus building.
* Design the site with an architect -- from housing units to gardens to a common house.
* Commit funds to the project, such as down payments for housing units.
Experts say that during the feasibility process, some members drop out but others step in.
From concept to construction, the process usually takes from two to four years, depending on the speed of the site acquisition.
“Often, you have to compromise,” said Neshama Abraham, a co-housing expert. “Participants find it’s more important to live in co-housing than get exactly what they want. They learn the art of expressing what they want, and hearing others’ needs too.”
-- Diane Wedner
