Can a farmer take a holiday in the summer one year and go to Europe/wherever for a month? Yes, if they are a member of a cohousing Farming Community. Does each neighbor in a neighborhood need a
tractor or
lawn mover or chainsaw or pickup truck? Not if they are a member of a common-purpose cohousing community. How long will it take you to build a shed for
chickens? Not long if members of your community do it together. Is it easy to trade places with someone else in the world for a month and
experience a different culture and country? Pretty easy if both families are members of a co-housing community and can swap homes and work for a different look at life for an agreed upon period of a week or two, a month, even six months. What do you do with your dog, cat and canary, not to mention
chickens and
rabbits, if you have to suddenly attend a family event far away? They can stay with and be cared for by your neighbors if you live in a cohousing community (and you will be able to do that for your neighbors when they need it as well).
I am on the Planning Board in my small town and we are trying to rezone so that a "cluster housing" option is available for plots of more than 10 acres so a group of homeowners can have a main house, some small personal homes clustered in one place and reserve the rest of the land for
permaculture or group farming, with the addition of a couple businesses perhaps like a woodshop, seminar spaces, pottery, food products such as jam,
honey and candles, chutney, goat
milk and cheese, eggs, baked goods or jerkey, and a café/shop or WHATEVER the group chooses to create. This would be similar to owning a condo where one owns the interior of one's own space and then is a member of the association that owns all the land (or you could arrange it as a co-op where members own shares of all of it determined by the square feet of their living space). There are charter rules and if someone wants to
sell, the association has to approve the new buyer as part of the sales process. The small homes or tiny houses would not need entertaining space, laundries, or much of a kitchen as that would be shared at the main house and in the ones I've visited when I lived in Washington State, the members would eat dinner together about 4 times per week with members rotating on the cooking team. The kids would be kind of like a tribe and the members might form small groups or pairs for support and activity purposes. There might be a music room/library for get togethers and communal relaxing time and meetings. Some of these have a bunkhouse for visitors who come to work for a while and stay. That could also be housing if the community offers seminars or seminar space. Members (by agreement with community) can choose to do work hours, or work in town/from home and contribute financially, or a mixture. Elders, youngsters, etc. can be valued parts of the multigenerational community. If there's one artist, they can contribute
art workshops for the community, etc. My question is, does anyone have this going on or know of good examples so I can present some examples to my Planning Board members so we can get the idea? Around Seattle the land cost is higher, but there are plenty of places where it's lower, so it could work for all kinds of starter investments, but that has to be thought of when choosing the place to do it... also the zoning laws, whether they permit cluster housing or not... currently our town voted it down about 15 years ago but I am not sure why (yes, next step is to find out). Here is a random one in Washington State, where 10 years ago they had 17 cohousing communities (I only visited 2).
https://www.sunnysidevillagecohousing.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiAwKyNBhBfEiwA_mrUMk-gZSOTjbIcqQSGYnPFMW43WBBIiNpEB-bI4MVb0AkoOjVprx6hxhoCQIUQAvD_BwE
1
