Alternative Housing for an Alternative Lifestyle

If you are some­one who is inter­ested in enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of extended travel, but don’t want to give up the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a ‘home-base’ then there is an alter­na­tive hous­ing style that might be of inter­est to you — cohousing.

Cohous­ing is not the same as co-operatives, where apart­ment build­ings are owned by the res­i­dents who have their own indi­vid­ual apart­ments or houses.

Cohous­ing is more like a cross between a com­mune and a co-op.  It’s like a tra­di­tional vil­lage that is owned by its res­i­dents, only not quite.

With co-housing a group of indi­vid­u­als get together, buy a prop­erty and either ren­o­vate or build to suit their pur­poses. Every indi­vid­ual or fam­ily has a pri­vate apart­ment or house in the vil­lage that they use as their space. They also share com­mon spaces, facil­i­ties and amenities.

Shared spaces, facil­i­ties and ameni­ties could be a children’s play­ground, guest rooms, a fully equipped office, work­shops, gardens/farms, arts and crafts stu­dios — basi­cally what­ever the group decides it wants to have (as long as it’s legal ).

Cohous­ing res­i­dents share respon­si­bil­i­ties for plan­ning, design­ing, man­ag­ing, main­tain­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the day-to-day run­ning of the devel­op­ment.  The res­i­dents become part of a sus­tain­able, work­ing com­mu­nity. A com­mu­nity where every­one knows every­one else and sup­ports the other residents.

For loca­tion inde­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­als and age­less nomads this type of lifestyle and hous­ing design offers a num­ber of benefits:

• you don’t have to worry about your home when you are away traveling;
• you could become part of a cohous­ing group that was formed around trav­el­ing so your non-traveling times would be spent sur­rounded by peo­ple who shared your pas­sion and under­stood your lifestyle;
• as a loca­tion inde­pen­dent pro­fes­sional, a cohous­ing com­mu­nity built around cre­ativ­ity or small busi­ness devel­op­ment could pro­vide unlim­ited sup­port and energy to your lifestyle. There is an Art Cohous­ing Com­mu­nity in Rome, Italy (http://www.artcohousing.com/) that seems to be offer­ing units for long– or short-term rentals to artists inter­ested in devel­op­ing their tal­ents (the site is in Ital­ian and the Google Eng­lish trans­la­tion is a bit rough);
• cohous­ing units can be ‘house swapped’ pro­vid­ing great oppor­tu­ni­ties for you to live in other com­mu­ni­ties; etc.

For Baby Boomers, the advan­tages to liv­ing in a cohous­ing com­mu­nity include:

• you don’t have to worry about your home when you are away traveling;
• house swap­ping your cohous­ing unit with some­one from another cohous­ing com­mu­nity is a great way to travel and explore other coun­tries with­out feel­ing lonely or isolated;
• being part of a com­mu­nity of indi­vid­u­als who share your inter­ests or hob­bies, with­out being lim­ited to just retire­ment vil­lages. Although there are some cohous­ing com­mu­ni­ties that are age-specific, most cohous­ing com­mu­ni­ties are inter-generational;
• you have com­mu­nity sup­port as you age;
• you could reduce your liv­ing expenses. Shared items, like laun­dry facil­i­ties, vehi­cles, RVs, sport­ing and fit­ness equip­ment, hobby sup­plies, busi­ness equip­ment and exper­tise, etc., can help reduce costs; etc.

The cohous­ing model is a recent phe­nom­e­non, with the first cohous­ing com­mu­nity being built in Den­mark in 1972. In North Amer­ica the first cohous­ing com­mu­nity didn’t occur until 1988.  Accord­ing to the Cana­dian Cohous­ing Net­work, there are cur­rently only roughly 130 cohous­ing com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered through­out North Amer­ica, with most Cana­dian cohous­ing com­mu­ni­ties located in British Colum­bia. How­ever, another 120 are cur­rently in var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment and the move­ment is pre­dicted to gain in pop­u­lar­ity over the next 10 or so years.

More infor­ma­tion on cohous­ing can be obtained from:

1. The Cana­dian Cohous­ing Net­work, http://www.cohousing.ca
2. The Cohous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of the United States, http://www.cohousing.org
3. The UK Cohous­ing Net­work, http://www.cohousing.org.uk/
4. The Fel­low­ship for Inten­tional Com­mu­ni­ties, http://www.ic.org/

TTFN

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