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Summary Co-housing is an intentionally designed neighborhood that facilitates human connection. It combines intentional design with social infrastructure to create a well-designed neighborhood where people show up for one another. There are approximately 180 existing co-housing communities in the US, with 140 in various stages of development. Some communities are
CoHousing
Michelle: Welcome once again to Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Passoff. I’m Michelle Passoff. This is the place to come for news you can use to get things done in life without anything in the way on the road ahead. For those of you visiting us for the first time, I want to take a moment to fill you in on what goes on here.
Michelle: You can expect conversations about letting go of conventional clutter, like too many papers, too many clothes, and too much stuff here, there, and anywhere. However, in my book, Lighten Up, Free Yourself From Clutter, I don’t speak about cleaning clutter as a path of being neat and tidy. Although you do get neater and tidier in the process, I see cleaning clutter as a little known and underused life management tool, clearing space for more, not less, of what you want in life.
Michelle: As baby boomers, the many distinct things that we encounter in our lives can get messy because they’re confronting and confounding and downright bewildering. We may just brush aside some things because we fail to make decisions or are uncertain about what to do. Whatever gets in the way of clear choices is clutter.
Michelle: Things like deciding what to do after retirement. If and how to tell your life story to future generations, getting financial and legal papers in order, resetting your health and fitness regimen, and assessing your family, intimate and social relationships can be clutter if they languish in uncertainty.
Michelle: Another area of indecisions may be where you want to live as you age. And that is what we’re going to talk about today. According to this and that survey, the number of retirees in the United States is rising, and so is the percentage of the 55 plusers who are relocating to warm climates, closer to family, to smaller, less expensive spaces, and neighborhoods, or whatever the reason may be, they are moving.
Michelle: The big question for them is where they’re going to live in their twilight years. So today’s guests will share with us one option for relocating called co housing. Please welcome Trish Becker and Diane Wiley. Trish Becker is the Executive Director of the Co Housing Association in the United States, and a founding Member of ARIA co housing, Chase street commons, a micro village built upon the principles of co housing.
Michelle: She is a TEDx speaker and a passionate advocate for housing solutions that address our collective crisis of loneliness, environmental degradation, and housing inaccessibility. Above all, she believes that humans need one another for meaning and survival. And that collective housing is poised to be among the.
Michelle: Signature movements of our time. Diane Wiley is recently retired from her job as an associate director of foundation relations at Mount Holyoke college and a founding member and longtime resident of the Cherry Hill co housing in Western Massachusetts. She is a speaker and facilitator on many topics, including senior living in co housing and aging successfully in community.
Michelle: Welcome Diane.
Michelle: Trish, let me start with you. First, let me ask you to explain to those in our audience who are unfamiliar with it. What is co
Dyan: housing?
Trish: Uh, so co housing is an intentionally designed neighborhood, and it’s designed, to facilitate human connection. And we always say that co housing is the pairing of intentional design.
Trish: And social infrastructure. So if you looked at a co housing community, you would see lots of green space and walking paths. Cars would be at the periphery. Um, and you’d often see a common house or lots of common areas. but if you look Just had the intentional design without the social infrastructure, it would really just be a well designed neighborhood.
Trish: So the other critical element is the social infrastructure, which just means that people who live in co housing have an intention to show up for one another to offer their time and labor towards the strengthening of their community and towards knowing. Their neighbors.
Michelle: So this communities are houses or apartments or a combination of houses in our apartments and they’re constructed intentionally in advance to foster relating among the neighbors.
Michelle: Is that
Dyan: correct? Yeah, that’s correct. Yep.
Michelle: How many, um, How many of co housing communities are there in the country?
Dyan: Yeah,
Trish: so there are currently approximately 180 existing co housing communities across the U. S. All of them are listed on our directory at co housing. org And then there are 140 in Some stage of development.
Trish: This could be anything from a, yeah. Uh, so some of those communities are, you know, they have land and they’re under construction. Some of those 140 are a group of people with the shared dream who are in what we call the potluck phase, um, gathering people, they don’t yet have land or have, uh, defined the project yet.
Michelle: Is this an American concept or was this borrowed from somewhere else from
Trish: around the world? Yeah, no, um, so the, the specific model, of intentional community called co housing started in Denmark, um, in the 1960s and Katie McCammon and Chuck Durrett traveled to Denmark. Uh, they were architects and then they brought back, uh, the concept in the eighties and wrote, uh, what we call as the book on co housing.
Trish: Um, And sort of brought the model to the U. S. at that time.
Dyan: Wow. So,
um,
Michelle: Diane, at the same time, you were instrumental in starting one of these communities. So maybe you can enlighten us on it as well. If I understand it correctly, it’s ethnically Age wise and economically diverse. And, but there are some communities that are just for seniors as well.
Michelle: Can you tell us how that breaks down? How many of how many communities are mixed in age and race and economics and how many are strictly for seniors?
Dyan: Uh, so of the 180 that Trish mentioned, there’s 17 that are senior specific. it’s a new, it’s kind of the cutting edge of the co housing movement because there’s so many boomers, right?
Dyan: You have the silver tsunami that is upon us. And many, uh, seniors, really wanted to, Live with their generation with people with similar values and similar perspectives and, um, there is another book specifically on senior how to do a senior co housing community. So that that’s another, resource that really generated and it was written by Chuck Durrett.
Dyan: Um, so that’s another place where this what’s the name of that book is called, uh, creating co housing senior or the senior co housing handbook. I think it’s called senior co housing handbook. Yes. If you Google senior co housing book or Chuck Durette, you will find that book and others as well about how to start a project, how to form a group.
Dyan: So our core group was small and as we looked for land and, Bought land. We were also constantly marketing our project so that we got eventually 32 households joining our project. So that was 30 years ago. So you’re separate
Michelle: households. Co housing doesn’t mean you’re all living in the same house.
Michelle: That’s correct. Can you explain that
Dyan: a little bit more? How that works? Um, so we have separate units, we can buy and sell the units individually. They have kitchens and bathrooms, and then they’re supplemented. They’re smaller than typical homes because we have a lot of common amenities, common facilities.
Dyan: So we have a common house with Two common meals a week. It has a kid’s room, two guest rooms, um, so that we can have smaller homes. We also have a workshop, a craft space, office spaces, um, an exercise room, a sauna, bike room, meditation room. So those all are meant to enhance the smaller living space that we have, but I have three bedrooms in my home.
Dyan: and there’s different size units here, depending on what people wanted to purchase or could afford to purchase.
Michelle: What’s the range and size of each of those units and the range in price?
Dyan: The smallest units are about 650 square feet.
Dyan: Those, some, a couple include balconies. Up to, uh, 1500 square feet and the price range nowadays in Amherst where it’s expensive to buy a house is 350, 000 to 600, 000. But
Michelle: if they were going to, if somebody was going to buy a house or, um, buy into a senior living, progressive community, it would be in that price range or how does it compare to other options?
Dyan: It’s really comparable to the geography of where a project is being built, um, so the prices are similar, um, what I will say that’s different is, uh, a lot of senior communities are built, like ours is spread out over four acres, which as seniors on a hill is problematic. It wasn’t a problem when we were here.
Dyan: Uh, parents of little kids, but nowadays it’s an issue. So many of the senior communities are built either as apartment complexes in town or near town because seniors want to be near services, um, or their duplexes and triplexes, so they’re, it’s clustered much more than ours is. We want it, you know, out in the country, spread out.
Dyan: Um, nowadays, uh, seniors are very smart to find something that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance. Um, it’s easy to get in and out of and in bad weather, um, cars are much closer than our cars are. I have to walk a couple of minutes to get to my car. So there’s differences in the physical infrastructure.
Dyan: Um, but price wise, it’s very similar. Um, but if you were, if you compare a senior community to retirement, it costs a fraction of what it would cost to buy into a for profit senior, um, for profit that’s run by a management company. Co housing is run by the residents themselves. That’s another very big distinction.
Dyan: With cooperative decision making, um, central to that governance. So we govern ourselves, we take care of things ourselves, we do contract for services, of course. Um, but we’re, we’re in the driver’s seat. There’s not a manager planning our leisure activities or making decisions that we don’t like.
Michelle: I see. And in terms of Uh, Trish, how does it when you break down between, um, integrated communities that are not just seniors versus those that are, um, like, why would somebody choose 1 or the other?
Michelle: Can you address that? Yeah, you
Trish: know, uh, cohousing communities exist on a number of spectrums. We always say if you’ve seen one cohousing community, you’ve seen one cohousing community. And so it’s really just this journey about what an individual craves, whether you crave an urban or a rural or a suburban, whether you want condos or, um, uh, Single family homes and the multi generational senior question is one of those.
Trish: Um, so, I can speak to why I chose to join, um, a multi generational community. I, um, moved into ARIA co housing as, um, a woman who was six months pregnant. Uh, and so, uh, it was really important to me to have other kids, um, but also, You know, the, uh, the elders in our community are, are the ones that really, gosh, kept our family afloat, to be honest.
Trish: And so there was this beautiful intergenerational connection. Um, my daughter had, uh, different days of the week with different aunties in the co-housing community, and I always tell the story that she learned to walk, um, with her hand on the walker of one of her closest neighbors. Wow. And it’s just really beautiful.
Trish: So, um. Uh, that’s a reason why if someone would choose to move into multi generational communities, um, and the questions of whether to move into a senior community are many, um, one example, you know, many senior communities are a mix of retired and still working folks. And so, um, it’s easier to find, uh, if you’re retired to find others to go do activities with, um, because they are not, um, working for most of the day, um.
Trish: It’s also sort of, yeah, go ahead, Diane. You
Dyan: can see I want to, I want to jump in. Cause I was a single mom and I moved into a multi generational. I don’t think there were senior communities 30 years ago. Um, now I wish if I was choosing now, I would choose a senior community because multi generational is very focused on kids.
Dyan: We were very focused on making sure there was playgrounds and safe, you know, things that. Parents and children would be comfortable with and would need nowadays. I’m really interested in hanging out with my generation But I will also say senior communities have a 30 to 40 year age range um, and they’re not always most of them are not 100 percent 55 plus they’re Legally 80 so some of them on the west coast are so there can be even younger members but if you take 55 To 95, that’s the age range you have.
Dyan: And I was talking with a member of a Phoenix comments in Oakland yesterday. And she said, our 90 year old is cooking, driving, and more active than a 65 year old who’s next door. So there’s, um, a kind of myth that if you’re moving into senior, a senior co housing community, everybody’s going to be in a rocking chair.
Dyan: They’re not going to be able to do any work. They’re not going to go anywhere. And that’s just not the case. There’s bike clubs, ski clubs, they go out and do things together. Um, and they want to learn, they want to explore they, we, I’m one of them. Um, so I think there’s, it depends on where you are in your life journey.
Dyan: Um, but there’s also seniors who really want to be around kids. So as Trish said.
Michelle: Multi generational would be better for them. In terms of, um, I have so many questions coming up in my mind as you’re speaking, but, um, when you’re a senior, um, and you want to live in co housing, how long does it take to initiate, create, build, and get people to move into that senior community, or are seniors moving into already existing communities?
Dyan: Yes, it takes three to four years, um, less if you’re working with, uh, seasoned co housing professionals and there’s a directory of them on, uh, uh, co housing. org site. Um, It also depends on the mix of skills that, uh, the core group, you know, a few people who get together, some groups are very skilled, some are not in need to import them, but it does take time and seniors are in a hurry to get into those homes and get out there and have fun and do interesting things.
Dyan: So, um, there is a pressure. I do say when I do workshops on senior co housing is. Be open to moving from where you are because a lot of seniors want to build a community where they live and I say be open to moving across the country. If there’s a senior community, you’re going to get into it a lot faster.
Dyan: That’s not to say that you shouldn’t start your own community. And there are folks like me who can be helpful, but have that other option as a possibility and also check out multi generational communities.
Michelle: Are they all, um, in every state or there’s a list somewhere? Do you, do you, do you go live at one and try it out?
Michelle: How does that
Dyan: work? Good question. There is, uh, again, cohousing. org has a directory. Um, so you can see where they are and how big they are. There’s a few, uh, features in the profiles of each community. Um, another thing is very, I talk a lot about doing your homework and learning about co housing by reading books, signing up for newsletters.
Dyan: Almost every co housing community has a newsletter that you can sign up on their websites and they do virtual tours. A lot of them, you can go visit from the comfort of your sofa, go see what it. What it looks like, ask questions, see what their culture is like, and also go visit them. Find ones that you can take a road trip and go visit some because like in my, in my area, there’s five co housing communities in Western Massachusetts.
Dyan: Wow. Um, you go to Portland, Oregon, and I think there’s 15 or 20. Wow. So, um, yes, go visit them, uh, moving in and trying it out. I would not suggest that as a first step, I would say most communities have guest rooms. You can ask if you can get a tour and stay overnight, come to a meal, go to a work party, get a get a feel for it.
Dyan: Is this a fit? And also on websites, there’s a lot of resources. One of them being they’ll have a page of frequently asked questions. So you can find out about costs and what would it be like to live there. And there’s also some that have a little worksheet called, are we a fit? And it will ask questions about, do you, you know, do you like working with others?
Dyan: Are you a hermit? And we have a lot of hermits here. So that’s not, that doesn’t exclude you.
Michelle: So if you live in a co housing community, you still have your privacy, is that right? Very much so. Trish, can you address, um, what, if you live in one of these communities, how is it different than just moving into a neighborhood?
Michelle: What happens in those common rooms and how is it different than just moving into any other community?
Trish: Yeah, the main difference between a co housing community and a You know, active neighborhood with an active HOA is the intention piece, um, as well as the fact that, as Diane mentioned, it’s self managed, so the members are creating the programming, um, based on the needs of the community, so typically a co houser will be expected to participate in one or more committees, um, as well as attend regular community meetings.
Trish: And then just to give sort of their, some of their time and labor towards the strengthening of the community. Um, but because of that, there’s this common misconception that, uh, introverts don’t like community. And actually there’s way more introverts in co housing. And my theory as an introvert, uh, is that it’s a structure to engage.
Trish: Um, so that I can say if I’m feeling social. I know that I can walk out to the courtyard and find someone who knows me and knows my story and will ask me how my presentation went the other day, or how’s my daughter. Um, and so I really like having that, um, that structure to engagement. Um, but yeah, private spaces are a key factor in co housing that you do have the option to opt into community or to.
Trish: To retreat into your private
Michelle: privacy. Yeah. Well, at least we’ve opened up the mind and thoughts to that as a possibility for living as we age. So I want to thank you for joining us today. Boomers, if you’re ready to pack your bags and make a move to co housing. It may be an option for you. I want to thank our guests, Trish Becker of the co housing association of America and Diane Wiley, a frequent speaker on senior housing for being with us today.
Michelle: If finding out more about co housing interests you, you can start with a search at their website, www. cohousing. org.
Michelle: For all our listeners, we would love to hear from you. Please go to our website, www. decluttering55plus. com and click on the let’s connect button. Let us know what you’re thinking. If you have questions, share your successes that you have in cleaning your clutter in any area of your life. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Michelle: By all means, click on the podcast platform you’re listening from today and let us know you’re out there. It was a pleasure speaking with you all, and I thank you for coming once again. See you next week. Have a clutter free day.