Hi! again
Susan Dillon
--
Susan in Potsdam, NY
Marganne Meyer
>It just seems more expensive than I can afford on disability.
>Anyway, I have a number of options and will start visiting once
>driving restriction is lifted.
Welcome back, Susan. Hope all the driving you plan won't make your
healing time longer. Most stuff I've found in forming or existing
cohousing projects is more expensive than I can afford on disability.
However, I just heard privately from a member of the eco-village
there. His unit is built so he can rent the basement and another part
of the house, yet maintain his privacy. I see this as about the only
avenue available to the disabled or fixed income people into existing
cohousing.
I subscribe to the main cohousing mailing list and floated this idea
there recently -- creating a model in which each member has a main
home plus a smaller or granny home. It could be rented, used to house
relatives that need support, or even occupied by the owner while they
rent the bigger house. No response yet from that list. I'm hoping
this list will be more interested in some variation of this idea.
I realize Ron is proceeding on a similar type of project already in
one of the Carolinas. Since I can't afford the ball park for an
estimated buy in ($200,000), I'm waiting to see how his project
proceeds and how rents shape up for the secondary, smaller homes.
I'll also be interested in what you find out, Susan, when you take
your road trip. I hope that, as the cohousing or intentional
community movement grows, more barriers will break down between those
who feel the need for all the project homes to be approximately the
same size versus people who want to form mixed-come communities.
Cheers!
Marganne
Susan Dillon
At 11:52 AM -0400 6/2/10, Susan Dillon wrote:
It just seems more expensive than I can afford on disability.
Anyway, I have a number of options and will start visiting once driving restriction is lifted.
Welcome back, Susan. Hope all the driving you plan won't make your healing time longer. Most stuff I've found in forming or existing cohousing projects is more expensive than I can afford on disability. However, I just heard privately from a member of the eco-village there. His unit is built so he can rent the basement and another part of the house, yet maintain his privacy. I see this as about the only avenue available to the disabled or fixed income people into existing cohousing.
I subscribe to the main cohousing mailing list and floated this idea there recently -- creating a model in which each member has a main home plus a smaller or granny home. It could be rented, used to house relatives that need support, or even occupied by the owner while they rent the bigger house. No response yet from that list. I'm hoping this list will be more interested in some variation of this idea.
I realize Ron is proceeding on a similar type of project already in one of the Carolinas. Since I can't afford the ball park for an estimated buy in ($200,000), I'm waiting to see how his project proceeds and how rents shape up for the secondary, smaller homes.
I'll also be interested in what you find out, Susan, when you take your road trip. I hope that, as the cohousing or intentional community movement grows, more barriers will break down between those who feel the need for all the project homes to be approximately the same size versus people who want to form mixed-come communities.
Cheers!
Marganne
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Marganne Meyer
Sounds similar to my situation. I inherited a little bit of money,
but, since I'm disabled, it's difficult to decide how to use it to
best help support myself for the next 20 years or so.
I will send your information to the guy at the Ithaca eco village so
he can contact you if he is comfortable sharing.
Traditionally, a rental still means run down and riff raff to some
people who see their home as an investment that should appreciate.
Many misapprehensions that aren't always valid. It's a big shift for
some people to stop looking at their home as a big investment and
start looking at it as a place to live and build community long-term.
There are plenty of areas where rentals exist and the neighborhood
deteriorates -- enough to make people think that's the only way it
could be.
On the other hand, there are many people in cohousing who sincerely
want to have a low-income component. That usually includes
involvement with local government for subsidies and then following
rules that may or may not gel with financial arrangements within the
project.
I, too, was raised in middle class and have a university degree. It's
been difficult for me to adjust my vision for the 'rest' of my life
since my illness was very unexpected. Although I've always been
pretty thrifty, planning for my future based on disability is a
challenge.
Wish I could find a group of single people or couples either living
on a limited income or choosing to adopt a less expensive, simple
life. We all could benefit each other by creating a workable model.
Cheers!
Marganne
Naomi
I've heard of people buying a "plantation house" w/ 20 acres in Black
Belt Alabama for under $100,000. You could possibly buy a big old
house in the country like this, have it be the main house, and
construct a neighborhood of small houses around it. Something like
these: http://www.polehouses.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=11.
If you built 10, that would be a big house, 20 acres, and 10 very
small houses for about 260,000, or 26,000 per house and a lot of
labor--after building 10 I think you'd get pretty good at it though.
(Note that you would be in the middle of nowhere.) I really have no
idea how much it would cost to set up electricity & plumbing though,
and that would have to be factored in. And you'd have to look into
whether or not Wi-Fi would be an option in any rural location. I'm
sure that you can also get large tracks of land in the middle of
nowhere all over the country for comparable prices--except in areas
where there's no "nowhere" left.
An alternate rural option would be to go with a "trailer park" model.
Buy a chunk of land like described above & subdivide it in a way
that's consistent with co-housing principals. Then each family unit
could just go out and buy a used (or new) trailer that meets their
needs and that they can afford or build a small house if that's their
preference. Used trailers are dirt-cheap, as far as places to live go.
Buy in could be $10,000 for the land, and whatever individuals spend
on their individual trailers is is up to them. This wouldn't be much
of an investment, since trailers decrease in value with time, but I
think that you could have the co-housing community aspect with
trailers. Work in a community garden, a large patio with a grill, a
big tree house and some tire swings for the kids, and good neighbors
and it would be appealing in a community sort of way. You could also
do something like this with the idea of slowly transitioning from
trailers to houses, setting up a time-line for house completion and
leaving people to build houses over the course of 5 or 10 years. This
way the cost and time-investment could be spread over several years.
I've said before that I think that there's a cheap "urban-
revitalization" option. Because (obviously) people are already living
in urban neighborhoods, you would have to work around them in a way
that's non-exclusive and non-offensive. (This would be a challenge.)
This would basically involve getting together 10 (or however many)
families and agreeing to move into a neighborhood where the cost of
the average house is at or slightly below your desired price. (50,000
for you.) Once there, each family would have to meet certain behavior
requirements. (Standards for neighborly behavior would have to be
defined and quantified beforehand.) Also, any group activities--like
weekly group meals--would have to be open to family groups that
already live in the neighborhood. One thing that would make this tough
would be that nothing could be required from existing residents or
future residents, only the 10 or more families that agree to
participate up front. So--you'd want to make sure that you had enough
families close enough together to get that cohousing, I-know-my-
neighbors feel. You'd also want other neighbors to feel invited to
jump into activities and conscious behaviors. You'd absolutely have to
talk to any neighborhood association and make sure that they felt
welcoming before moving into a neighborhood. Some neighborhoods
already have "community centers" that function (or could function) in
a way that is similar to the "main house" in a cohousing community. If
not, there may be a church, library, park, local business, or
recreation center that that would be opened to being frequently used
for community building activities. If there was already a building
that could meet this function, and that a neighborhood association or
local government would let the group use in this capacity, then that
could cut down significantly on cost. If not, you'd have to talk to
these groups about creating such a building, preferably from an
existing house. Again, the investment in this building would have to
be handled by members of the group, but the use of the building would
have to be open to all community members. If having to create group
space like a common house, playground, or community garden, you'd want
to consider these costs before the cost of the house. (If you
anticipate a cost of $150,000 for these elements, then you'd know that
you needed $150,000/n from each of n members, meaning that you'd have
to lower actual-house-cost to $(50,000-150,000/n).
You could also probably buy an already existing apartment building
shaped like a "U" with a group of people in an urban area to convert
to co-housing. Or an empty office building to convert into a co-
housing / loft development. One by a vacant lot would be ideal because
both spots could be bought and the lot could be converted into an
outdoor group space. One thing to keep in mind if going urban is that
existing buildings are often less expensive than how much it would
cost to build them--so retrofitting existing spaces would make more
economical sense than throwing up a bunch of tiny houses.
Respectfully, I do think that you'd have to go either really rural or
really urban to get your cost as low as you want. The land in-between
(at least where I live) is just too expensive to get under $50,000 per
person.
Obviously I plan to stay in Birmingham, but even though I couldn't
participate in an east coast or west coast project, I did think I'd
throw out some ideas . . .
Naomi
Brian Bartholomew
> in any rural location.
Satellite Internet is now available anywhere in the continental US
from hughes.net. It runs about $75/month and has a 200 Megabyte/day
download cap, except for a no-limit period between about 2 and 5am.
The lightspeed delay to go to and from a satellite 30,000 miles high
is a substantial fraction of a second. When web browsing, you notice
a pause, then an image loads with a pop. When you browse the web you
will know you're not in town, but you're not on dialup, either. The
service doesn't go out in the rain unless it's a major downpour.
Brian