research-l Mailing List: Re: Senior cohousing in the news!

[Raines Cohen (rainesc]

Thanks, Angela! Nice find.

Tip for all: If you can't read the full article via the web (I couldn't without registering on the Mercury's website), just search for cohousing in the News app on iPhone or iPad, and it will pop right up; the same may also work for some Google searches on the web.

It has some great photos featured in a gallery up top and scattered throughout the piece, and profiles and real-world stories of why people got into community. And a great quote from our own Anne Glass at UNC Wilmington!

Strange to see the Oakland community referred to as "The" Phoenix Commons.

Interesting to note the difference between the original headline implied by the URL ("The Brave New World of Senior Living") and the final headline "The new Bay Area Trend in Senior Living."

Alas, like most such articles, it conflates "cohousing" as we define it with "cohouseholding" (aka #coliving, the hip young hashtag), i.e. roommates, both in the text and pictures, and uses a quote from folks like Silvernest doing home-sharing as a bridge. It flips between someone who had problems with a housemate who stole from him and smoked crack, with dog-walking-arrangement challenges in cohousing.

And of course they include the annoying hyphen, per AP stylebook, something that coworking advocates have been successful in getting eliminated over time, and perhaps we should follow in their footsteps.

I'd love to see any data backing the assertion in the piece that some [cohousing] communities vote; have any of you run into ANY communities on the cohousing association's list that use that method other than as a very-rare backup?

I was intrigued to see Walnut Commons in Santa Cruz mentioned as a senior community example; like Mountain View Cohousing, they aren't legally structured as 55+, to the best of my knowledge. My perception is that the senior focus was ultimately a marketing decision based on who wanted to live in a "downtown" urban location in a college town, vs. intentionally designing for Aging in Community.

It claims 16 senior cohousing communities across the country, including these three; does this jibe with our stats? The piece makes no reference to the larger established intergenerational cohousing movement or its scope or history, or the realities of aging in place within intergenerational communities.

Do our ranks include anyone involved in media studies? It could be helpful to us as a movement to chart over time frequency and quantity of coverage and the degree to which articles these same mistakes and uses the same frames.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach and Aging-in-Community author / community organizer (at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing)

Certified Senior Advisor / Certified Living in Place Professional

http://www.AgingInCommunity.com/

510-842-6224

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 9:39 AM, Angela Sanguinetti <angelasanguinetti [at] gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All,

New article just out on senior cohousing in the California Bay Area:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/18/co-housing-the-brave-new-world-of-senior-living/

Angela Sanguinetti, Ph.D.

Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)

Behavioral Scientist, Consumer Energy Interfaces Lab at UC Davis

Director, Cohousing Research Network

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