research-l Mailing List: Re: Welcoming new folks to our (Cohousing Research Network) listserv!

[Reid Fairhurst, Wendy (wreidfairhur]

Hi all! Glad to join!! 

I wish I were living in cohousing, and have been trying to develop over the past 5 years in or around St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. We've run into the same roadblocks as many: stuck at purchasing land/building and how to legally structure in a way that allows us to equitably share risk and make the community affordable/accessible to anyone who wants to live there. We put the project on hold while I began an MBA in Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship last year, basically to gain social innovation and finance skills so that we could be more creative beyond the typical owner-developed communities (through which we couldn't achieve any real upfront affordability). 

I come from an architectural design background, and started off wanting to design cohousing ... but I realized the real struggle is getting the model much more accessible. So, in September I will be continuing my education via an Interdisciplinary PhD focused on how to make cohousing more affordable and more broadly adopted in Canada. This consists of sociology (why cohousing should be a predominant model of housing), social geography (what is the existing political, cultural, economic and environmental context that creates barriers and/or opportunities for cohousing and the community-led development model), and social enterprise (how can innovative business help achieve greater affordability and support more communities be successful).

I have started to collect data on what has been done in other jurisdictions to increase cohousing affordability to categories existing attempts as a foundation for the research. Would love any suggestions, directions, or advice on this line of research.

In the meantime, we are also plugging ahead with our local affordable cohousing project, hoping to test out some strategies and share our process. Currently we are taking inspiration from LILAC (Leeds, UK) and CHUC (Seattle, WA) models to develop a hybrid social enterprise to get the project moving.

Thanks for adding me! Love to hear more about what is happening with the Research Network!

Wendy Reid Fairhurst

On Sat, Aug 8, 2020 at 7:58 PM Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net> wrote:

A Warm Welcome to all the new CRNs!

Do any of you live in cohousing or are you a member of a cohousing group?  I only ask so as not to make any suppositions.  You do not have to live or work in cohousing to be involved in this field.  In fact, it may be better in some cases if you don’t!  :-)

There are so many interesting aspects of cohousing to study — it’s like having a self-opening piñata of topics.  I don’t know who of you are attached to research institutions or in some way attached to the social sciences — you will find that cohousing has many unanswered questions about why people choose to join a coho group.  And why so many of them work so well while others struggle as well as what is the contributions cohousing makes to the larger community in which it resides.

Happy to have you aboard.

Onward!

Best --

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC
Member, Board of Directors
Mid Atlantic Cohousing
Principal, Cohousing Collaborative, LLC
Falls Church, VA
202.546.4654

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

–Wendell Berry, “Our Real Work”

NOTE: Please add my new email address to your CONTACTS list.   I’m transitioning to this new email address.  Please start using annzabaldo [at] me.com

On Aug 8, 2020, at 5:57 PM, Neil Planchon <neil [at] swansway.com> wrote:

Happy August 2020 everyone!

Including today’s new subscribers, we are now 142 here - on the Cohousing Research Network listserv. Today, our small and mighty CRN ( https://www.cohousingresearchnetwork.org ) team is welcoming:

Jia Hui
AJ Viola
Theresa McMillan
Mary Finney
Stefani Danes
Patti Millar
Katherine Harman
Paul Scholes
Darlene Savoy
Washington Cunha
Vanessa Kredler
Brendan Taliaferro
Wendy Reid Fairhurst
Habitatge i Salut

We would love to hear from you. Please take a moment to introduce yourself, tell us where you live, what your interests and professional affiliations are. I personally am curious about how you found us. We look forward to hearing from you!

In community,
Neil

Coho/US. Events team volunteer
Steering Committee. Cohousing Research Network
Co-Director. Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC)
Co-Developer and Founding Owner. Swan’s Market Cohousing

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