Impact of Senior Cohousing

There is a senior housing crisis in this country. In the United States, traditional senior housing options aren’t meeting the needs of older adults. Many attempts to put seniors in community have proven to work short term, but funding and employee retention continue to strain these organizations. Senior support, like Meals on Wheels, drains local economies and is constantly at risk of being dropped, which could leave seniors without access to proper nutrition and socialization. These services are also offered at the expense of the environment as vehicles drive hundreds of miles each day to bring services to older adults living alone, in their big ranch houses. As the population gets older, we are running out of options. One solution, senior cohousing, cohousing for adults 55+, has proven to mitigate loneliness and provide support to keep older adults in their homes for longer without draining government resources, and those are just some of the perks.

Older adults around the United States (and around the world) are making a strong case for why living in a high functioning community is important to them, economically, physically, emotionally, and socially. What seniors need (and want) is to be in the driver seat, to take control of their aging scenario. What they desire is to create their own community. Senior cohousing is gaining popularity, meeting the needs of seniors internationally, and is proving to be a solution to housing seniors in the neighborhoods of their dreams, supported by their neighbors and friends.

Mountain View Cohousing, Mountain View, CA. Architecture by McCamant & Durrett Architects

As a national leader and innovator, Charles Durrett has dedicated his career to creating cohousing neighborhoods, including a dozen senior cohousing. His book, “The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living is an invaluable resource used by cohousing groups around the world and his continued dedication to appropriately housing older adults propels much of his life’s work. Durrett will be leading an all-day intensive Senior Cohousing 101 at the Northeast Cohousing Conference on September 21, 2018. Participants will learn about cohousing, discuss challenges in senior housing, and explore why senior cohousing just makes sense. The intensive is open to 20 people so early sign up is highly encouraged.

Register at: https://cohousingassociationoftheunite.regfox.com/northeast-cohousing-summit

We look forward to seeing you there!

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For more information and an in-depth look at senior cohousing, Durrett and McCamant & Durrett Architects will be hosting an online facilitator training for Study Group 1 Aging Successfully. This 10-week course will begin Oct 10 with meetings once per week to learn how to organize local efforts for seniors, by seniors, in their area. Those interested in becoming a facilitator should contact Lindy at lindy.sexton@cohousingco.com.

Design process critical in creating cohousing communities, says American architect

Comment from Chuck:

I want to be very clear about this article. Although I believe that the full measure of cohousing is accomplished best by virtue of real authentic participation, community in all of its incarnations is the step that we need to be headed in. The true legacy of cohousing will be all that it inspires in the way of making better neighborhoods . I'm sure that Our Urban Village will be a successful project.

Thanks,

Chuck

Published in Vancouver Courier July 22, 2018

Written by Naoibh O'Connor

The American architect who came up with the word “cohousing” is questioning the Vancouver-born version of the concept dubbed “cohousing lite.”

“I don’t want it to be called cohousing, for one thing. Since I coined the word, I don’t want it to get adulterated,” Charles Durrett told the Courier. “They can call it cohousing-inspired or whatever, but I’d rather they call it something else altogether because as soon as you call it cohousing-inspired or cohousing lite, then it gets truncated to cohousing and then you end up with more not truth in advertising.”

In the traditional form of cohousing, which is a collaborative style of living, a group of like-minded people find and buy land, work together to design a development, and steer the project through the complicated rezoning and construction process.

Cohousing developments feature individual units that members purchase, as well as large, shared indoor and outdoor spaces. Residents hold regular communal meals, make decisions by consensus and have responsibilities around the building. Fostering social relationships throughout the process, from the design to the live-in stage, and making sure the architectural design encourages interaction, are key elements, Durrett said.

Vancouver’s first cohousing complex, which he helped design, opened in East Vancouver 2016, while another one in Riley Park is expected to open in 2019.

On July 17, Vancouver council approved rezoning for the first project in the city that the founders describe as “cohousing lite.”

Cohousing lite

The plan is to build a 12-unit, three-and-a-half-storey complex with about 2,000 square feet of common space on a site on Main Street at Ontario Place. Our Urban Village, the group behind the project, formed in 2015 and currently includes eight member households. They dreamed up the “lite” version of the concept in an attempt to streamline and speed up the process by having a developer  — in this case Tomo Spaces Inc. — take on the development details, the approval process and construction plans.

Our Urban Village picked Tomo, which stands for “together more,” as the developer because members see the firm as socially progressive.

Although Tomo has control over the design and plans for the building, there was some consultation. During the design phase, Tomo held occasional workshops with group members on key matters such as anticipated uses for the common space.

Our Urban Village also formed a site and design committee to give input as requested, and group members have met regularly for social and planning events to help gel the community. Their main requests for their complex were that it feature open-concept units, lots of natural light and nine-foot ceilings.

While Tomo owns the land, Our Urban Village will take over ownership once the building is finished and function like a traditional cohousing complex.

Part of the rationale behind their decision to modify cohousing was that some cohousing groups fall apart before a project is realized because it involves a years-long commitment, a complicated development process and, in Vancouver’s case, finding land in an expensive market.

But Durrett maintains skipping any part of the process won’t yield proper results. He doesn’t think groups should give design control to a developer and insists all members should be personally involved from start to finish.

“The most important component in a cohousing community is the participation in designing and developing a project,” he said. “Basically, groups of people will take risks that no developer will ever take.”

Durrett also said the hands-on process will weed people out who aren’t meant for cohousing, help those who are committed to figure out how to get along, and it will reveal what they’ll have to deal with once they move in.

Durrett is not convinced a tweaked version of cohousing will result in a faster process, and he said dozens of cohousing lite projects would have to be completed and evaluated to prove that to be true.

“My overarching feeling is that there are no magic bullets. There’s no need to take shortcuts because they simply take longer and there’s no reason to take shortcuts because you don’t get the same value,” he said.

“It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to do organic gardening but I’m just going to use some chemicals.’ There’s too much to be gained by participation to not do it… [Shortcuts] might get a quicker result in one or two cases… It’ll never get a better result.”

Traditional cohousing

Durrett, whose firm McCamant and Durrett Architects focuses on cohousing, lives in Nevada City, California.

He brought the concept of cohousing from Europe to North America decades ago. In 1988, Durrett and Kathryn McCamant introduced the idea through the book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. More recently, they published Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities.

Cohousing, Durrett explained, originated in Denmark where it’s called “Bofaelleskaber.”

“I didn’t think Bofaelleskaber was going to work well in the USA,” he said. “One day, when I was living in Denmark, the Danish government called me up and said, ‘Chuck, we’re translating an article about Bofaelleskaber tomorrow, so we need a word tomorrow’ so I spent the evening coming up with a word.”

He’s lived in three cohousing communities over the past 25 years and has been involved in helping build 55, including five in Canada. Among them is Vancouver Cohousing on East 33rd Avenue, which includes 6,200 square feet of shared space — a size that’s nearly impossible to re-produce in Vancouver these days given the high price of land.

Durrett was involved in several workshops with members of Vancouver Cohousing from which all the preliminary designs were produced. They were then handed over to a local architect who did the working drawings.

During the workshops, numerous details, such as reducing the number of parking places, were nailed down. 

Durrett maintains the design details that are developed and the relationships that are formed through a hands-on process with the entire cohousing group helps create the foundation for, and the culture for, how the complex will function once everyone moves in. That includes how residents get along and how much time is spent in shared spaces, especially after the honeymoon phase wears off.

“My cohousing community has about 450 people-hours a week and I’m sure it’s pretty similar in Vancouver Cohousing because it was a very hands-on design,” he said. “Even a badly designed cohousing has about 100 people-hours and in non-cohousing [development] it’s 50 people hours a week,” he said.

The night before speaking to the Courier, Durrett said his cohousing complex held a dinner with about 50 members in attendance, followed by a game night and music in the common house, after which people played pool until midnight.

“There’s a real heartbeat there and it’s partially because all these people knew each other quite well when they moved in. They’re a community when they move in. That’s the big difference — what participation brings to the table. One of the many big differences,” he said.

Durrett doesn’t believe a design committee is as effective. He also suspects it would take longer because of the back-and-forth.

“It just adds another step — the notion you’re going to take the whole group’s concerns, give it to a design committee and they’re going to translate it. Because when they translate it, they’re going to have forgotten some stuff. Anyway, I’m very curious to see how it turns out,” he said.

Durrett also thinks the idea comes from a place of mistrust based on a perception that involving everyone will make the process too long.

“It never works for some people in the group to think that they’re protecting the interests of others in the group. Every time that happens, it makes everything a lot more conservative…,” he said.

"Basically, you’re precluding possibilities. … You never know where the good ideas are going to come from. I can tell you, because I've designed 55 cohousing now, that that meek and mild, quiet voice in the corner, who never says anything, sometimes comes up with a watershed [idea]. They would never, ever be on the design committee because [they think they] don’t have enough confidence or [they're] not that hip to design and these other guys have been reading all the magazines and they know enough to be dangerous. But the reality is there are a lot of quiet voices that bring a lot of wisdom to the table — real values, real experiences and I want to hear from them. They get things done.”

The future

Despite his reservations, Durrett said he hopes “for the best” for cohousing lite, although he wondered how success would be measured.

In fact, Our Urban Village and the developer plan to continue their relationship beyond build-out. They’re working with the organization Happy City, led by Charles Montgomery who wrote the 2013 book Happy City, Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design. Happy City will track how the community functions for a couple years after move-in, including interviewing members and conducting focus groups to see what’s working, what’s not working and what can be tweaked.

Durrett, meanwhile, remains concerned about how the project evolved.

“If they’re hands off, they’re not going to get what they want. The way to mold the clay is to have your hand on the clay. So we’ll see if they’re happy, semi-happy, unhappy… it’s going to be somewhere along there,” he said.

Countering the doubts about cohousing lifestyle →

Published in Revelstoke Review June 15, 2018

By Barry Gerding

Cohousing is an emerging lifestyle that offers quality of life options not readily accessible from conventional urban sprawl and high density living concepts, says the architect who introduced the concept to North America.

Charles Durrett says the lives that Millennials’ parents and grandparents aspired to, such as living in a single family home, has become less realistic looking forward with the cost of housing and detrimental environmental impact of urban growth.

“I think you are beginning to see a cultural shift in how people want to live their lives. More and more people today are willing to look outside the box on how to make something work that will impact their lives in a positive way,” he said.

MDA Cohousing Architecture Internship

Cohousing was catapulted into success in Denmark with the collaboration of two cohousing architects, Jan Gudmand Hoyer and Vandkunsten, a Danish architecture firm. The idea, it takes a village to raise a child, was the force behind this movement and getting there was going to involve future residents in the decision-making process. Their project Trudeslund knocked it out of the park. In fact, they did so well, they inspired more cohousing communities to be created across the country. Suddenly, several cohousing communities were successfully built and architects were trained, based on this model. I was fortunate to be one of these architects.

In the early 1980s, I lived in Denmark, studying at the University of Copenhagen. It was on my walks to and from class that I began to see the comprehensive social movement of cohousing. Every day, I immersed myself in the sea of possibilities that cohousing groups brought to the table, what worked, and what didn't. In 1988, upon returning from our study, Katie McCamant (CoHousing Solutions) and I released our first book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves and began what is now a thriving movement in North America. Our efforts as architect and development consultant have influenced many and I am pleased to know that we facilitated cohousers in successfully designing the neighborhoods of their dreams. I couldn't have done any of this without the intense period of mentorship I received from the experts (who were at the time only in Denmark.)

I invested my entire adult life to this concept of community-designed living because I saw how it improved the quality of life for those who participated in it. I know that other architects have the same mindset - in fact, I have trained a few over the years. But having the desire to help cohousing groups get started is a complicated process, especially if you are new to the world of development, architecture, and consensus-making. Projects that work with untrained architects might look in-fashion, but the glue that holds the community together often falls apart, if it is there at all. Homes in successful cohousing communities have the same handsome appeal and they work socially. As cohousing becomes more desired, it is important that the architects who will facilitate future projects are mentored, just as I was, by successful cohousing architects. That way, they too can contribute to bettering the future lives of their city and larger community.

Cohousing projects don't succeed just because the future residents are motivated. They don't succeed just because the architect is a nice person. Each project needs the guidance of someone who has experience and knowledge. Groups that hire cohousing professionals save money and time. They live every day the satisfaction that they did it the right way.

For the past 30 years, MDA has offered internships to architects who aspire to get cohousing into their towns or cities. We've trained several architects who are now guiding cohousing communities across the U.S. and around the world. Most of our 50 interns to date have been from overseas (seven from Denmark, ironically); five from Germany; two from Indonesia (interesting); one from each of the following Iraq, France, South Korea, Columbia, Australia; and so on. Only about ten from the U.S. and none from Canada. Although I like helping other countries see some of the in-depth tricks of designing high-functioning communities, America still has a huge negative ecological footprint.

Demand continues to grow and MDA has decided that it makes sense, socially and environmentally, to focus on training architects in North America. Our next internship starts this fall - a six-month on-the-job training - and we're looking for architects in the U.S. and Canada who want to learn how to think outside of the box and create eco-groovy, socially-sustainable housing.

Interns learn specific facilitation techniques and successful design elements that are fundamental in cohousing. They receive specific instruction on how to move projects from beginning to end and how to replicate this while adhering to the nuances of future groups. It's not about recreating the wheel. Instead, cohousing thrives in the knowing that the technique is proven effective.

What is the future in cohousing? It lies in the hands of professionals sharing knowledge with professionals. When more trained architects adopt cohousing as a modality in their practice, those who are interested will make themselves known. It's already happening - we receive several inquiries with regularity, from groups looking for a trained professional in their region. When more interest grows in an area, local government and businesses will also jump onboard, if they're not already in support of creating high-functioning neighborhoods. Once the wheel gets going, there's no telling how big the reach. Adding cohousing to your offering of services as a trained architect will lead to growth in your firm.

Now, more than ever, it is important to see the potential in the cohousing movement and join in. A six-month internship is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the value you'll add back into your community. Trust me, I've seen it clearly in mine. So, if you're interested in learning how you can become a cohousing architect, we'd like to hear from you.