coho

While we’re considering other options like shipping containers for homes, aren’t the flower children from the 1960s still interested in communes? Indeed – there are 130 cohousing communities in the country! Hat tip to daytrip.

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/can-boomers-make-cohousing-mainstream/384624/

That communal spirit extends beyond the utility bill. Alexander says daily life among her “true neighbors” is a stark contrast with the suburban subdivisions of her native northern Virginia, where she lived in single-family homes for decades before discovering cohousing.

“I did what everybody did. I was in commuter hell, I didn’t know my neighbors, all that. There wasn’t a choice, or we didn’t know another choice existed,” Alexander says. “Baby boomers are demanding a better way to live. We want to be sustainable; we want community, happiness.”

Joani Blank, 77, lives in Swan’s Market Cohousing in downtown Oakland, California. She has spent 22 years across three cohos and has visited dozens more. Blank says senior citizens struggle with the public perception that cohos are like other senior housing or retirement homes.

“I like living with younger adults. I want to live in a diverse community. That’s the way humans used to live—in multigenerational groups,” says Blank, who founded San Francisco’s Good Vibrations sex shop in 1977.

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/can-boomers-make-cohousing-mainstream/384624/

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