Consensual Communities

NICK MEIMA WAS FEELING INCREASINGLY isolated. “I had a growing sense that as I was working on my house, my yard, my driveway, that I was building a glass wall around my house.” The developer and CEO of a large retirement community in Ann Arbor, Mich., Meima found himself one day in the library of the University of Michigan's school of architecture. That's where he saw the book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, by Kathryn McCamant, Charles Durrett, and Ellen Hertzman (2nd ed., Ten Speed Press, 1994).

It detailed a concept imported from Denmark—a type of community whose residents choose to be neighbors even before land is purchased. Cohousing communities are designed to foster social interaction rather than isolation. Units are smaller than average, with a large commons building serving as an extension of the homes.

“After reading the book, I had a feeling of relief that there were others who felt like I did and had created a viable solution,” Meima says.

So Meima started talking. In 1994, he gathered a group of like-minded people, and with two partners who were also professional builders, the group in 1996 bought 10 acres of land outside Ann Arbor. They began building, and in 1998, four years after Meima's visit to the architecture school library, he and 88 others moved into the Sunward Cohousing community.

The project also took Meima and his partners into the cohousing business. Their Cohousing Development Co. is now building its third community in the Ann Arbor area. A small niche market, with kinship ties to sustainable housing and New Urbanism, a cohousing community is an intentional community—committed to diversity, environmental sustainability, and keeping members from disappearing behind that glass wall of isolation.

There are some 80 cohousing communities operating in the United States, with another 10 in advanced stages of development, according to Chris ScottHanson, a cohousing consultant. They tend to be small, ranging from nine to 44 households. And they're built wherever a large enough pool of like-minded people exists—as urban infill, within a master planned community, or, like Sunward, as a stand-alone in a semi-rural area.

Builders and developers such as Meima say it is possible to make money from these unorthodox projects. Cohousing has its advantages for builders: The communities come with a group of highly motivated, highly committed buyers. The downside? A group of highly motivated, highly committed buyers.

Projects achieve consistent 75 percent to 80 percent pre-sales before breaking ground, according to Neshama Abraham, a cohousing consultant. That preselling substantially reduces the risk for a builder/developer, says Don Tucker, president of Eco Housing Corp. in Bethesda, Md., which co-developed two urban communities in the Washington area. One, Takoma Village, was built on vacant land that for years had defied neighborhood approval for development.

What won over those skittish neighbors to Takoma Village was meeting the cohousing community's members, Tucker says. Having those highly committed buyers at your side “allows you to put a face on who's going to live there. They're active advocates at community meetings. You can't talk about ‘those people' when they're right there in the meeting.”

Those highly motivated buyers will also do all they can to sell the project. “We had a marketing budget of $20,000,” says Patty Lautner, a founding member of Jamaica Plain, a just-completed community in Boston. “We spent $5,000.”

But builder beware. Working on a cohousing community means that the buyers will dog your every step, question your every more. At least they'll want to.

“Cohousing is not for every builder, especially for the builder with an ego who wants to have it his way,” says Martin Poretsky, president of Poretsky Building Group, who has developed projects with Tucker.

“With a standard project, the developer/builder has a clear idea of what he wants to do,” Meima says. “In cohousing, the process is much more collaborative.”

Groups make their decisions by consensus, a slower deliberative process than an up-or-down vote. And the number of details to be decided can be as high as the group will allow. Lautner puts it bluntly: “Cohousers get more involved than they need to—we're all ‘Type A' personalities.”

Doug Kohl repeatedly turned down a cohousing project for just that reason. “The group's development consultant bugged me and bugged me and bugged me,” says Kohl, president of Kohl Construction in Hadley, Mass. “I was resistant because I knew how much time was involved.”

Kohl says the consultant's persistence eventually wore him down. Then he was won over. He went on to build Pathways Cohousing in Northampton, Mass., and is working on another development nearby. “I do enjoy being a part of it,” Kohl says now. “If you don't get a kick out of helping people realize their dream, don't do it.”

Many communities are group-driven. They often act as their own developer and then bring in a builder. Others are developer- or builder-driven. In either case, it takes a little bit of grease to smooth the relationship between the professionals and the buyers. Or someone to keep the two apart altogether. That's what Scott-Hanson, co-owner of Cohousing Resources, does for a living.

“Cohousers are a many-headed monster of overeducated consumers,” he says. “Developers don't want to have anything to do with them. What I do is broker the deal and handle all the emotional and feeling stuff. I do the deal with the developer. I become the neighbors' educator, promoter, facilitator.”

That was his role at Boston's Jamaica Plain, which opened this past spring. The one-acre infill location was perfect for cohousing: It is on a bike path and close to the T, Boston's subway system. But Eden doesn't come cheap—$1.7 million for the land and $750,000 for arsenic remediation. It doesn't come quickly either. Lautner joined the group at its inception six years ago. It wasn't until 2002 that they had progressed far enough to have a schematic design prepared. To date, 28 of 30 units are committed.

“In this project, there have been 30 residents who have been with us from the get-go,” says Fernando J. Domenech Jr., of Domenech, Hicks & Krockmalnic, the project's architect. “They're highly knowledgeable from macro to minutiae—from urban design to how much recycled content is in the carpeting.”

The design is U-shaped, with a single-loaded corridor, Domenech says. “The units on all floors are interconnected via this open gallery type of corridor. The common areas are within the common house, located at the end of the open corridor on the first level.”

The communal space includes a great room for dining and gathering, a kitchen, library, kids' room, laundry room, office space for residents who work from home, and a guest suite. The central courtyard has room for children to play, an organic garden, and a patio. Parking is at the periphery of the property. All are elements of the typical cohousing community. The units, ranging from one to three bedrooms, sold for $200,000 to $499,000.

“It's not normal to do a huge mix like this, especially in an urban environment,” Lautner says. “We're trying to attract a mix of incomes, mix of ages, and mix of family types.”

By cutting construction costs and dedicating 5 percent of condo fees to an affordability fund, Jamaica Plain has been able to attract low- and moderate-income residents to more than half of its units, Lautner says.

To cut costs to the bone, “You need to use streamlining,” she says. Jamaica Plain's founders followed one unchangeable rule: “Absolutely no customization.”

The big star in this small universe is Wonderland Hill Development Co. Based in Boulder, Colo., Wonderland is the largest developer of cohousing in the United States, with 15 completed communities since 1993 and four more in various stages of development. Its founding mission was sustainable building, says company president Jim Leach. “Now we do what a lot of home builders do—design, permitting, marketing,” he says. Also, group formation and conflict resolution services. “We operate like a home builder—but we sub it out. It's an ideal size for a small-to-medium–sized general contractor with the capability to crank out 30 units in less than a year.”

Leach is following the graying of the baby boomers into a sub-niche called Elder Cohousing—age-restricted communities. The first projects are under construction in Davis, Calif., and Abingdon, Va. And Silver Sage will be breaking ground this summer across the street from the Wild Sage multigenerational cohousing community in Boulder. When the first residents move in, Leach says, he will be among them.

Far more than gray, cohousing is green. Sustainability is an integral part of the cohousing creed, and it hasn't gone unnoticed in the home building industry. Eastern Village, a community that Eco

Housing and Poretsky created in Silver Spring, Md., is one example. Once an abandoned four-story office building, Eastern Village won the NAHB's 2005 Green Project of the Year, in the luxury multi-family category.

“The new residences maintain the same U-shape design, but added green features including a front façade with a sunshade and a ‘living' roof with plants to control rainwater runoff and provide thermal protection,” according to the NAHB.

There are techniques to building cohousing, but no secrets. “Any land that works into a cluster—it's an alternative to condo housing—can be possible for cohousing,” Kohl says. Builders quickly learn what makes money and what burns it. For Kohl's most recent project, “I owned the land as the group was coming together. If I had to do it again I would have built in the cost of carry[ing it]. I would have allowed [the group] to absorb some of the cost.”

And though cohousing contains the seeds of risk for builders, cohousers have demonstrated they will pay a premium for a community that is diverse, green, and done their way.

“There are people out there who will pay more for organic shampoo, for organic foods, for a Prius,” ScottHanson says. “There's nothing like that in the housing market. There is a pent-up demand for this stuff.”

David Holzel is a freelance writer based in Montgomery Village, Md.

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Two cohousing residents who participated in the design of their communities offer these tips for builders:

Be prepared for rising expectations. “They can run beyond the point where they would be realized on any budget,” says Katharine Matthews, a member of Eastern Village in Silver Spring, Md. It's an issue that must be discussed “openly and frequently” between members and the developer. “Expect to take flak at the end of the project for having failed to create Utopia,” she adds.

Limit options. The greater the number of unit features and floor plans you offer, the more residents-to-be will think in terms of customization, says Eric Mendelsohn, a resident of Takoma Village in Takoma Park, Md.

Use an interiors expert to help design common areas. The kitchen, dining room, and living room will be used extensively, Matthews says. An interiors expert should speak to future residents to learn how the spaces will be used. “The expert should be familiar with children, cooking, the needs of old folks and the disabled, and the social aspects of cohousing.”

Design for diversity. Units will need to accommodate families from the suburbs, singles, empty-nesters, and others. “Cohousing isn't appealing if only one- and two-bedroom units are offered,” Matthews says.

Make the units quiet. A family that just moved from a home in the suburbs will not expect to be able to hear what's going on in a neighbor's unit.

Be prepared for consultants. As with the interiors expert, future residents may want to bring in outside experts on various aspects of project. Simply having an extra pair of eyes watching construction can reduce warranty costs, Mendelsohn says.

In return, developing or building a cohousing community can be an opportunity to develop a green reputation for yourself and will likely bring you more media coverage than an ordinary project, Mendelsohn says.

And if you enjoy collaborative efforts, working on cohousing offers you the opportunity for plenty of feedback at every stage of the process.