co-housing community

 

The Dharmahouse community project

In May 2006 a few of us moved in together and formed the Dharmahouse centre which started to run courses and retreats on a 8 acre property in southern France. The property was previously a farm, and gave us a great opportunity to start to explore our desire for community living in the context of natural surroundings. We started to experiment with growing our own food using ideas based in natural and synergistic agricultural systems. We have also started to explore ecological and sustainable building techniques as a basis for future community building. The present property is serving as a springboard and small-scale temporary model for community living. Our main goal is to establish a larger co-housing community based around the teachings of the Buddha and environmental concern. Why did we choose Cohousing? And what is it? To start with a dictionary definition Cohousing is:

"a type of collaborative housing that attempts to overcome the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no-one knows their neighbours, and there is no sense of community. It is characterized by private dwellings with their own kitchen, living-dining room etc, but also extensive common facilities. The common building may include a large dining room, kitchen, lounges, meeting rooms, recreation facilities, library, workshops, childcare."

The concept of Cohousing was first established in Denmark in the 1970s; catalysed by frustration at the isolation and impracticality of modern day housing designs, cohousing became an attempt to redefine how our living arrangements can support and develop our human relationships. Taking inspiration from different cultures and traditional village settings, the concept of cohousing is now being developed across Europe, north America, Australasia, and eastern Asia.

Expanding on this definition of cohousing within the context of the Dharma, we are seeking a ‘practicing neighbourhood’, a sangha to provide nurturing and supportive conditions for our spiritual lives. Our common building could perhaps be a Dharma hall, to again support our practice, where we could come together to share, discuss, meditate and support each other. This could also be a place where Dharma teachers could come and lead retreats from time to time.

In the regular on-going meetings of this project we have keenly discussed the social, economic and environmental aspects of cohousing. What follows are some of the benefits of cohousing and also some of the issues that we are looking at in our ongoing discussions. I am sure many more questions and discussions will be raised the longer we continue to meet, this will give us a chance to inquire into what best direction we can take this project in the years to come. A chance to dip in to the sea of possibility! Maybe a few different visions of community will emerge from these discussions, maybe a few different communities could start - the beginnings of small network?

Let's see……

 

Personal space / freedom within a community setting

Cohousing is unlike the ‘commune model’ of community in that it gives you your own personal boundried space in the form of a seperarately owned dwelling. This of course gives you the choice of when you wish to be among others or just with your immediate family / alone. Two of the traditional key conflicts occurring in intentional communal settings have been around a lack of personal space and the sharing of finances. Cohousing communities address these potential banana skins by giving the individual autonomy over both of them. Community does however include many people, making it hard to satisfy everyone’s needs all the time. Plato spoke about the conflict between ‘the one and the many’. e.g. One person's freedom to dance all night negates their neighbours' freedom of peaceful sleep! How is this held within the confines of a intentional community?

What is your notion of community? How are you at making compromise?

 

Democratic self-determination

The ability to have some control over decision making. Entering into a collective decision making process where people feel they are being heard and have some influence over the way they live. I’m sure we have all had the experience of poor communication with a landlord / freeholder / organisation that does not share our value base. Feelings of disempowerment and separation from what matters to us can soon arise. A lot of cohousing communities use a consensus model of decision making (see this article on the Consensus Decision Process in Cohousing for more info). What are our experiences of decision making processes?

See also 'On Conflict and Consensus: a handbook on Formal Consensus decision making'.

This book is free to download from www.ic.org/pnp/ocac/

 

A shared vision

Implicit in the early stages of forming a cohousing project is a clear understanding of our aims, values and expectations, and their formalisation in writing. It would seem this has to be established prior to any commitment into a project. It has been a common problem in many communities that don’t establish these ground rules to begin with. They are indirectly setting up a potential timebomb for dispute later on down the road. Gary Moffatt highlights this point in his essay ‘Why Do Communities Fail?’:

“Part of the problem doubtless lies in an over-optimism which causes those taking part to waive some of the fundamental prerequisites for selecting companions in the venture, i.e.:

Without these prior agreements, a group's chances of working together over a long period of time for common goals are most remote. The difficulties of finding enough people to rent a house or work a piece of land often tempt those starting such a project to waive some or all of these requirements. The easier it is to get a group of people together, the more easily it will fall apart in midstream when it fails to meet all the members' diversified expectations.”

One person’s vision of community maybe wanting to be away from all technology in a rural setting, completely off grid only wanting to be with those that spend most of the day in silent meditation. While another person has an internet business and 3 children needing to be close to a town school. We need to know from the outset what it is we are looking for. What differences are we not prepared to accept?

 

Personal / spiritual growth


"The ego does not go with laughter and caresses. It must be chased with sorrow and drowned in tears." (a Sufi saying)


There are of course many challenges in living with just one person. How are we going to be with 10 or 20? What is the essence of what pulls us towards community? To many community is the holy grail of the spiritual life. It is a chance to break down the narrow confines of our self-interested ego. A chance to work towards a deeper feeling of interconnectedness with others, a sharing and belonging to a group or sangha on the spiritual path. This of course is a beautiful vision of how we could lead our lives, and the way many people do, but how idealistic are our notions of what this will really be like?

Diana Leafe Christian, the respected community author who wrote 'Creating a life together' gives us a clear sense of this when she states:

"My observation of "the successful 10 percent" (of communities) taught me that it's all in the willingness of the potential new member or cofounder. If he or she has what I call "high woundedness" (hey, don't we all?), it seems to only work if the person simultaneously has "high willingness" — to grow and learn and change. I have seen several forming communities in recent years - even those with powerful vision statements, fine communication skills, and good consensus training - break apart in conflict and sometimes lawsuits because even just one member didn't have enough self-esteem to function well in a group. The person's "stuff came up" — as everyone's does in community — but theirs was too destructive for the community to absorb. When a person is wounded and having a difficult time in life, he or she can certainly benefit from living in community, and, ideally, can heal and grow because of the support and feedback offered by others. But a certain level of woundedness — without "high willingness" — appears to be too deep for many new communities to handle. I believe one deeply wounded person can affect a group far more than 10 healthy people, because of that person's potential destructiveness to the group. Such a person can repeatedly derail the community's agenda and drain its energy."

Quite a sobering paragraph! What are we to make of this? How high is our willingness? How do we deal with those whose 'stuff is too destructive for the community to absorb'? What will our policy be?

 

Security, safety and support

There is a security, safety and support to be found for both oneself and ones family in the community setting. As relationships within the community grow, networks of support can be put into place. Maybe someone has some form of disability / illness that requires the support of others from time to time? Maybe a more elderly resident is not able to go shopping on a particular day? Maybe families can take it in turns to take children to school or form some kind of crèche to support working parents? Of course the benefit of positive people looking out for eachother's welfare makes for a very safe secure environment. As Corporal Dan Kelly states “Safety is in knowing your neighbours – not in walls and barriers.”

 

Environmental economics

One of the key financial aspects of an intentional community that assumes the cohousing model is that owning your home keeps you in touch with the economic world, providing you with the ability to sell up and move on should you choose or need to at any point in the future. Depending on the dwelling you would choose to live in you could also save money i.e. living in a cob house that has built-in passive solar designs alongside solar hot water and wind energy systems could save you a lot of money in build and electricity costs.

(see www.simondale.net/house/family.htm)

Even renovating a ruin or another form of self-build? Could we access the shared skills and resources of the community to cut down expenses? What skills do we share between us? Having lower overheads also means having to earn less, being able to spend more time with friends and family and on retreat.

The environmental impact of this form of community has many implications. Shared community spaces can cancel the need to live in overly big homes. Transport can be shared and pooled, again cutting down on expenses and carbon emissions. Creating a community design around permacultural and natural farming models creates a positive environment to maximise resources, grow food and develop a closer bond to the land. Growing our own organic food has tremendous health benefits and again brings financial savings.

Incorporating this way of living can produce positive working environmental models for the wider communities in which we live. Liz Walker invites this challenge for cohousing communities in her essay 'Stepping stones to sustainability, What cohousing communities can learn from ecovillages':

"In my experience, ecovillages are distinguished from typical cohousing communities by emphasizing a holistic approach to ecological, social, economic and spiritual design. Ecovillages typically incorporate green building, organic food production and on-site businesses. They are oriented toward learning from experimental systems and teaching the lessons learned.

Some cohousing communities integrate many but not all of these features. I offer a challenge to other cohousing communities to consider not only adding on some of these eco-features, but also serving as a catalyst to learning, teaching and organizing local sustainability initiatives. The world needs your inspiration."

 

Some possibilities

We have started looking around at potentially suitable properties and found some exciting prospects in two departments that near to us at present; the Gard and Ardèche. There are some very interesting old-style hamlets that can have up to 10 properties of various sizes within them as well as land attached. An example of one place we went to visit in the Ardèche mountain ranges had 7 properties and 75 adjoining acres. A rough estimation of 7 households purchasing this property would have worked out at €50,000 Euros per household (that’s about £33,600 British Pounds and $62,000 U.S. Dollars). This is an average price of course, as some houses / flats were smaller than others so would have had a lower market value. However the gist is that property here is still very reasonably priced at present! We are mindful of rising property prices and would like to aim to try and buy somewhere in the next 12 - 24 months, hopefully before property prices rise too much. There would be some legality to work through with this option as we would need to get official agreement to divide up such a property, and work out how to perform such a task in an agreeable way to all.

Another idea to look at would be a ‘Retrofit cohousing neighbourhood’. This differs from a purpose-built neighbourhood in that residents start with a few existing homes on some land, and then find innovative ways to adapt the houses, alleys, backyards and courtyards to make them more pedestrian-friendly and community-oriented. By nature, retrofit neighbourhoods are unique, and each community would control its own timetable of work and developments, depending upon financial resources and availability of adjacent properties / building permissions. There have been some interesting projects in the USA of Cohousing groups converting farms and even old factory buildings to great effect.

It could also be possible to buy some land with existing planning permission and build from stratch using permacultural models as a design basis. This would obviously be a longer-term project as the whole community infrastructure would have to be laid down. Lots of planning involved!

These are some possible avenues we could follow, and there are many variations of properties we could eventually buy. These final decisions will be formed by the others getting involved with this project.

The ‘Dharmahouse community project’ is differentiated from the ‘Dharmahouse / Maison du Dharma’ retreat organisation. The ‘Dharmahouse community project’ will be a privately funded housing scheme whereas the ‘Dharmahouse / Maison du Dharma’ retreat organisation is registered as a non-profit organisation under French law to run Dharma retreats and courses in Permaculture.

Please join our Yahoo group (see the Contact page) for ongoing updates and information on both the community project and our retreats and courses. We currently hold regular meetings on this project both in England and France, if you are interested in attending our next meeting please email us for more information.

 

 

Further reading...

An inspiring piece on community by Zen philosopher David Loy:

"But here is the interesting question, I think. If as I now think we have a pretty good sense of how the intellectual process of meditation works to help develop prajna, nondual wisdom, what's comparable for working on the heart level? What I would now say, what seems to be the case, is that you don't work in this heart level so much in meditation, although there are meditations that help it, but I think the heart level has to do with developing love, with purifying and extending our love, and the most important way that we work on this is not by sitting, facing the wall, but in community with our friends and families, with our wider circle of community that we help to develop, which provides the opportunity, which provides the place, for this love to be worked out. In the situations that arise in dealing with other people, it allows us to see how the way of love can help us to let go of the kinds of resistances and selfishnesses that normally tend to limit our way of relating to other people. It seems to me that when we really do this sincerely and over a period of time, then what we get is a sense of a community of love. Love is not simply something that is an attribute of me that I am expressing and bouncing back and forth with other people. It is not just a subjective process, but that we start to realize that out of this community of love we are participating in something deeper than us, and then we begin to see that love isn't something that belongs to me, it is not something that I have or show, but that it is something that I participate in."

 

To end, a good essay written for newly forming Cohousing groups. It is written with the American property market in mind but can serve as a basic blue-print to follow in Europe. Important point that Rob Sandelin makes!: ‘There is no point in reinventing the wheel!’

 

Getting started: The first eight steps

By Rob Sandelin, Sharingwood Cohousing

November 2006

One of cohousing’s sages updates his worthwhile advice on where a new forming group should focus its energy.

These are some of the elements to consider working on in the first months you spend together. This assumes you have brought together a core group of at least two or three households. Three or four households is even better.

1: A vision / goals statement which defines the intentions and directions of the community. This should clearly state what you hope to achieve as a group. Give it to every future member.

2: A group decision and communications process. You need to answer the following questions:

3: A financial structure. You should have answers to the following questions:

4: Form an LLC or incorporate. It costs very little to form an LLC (limited liability company which is a hybrid of a partnership and corporation) or to incorporate, and this protects your personal assets. It also lends legitimacy to your organization in the eyes of banks and other agencies.

5: Make bylaws. Based on the decisions made in Step 2, write them down as bylaws for your organization. These will be changed several times. If you live in a state where the bylaws must be filed along with the LLC or incorporation papers, it will be harder to amend them, but the purpose is to write down your agreements so you don’t forget them and to create a record you can refer to.

6: Get a bank account. Once you incorporate you will be able to get a tax ID number and a corporate bank account. Use this for all expenditures and put someone responsible in charge of keeping track. Remember, once you start spending people’s money you are a legal entity in the eyes of the courts and the tax man. Lots of communities have gotten in trouble from bad accounting.

7: Collect assessments from members. Start with a small sum, like $20 a month. Along with an initial $100 investment this will identify those who are committed and also painlessly raise some startup capital for mailing, legal paperwork, advertising, etc.

8: Don’t reinvent the wheel. More than 85 cohousing communities have figured out how to create community together. Take advantage of all the knowledge out there by turning to resources like the Cohousing list-serve as well as the articles, cohousing events, workshops and consultants on cohousing websites. They will save you incredible time and aggravation.

© 2006 Rob Sandelin

Thankyou to Rob Sandelin for letting us use this article. Rob has lived with family and friends in the Sharingwood Cohousing (Snohomish, WA, USA) since 1991.

 

Further reading

Sustainable Community: Learning From the Cohousing Model
Graham Meltzer (PhD), Victoria (Canada): Trafford, 2005

McCamant and Chuck Durrett’s CoHousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (1988)

The Cohousing Handbook (1996) Chris Hanson

 

Internet sources

www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX5003-WhyDoCommunitiesFail.htm
Gary Moffatt

www.ic.org/pnp/cdir/2000/20diana.php
Diana Leafe Christian

www.innerexplorations.com/catew/d.htm
David Loy

www.cohousing.org/creating_ecovillages.aspx
Liz Walker