Lifetime Cohousing Community - Aims and Guiding Principles Our Aims It is our intention to create a collaborative housing community for people who wish to build a supportive and self-responsible lifestyle for their later years. Our community will support our members to grow older together and encourage them to sustain personal choice and be of value to the community at large. Our Guiding Principles: We resolve to: Share a vision of mutual support and co-operation to enhance and extend our wellbeing and personal choice Stay in contact and in relationship with one another whatever process is happening Create a way of shared living that enables us to continue to grow and be healthy As Individuals we commit to:
What are the 6 Defining Characteristics of Cohousing? While these characteristics aren't always true of every cohousing community, together they serve to distinguish cohousing from other types of collaborative housing: 1. Participatory process. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Return to What is Cohousing. Creating Cohousing A man's home is his castle. But demographic and economic changes haveturned our castles into islands. How can we regain the elements of the traditional village – family, cooperation, community and a sense of belonging – within the context of 21st century life? Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities is an in-depth exploration of a uniquely rewarding type of housing which is perfect for anyone who values their independence but longs for more connection with those around them. Cohousing communities create unique opportunities for designing more sustainable lifestyles. Creating Cohousing puts the "neighbor" back into "neighborhood"; and is an essential resource for anyone interested in more environmentally and socially sustainable living.
In Cohousing We Trust | The Critics Stephen Hill is a firm advocate of the ideas contained within Cohousing in Britain: A Diggers and Dreamers Review ‘Warning: This book may harm your mental health.’ Not that it is anything other than highly readable, full of understated common sense and well mannered in its advocacy of cohousing. Cohousing is already well established in Scandinavia, Germany and the US, but is only just taking off in the UK. While the rest of the housing industry tries to do as little different as possible, cohousing groups, and community land trusts and co-operatives, are the only housing producers actively designing for the future. The LILAC project, now being built in Leeds, does what it says on the tin: Low Impact Living… (permanently) Affordable (housing)… Community. Meanwhile, mainstream housebuilders are still struggling with the illiterate economic argument that people need persuading sustainable homes will cost ‘more than’… well ‘more than’ what exactly?
Older Women’s Cohousing (OWCH) OWCH is planning a cohousing community in London for older women. Website: www.owch.org.uk Email: owch.org@googlemail.com Address: Older Women’s Cohousing, PO Box 44628, London N16 8WH About OWCH The OWCH project was set up in London in 1998 by a group of women who wanted to adapt the model developed by the Dutch. The planned cohousing community OWCH is planning to build a block of flats open to women over the age of 50, where each person has her own self-contained individual flat with shared communal facilities. Cohousing and community on the coast Where my mother grew up, the 42 children would play together outside for hours, and all the neighbours would look out for them. Although such traditional neighbourhoods are now rare, a new community that is likely to have many similar elements will welcome my family when we move there in the summer - we recently joined Belfast Cohousing & Eco-village (BC&E) on Maine’s mid-coast. Cohousing is a collaborative venture, where residents intentionally and actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhood. BC&E is a 36-unit community under construction that will include a ‘common-house’ (of approximately 4,000 square feet) with a large dining room, commercial kitchen, laundry room, guest bedrooms, and playroom. It is located on a 42 acre plot a couple of miles from downtown Belfast, a town of 6,700 with a harbour, library, YMCA, and Montessori school. Despite the benefits, there can be drawbacks to the community layout.
Stroud Cohousing | :: ARCHITYPE :: Value: £4.5m; client: Co-housing Company; complete: 2004 Stroud Co-housing is the first new build co-housing scheme in the UK. Based on the Danish model, co-housing is a form of collaborative housing that creates agency and a real sense of community. Finalist in the ODPM ‘Sustainable Communities Award’ 2006 Cohousing Cohousing is a housing development movement that started in the late 1960s in Denmark, where it is called Bofaellesskaber or 'living communities'. With increasing numbers of women going to work there was a desire to reduce the burden of housework, and in particular childcare and evening meals, through shared communal services. Cohousing is also seen to improve social relations and develop a sense of community. What started as a middle-class housing solution popular with young families, is now a well established housing model for all social groups, and has spread to a number of Northern European countries where governmental policy and funding has encouraged development. It is also becoming increasingly popular in the US, Canada and New Zealand, where cohousing has a more explicit environmental agenda, sharing many similarities with ecovillages but usually in a less radical, smaller and more urban version. References About Martin Field, Thinking about CoHousing. Connections
Cohousing and ecovillages Cohousing and eco-villages are two innovative forms of settlement which have evolved since the 1960s. They have different definitions and histories. Most cohousing groups are in urban settings, and most eco-villages in rural locations. Environmental sustainability is of prime importance for eco-villages, but this is only true for some cohousing groups. However, there is now some interest, and a number of examples, of projects which are both eco-villages and cohousing communities. About Cohousing A new approach to affordable, sustainable housing The essence of cohousing is a combination of self-contained dwelling units with some shared facilities. - Affordability: The shared facilities mean that individual units can be smaller and hence more affordable. - Sustainability: A cohousing group can live more ecologically than a single household: for example, through car pooling, shared shopping, sustainable energy systems. History Cohousing Features Cohousing in the UK Resources About Ecovillages
'Strong bond' of Leeds LILAC co-housing residents 1 January 2013Last updated at 04:23 ET By Samantha Haines BBC News, Leeds LILAC's residents will move into their new homes in the spring It began as a conversation between friends with the same ideals. They wanted to be neighbours, to form a community, to raise their children together and live in eco-friendly, warm, affordable homes. Now, more than five years on, they are weeks away from being given the keys to their dream. "It's been such a story of perseverance and dedication, really. LILAC, or Low Impact Living Affordable Community, is a development of 20 straw bale homes on the site of a former school in Bramley, Leeds, and is said to be the UK's first affordable, green co-housing project. 'UK first' Dr Chatterton and his partner Tash Gordon are among the founding members of the scheme. And while a construction firm has been building the homes this year, LILAC's members have been busy forging their community. "We want these new houses to be full of happy, fulfilled people." 'Amazing' people
Lilac - Affordable strawbale housing community in Bramley. Leeds London Countryside Cohousing Group (LoCo)