The Cohousing Road Trip

The wife and I went to the mentor cohousing community this weekend to see what we might expect out of the cohousing development we're looking into. We got to see the model community in action and in practice.

The place was two and a half hours away in Blacksburg, Virginia (home of Virginia Tech). Blacksburg is much less liberal than Charlottesville (home of the University of Virginia), so I'm kind of surprised that they had a cohousing community before we did. Oh well, that's not really relevant.

Our hosts were a couple with 2 daughters (ages 5 and 3). We brought our 3 year old daughter and 6 month old son with us. Our daughter had a blast playing with the other girls.

The tour was good. We got to talk to people who were living in the community and ask all sorts of questions. Better than that, we got the answers face-to-face with the reading of expressions and follow-up questions that are just not possible over email.

Besides that, to me at least, you can look at as many pictures on a webpage as you like. It will never add up to even a short amount of time actually being there and observing something first hand. There's nothing like walking through the pedestrian oriented neighborhood and standing in the common house.

All in all it took me a step closer to being able to commit to the idea. The wifey is totally sold. She'd sell the townhouse tomorrow and move in ASAP if she could.

My main hang up at this point is the financial feasibility of it all. That and the alteration of our long term financial plans. Mainly - we had planned to never sell the townhouse we are currently in. The plan was to pay off the credit cards (thus freeing up a bunch of money in credit card payments) and then rent the townhouse. Have someone else pay the mortgage, you know?

If we rented the townhouse and shook our credit card payments we'd be able to swing another mortgage payment, even if rent didn't cover all of the townhouse payment. That way when we retired we'd either be able to sell the townhouse for a quick cash injection or continue to rent it for long-term income.

Right now it looks like the community we're looking at will break ground in April, with move-ins around September. It depends on when we would have to kick in our down payment and how long it would take to sell the townhouse.

In this market we'd have to put the townhouse up for sale soon. If it did happen to sell in short order, we may have to move in with my Mom for as many as 8 months while our house was being built. That's assuming my Mom would let us move in. I think she would, but you never want to assume with something like that.

I am also fairly certain we'd get enough out of a sale to pay off the mortgage, but you never know in this market. In the original plan we didn't have to worry about the current downturn in the housing market. We weren't going to sell the townhouse in the short term or maybe ever. Housing proces would recover eventually and even if they didn't it wouldn't hurt as bad since people had been paying our mortgage (or a large potion of it) in the form of rent.

I just don't want to get all excited about this and make a bad decision. Our current long term plan is a good one, I think. And maybe in two years we'd be ready to buy a new house without selling the townhouse - but not right now. We need to pay off the credit cards first.

Oh, well. This wasn't what I wanted to babble about. Here's the place we toured:

http://www.shadowlakevillage.org/

A Road Trip, Then?

The mentor community for the cohousing development we are looking into is located about two and a half hours away. We've arranged to visit the place Sunday afternoon for a few hours. This should give us a pretty good idea of what the community life will be like in a cohousing development (since the place we may move is patterned after this community).

That's it for now.

Cohousing Meeting, etcetera

Wow, it was sooo easy to install the new showerhead... and so cheap, too. If you haven't done this already - you have to get this one done. It took about 10 minutes. Unscrew old showerhead (with help of adjustable wrench), clean the threads (just knock off the chunks), apply teflon tape, screw on new showerhead. Done.

That's 50% less water used in the shower and therefore 50% less energy used to heat it. I think this showerhead will pay for itself in about a month since it only cost about $16 ($12 for the showerhead, $3 shipping, and $1 teflon tape).

Cohousing

Me, the wife, and the kids went to a meeting of a local cohousing group this weekend. The people there were all very nice and very normal. The wife came away all excited about it.

For my part, I went with an open but skeptical mind. I must say that personality-wise the people won me over. No worries there.

My main reservation about doing this cohousing thing is that it would be a good deal less off-grid than I want to be in our next place. Like - it would be totally on-grid, Buffy. My personal goal was to have our next place be completely off-grid. To my knowledge, there are no off-grid cohousing developments. I can say with great certainty that there are no off-grid cohousing developments in our area.

But, on the positive side of this, they are building these units to be solar-ready. I assume this means that they would have the inverter grid-tie in place with a line running to the roof. All units are also to be built facing south. Both good points.

I also brought up the notion of building a bio-diesel refinery in either the barn or the large shed on the property. They seemed to be okay with this idea. Another bonus. It seems like this bunch isn't into the sort of anal retentive controls for which many HOAs are known. Ironic, I thought, since this is a very planned community with a very deep social aspect to it.

The wife suggested this may be a good stepping stone for us into something off-grid. She even tickled my pickle a bit by suggesting that we may be able to start an off-grid cohousing development after learning a bit about cohousing from living in this development.

The community we're currently looking at is in the planning stage. We're supposed to go visit another cohousing community in the near future. Scheduling is the only thing we need to iron out at this point. This community is actually the community that ours will be based on (called a mentor community).

I'm pretty undecided at this point, to be honest. I feel like I would be "selling out" my dream of being off-grid. I know we could afford to build a new place in about three to four years from now.

Another draw-back about this cohousing thing is that the community we are looking into will probably start breaking ground in February. The original plan involved paying off the credit cards and then renting out our townhouse before building.

Now, there's no way I can see us doing this without selling the townhouse. This is an alteration of the long-term plan. This aspect of our family planning predates our getting serious about the whole environmental thing (well, beyond recycling at least). I'm not sure the timing is right even if I can get over temporarily giving up the off-grid goal (which is by no means certain).

It is an interesting idea, though. I must admit that a part of me is very excited about the whole notion.

Cohousing - A Possible Alternative?

I am on the mailing list of a local "Peace and Justice" type group. I know, I know - I don't seem like the type. One might think I'm more of the militia type.

Well I'm a bit more complicated than that, okay?

In any event, there was a link in their latest mailing to a local cohousing community. The idea was pretty intriguing. I like the community aspect invloved with sharing of meal cooking duties, a common house, and the pedestrian nature of the developments.

The one problem with the Cohousing development that we're looking into is that they may not have the commitment to renewable energy that I'm looking for. They mention that all homes will be "energy efficient" and that they'll have features like rainbarrels but I'm not sure that allowances could be made for "going the extra mile", so to speak.

They mention that all houses must be 1,800 sq feet or less and that the floorplans cannot be altered. I don't know if installing PV arrays or evacuated solar tubes for water heating would be considered a deviation from the floorplan or not.

Here's a cohousing community in Ithaca, NY if you'd like an example.

Ha! As I was typing this entry I got an email back from the cohousing community I emailed stating that solar would be allowed. Hmmm.... this is worth looking into.

I think the wife and I will have to look into this - maybe attend a meeting or two.