Cohousing development settles into area

In Elizabeth Hooper’s extended family in rural Mississippi, they often shared food, gardens and child care, not to mention conversation.
“That’s just the way it was,” Hooper said. “I just took it all for granted.”
That familial, friendly neighborhood feel got away from her as she’s gotten older, but as she sat among friends old and new recently at a Crozet farmhouse — the gathering spot that will serve as the centerpiece of a new co-housing development there — that feeling returned.
Her new and potential neighbors of Blue Ridge Cohousing spent the afternoon cooking out by the pool, their kids splashing about as numerous dogs roamed for scraps. They spent the first of what they plan to be many days sharing dinners once their homes are built.
Some of the more than two dozen people in attendance had already made the commitment to live there, while others came to scope the house and the architectural plans and learn more for themselves.
The main message: Cohousing is community.
That’s what Jay Perry, one of the community’s early converts, believes.
It’s also why Hoover, after a youth of having a natural community, is more than willing to live in one, despite it being a little less organic than the more natural, familial one of her youth.
For now, just one person lives in the 1800s-era house, with a cabin attached, that will be the future common house. All say the structure of living in a co-housing neighborhood would give them the community they desire.
The co-housing development, sitting on six acres, will hold 26 families when complete by 2010. Thirteen have already made the commitment to join. Each family will own their own home, with prices expected to start at about $160,000 and will range from 1,000 to 1,900 square feet, Perry said.
Blacksburg-based Community Housing Partners, the project’s developers, are incorporating environmental principles into the design, with founding members still drafting the rules for the new co-housing community.
The co-housing concept — if not the name — originated in Denmark.
“It sort of grew out of this common need that people had where they were feeling disconnected and isolated, a lot of working parents concerned about child care and meals and all that stuff,” Perry said. “So they found a much more economical, efficient and ecological way to live together.”
Brad Gunkel, an architect with McCamant & Durant Architects — prominent co-housing designers — in its Berkeley office, says co-housing, with about 100 communities in the United States and another 100 in various stages of development, is gaining traction in the United States. This is one of six in Virginia, according to the Web site, cohousing.org.
“It’s obviously a growing movement, and there’s more and more demand for it through the country, and more and more of them being built,” Gunkel said.
McCamant & Durant has been involved in more than 40 co-housing developments and is involved in another six in various stages of development.
Happy to be a part of a co-housing development, Hoover wishes more people had the opportunity to experience what it means to have community.
“I think it’s sad for people who don’t have the opportunity, who don’t find out about a group like this,” Hoover said. “And you know, co-housing’s not the only answer. It’s one of the good ones, I think, that’s attainable to people.”
But it’s not for everybody, Perry and Hoover stress, especially for those not willing to participate in the community.
“It’s just sort of part of the expression of, we want to live our lives out in the community rather than inside the castle,” Perry said.
Some people also chafe under the rules of a cohousing neighborhood, which, as they say, people are well-aware of when joining.
“It self-edits, because there are some people who think that it’s right for them and they may come to some meetings, and somewhere it emerges that they’re not enjoying themselves coming to meetings,” Perry said. “They don’t enjoy the lack of structure, or the particular kind of structure [here].”
Some also don’t like the consensus decision-making process.
“For some people, that’s just like, they feel strongly about something, and they just want to make it happen,” Perry said. “I understand, but it’s not the way we do things, so we’ve had a few people join and then drop out as they learn more about it.”
Gunkel said the “co” in cohousing sometimes scares people off because they liken it to the 1960s-era communes. Modern cohousing is different, and more modern than that.
“Everybody still has their own home, everybody gets as much privacy as they want, but everybody also gets as much community as they want,” Gunkel said.
As Hoover spent time around her new community, and her potential new neighbors, she expressed hope that by planting seeds in Crozet, a sense of community can spread from there.
“It’s not just going to be good for me,” Hoover said, “but to share this idea with other people, it’s good for America ... it’s good for our culture in general, ‘cause I think we’re just so isolated.”