With its tidy three- and four-story buildings clustered around a green lawn, Cornerstone Village in Cambridge, Mass., could be mistaken for an ordinary condominium complex. Near the center of the property, however, is a large common building with an expansive kitchen and dining room where once or twice a week, about two dozen people sit down to an evening meal.
Right away, this regular shared repast sets Cornerstone, one of about 100 cohousing communities in the United States, apart from traditional neighborhoods. In this increasingly popular real estate format — more than 100 additional cohousing sites are in planning or under construction in 37 states and the District of Columbia — households own their individual units but commit to a kind of shared living experience — one that can vary from regular shared meals, as at Cornerstone, to a structure of assigned daily chores and pooled food purchases. Sizes range from fewer than a dozen units to more than 50.
Cohousing residents around the country speak of being drawn to the lifestyle because of what they perceive as the anonymity of American suburbs — and a desire to minimize their impact on the environment.
“These people already recycle, buy organic, and support the local economy,” says Kathryn McCamant, a California-based architect and real estate developer who is credited (with her partner, Charles Durrett) with helping to introduce cohousing to the United States. “Cohousing allows them to take it to the next level.”
The Missing Link
The father of cohousing was a Danish architect named Jan Gudmand-Hoyer. In 1968 he published an article, “The Missing Link Between Utopia and the Dated One-Family House,” that drew interest from more than 100 families. A year earlier, another Dane, Bodil Graae, had written a similarly themed article, “Children Should Have One Hundred Parents,” that spurred a group of 50 families to form a group. The two visionaries eventually joined forces, and in 1973, opened the first cohousing sites: Saettedammen, outside Copenhagen, and Skraplanet, near Hillerod.
Outside the United States, there are about 400 cohousing sites, with Denmark and Britain leading, followed by Canada and Australia. American cohousing projects have faced some challenges. The first one, Muir Commons, opened in Davis, Calif., in 1991. The Cornerstone group formed in the early 1990s and had contracts on four different sites before settling in North Cambridge and convincing the local authorities to grant them a zoning variance. The 32-unit community finally opened in 2001.
The Long Run
While not immune to real estate downturns, “cohousing is a sound investment,” says Neshama Abraham Paiss of the Boulder, Colo.–based Cohousing Association of the United States (cohousing.org). Anecdotal evidence supports that contention — Paiss says her unit in a Colorado community has doubled in value over the past 10 years. McCamant says that units in a recently built cohousing complex in Nevada County, Calif., appreciated 30 percent over the same period.
The environmental benefits of cohousing are considerable as well. Graham Meltzer, author of Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model, found that when households make the move to cohousing, they own fewer cars and more bicycles. Furthermore, he surmised, through pooled shopping and other shared errands, total per-person vehicular trips can be decreased by as much as 50 percent.
Some cohousing buildings are already sporting architectural bells and whistles commensurate with their eco-friendly image. Eastern Village Cohousing, a development in Silver Spring, Md., has a lush “green roof” — with multiple plants and trees sprouting from its upper reaches — and deep subterranean pipes that draw geothermal heat to warm the units. According to architect Don Tucker of Ecohousing, the project’s developer, Eastern Village exceeds local energy-saving codes by 45 percent.
“I had never heard of cohousing,” says resident Kara Strong, who is also an architect. “I was very excited about the opportunity to live my values.”
