Unsettled Forecast: The Cohousing Movement in a Soft Housing Market

I'm just done with four days at the national Cohousing Conference in Waltham MA, and it seems appropriate to reflect on what's happening with that dynamic segment of the Communities Movement.

While the number of attendees at the conference was about 2/3rds of the what the organizers were hoping for (280 instead of 400+), the energy was excellent and the venue (Bentley College) worked pretty well. Although Coho/US has never before held national conferences in successive years, next year they'll test the waters: June 25-28, 2009 on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Here are three miscellaneous reflections on trends:

Changing of the Guard
I noticed that a lot of familiar cohousing faces were not in Boston. In no particular order, all of the following were not with us: Kathryn Lorenz, James Hamilton, Nick Meima, Michael McIntyre, Barbara Lynch, David Ergo, Rob Sandelin, Sherri Rosenthal, Tom & Carol Braford, Annie Russell, David Wann, Shari Leach, Neshama Abraham, Tree Bressen. (What's more, I'm sure I'm forgetting others who deserve mention; these are just the ones I can name in one sitting.)

While nothing lasts forever, and a certain amount of turnover is healthy, the above list represents an enormous amount of cohousing experience that was doing something else last weekend. I used to know everyone on the Board of Coho/US and now I don't. We'll see where it leads.

Uncertain Future
Over the course of the weekend I had the chance to ask several heavy hitters their sense of the cohousing market. The answers varied widely. One reported that his company had gotten no cohousing business at all the last two years and was in the process of reinventing itself focusing on New Urbanism and Green Neighborhoods. Another reported that he had more business than he could get to. A third said she was getting steady calls, yet mostly it was for offers to develop projects in locations too far away for them to be interested in traveling to.

Overall, I got the sense that there was still significant business out there (a continuing flow of new starts and forming groups), yet the rate of growth was slowing and there were definitely some parts of the country badly affected by the slumping housing market.

Many developers and other cohousing professionals offer an overlapping array of services. Because few can offer a group everything, there is a compelling need for professionals to collaborate in meeting client needs. All the more so in that the core of what they're all selling is community and that's based on a root commitment to cooperation. However, not everyone is equally good at everything they do (it's hard to recommend someone if you're not confident they'll be able to deliver to the standard of quality you set for yourself) and it can be hard to keep up with what everyone is offering. In consequence, there is not the easy flow among professionals as might be hoped for, and in a soft market there can be increasing tensions around everyone getting all the work they'd like.

It's my sense that there is still plenty of work for those with the most established reputations, yet it may be a difficult time for new people to break into the field. We'll see.

Greener and Bigger
The largest buzz at the conference was around sustainability and an intelligent response to the challenge of upward spiraling gas prices. Chris ScottHanson was especially excited about how Jamaica Plain Cohousing (completed in 2005) has been able to reduce its total car ownership by 2/3rds (less than one per unit) by the sharing achievable with community living, and by building on a site that's within easy walking distance of the subway line. They have empty parking spaces which they're now thinking of tearing up and converting to garden and food production.

Chris, Jim Leach, and Zev Paiss were all talking about ratcheting up their businesses to aim at sustainable neighborhood development—especially in urban areas—and not just cohousing projects. There are several pieces to this puzzle. In addition to carbon-neutral construction, they're thinking about what can be done to create vibrant urban lifestyles that are not car dependent. It's exciting stuff. Next year, I'll get to check in on how all this is unfolding.