Summary Report


Creating Intentional Communities for the Second Half of Life
A Conference sponsored by the
North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement (NCCCR)
July 28, 2006, the Reuter Center, Asheville, NC

Over 125 conferees, some traveling from hundreds and even thousands of miles, attended a recent conference entitled “Creating Intentional Communities for the Second Half of Life” held at the Reuter Center, home of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement (NCCCR), a program of the University of North Carolina Asheville The conference was sponsored by NCCCR and co-sponsored by AARP of North Carolina, Asheville Home Builders Association (AHBA), the Asheville Section of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC). The purpose of the one-day conference was to provide an overview of several emerging forms of mutually supportive housing arrangements that have been gaining media attention and interest among Boomers and their elders. The following is a summary of the proceedings of the conference.

Cul de sacs and cohousing

The first speaker, Ben Brown, a noted journalist, called intentional communities “the wave of the future” -- whether their form might be mixed age cohousing or variations such as eldershires, elder co-housing, or naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs). By forming energy efficient, mutually supportive housing communities that place less stress on the natural environment and promote a sense of belonging, future residents of these communities, especially aging Baby Boomers, could contend with what Brown called the “cul de sacs” of American life. Brown argued there was growing awareness of dead ends such as the environmental crises. “Nature is coming back and biting us,” he noted. Global warming, water shortages and the escalation of fuel costs signal the end of cheap energy. Then, there were the personal emergencies popping up for this generation, including rampant diabetes and obesity, the results, in part, of a sedentary life style and poor diet.

Another crisis emerging in our society is the lack of affordable housing while, ironically, there’s a trend toward fewer individual occupying bigger (“but crummier”) houses. The housing crisis is being driven by the increasing cost of borrowing money, labor, land, materials and construction. However, the housing market may be changing. Brown lauded the emerging trend toward aging populations moving into smaller houses and more resource-sharing communities -- small, walkable communities that are compact and very tight. The trend is most evident in high-income housing, where individuals are investing in small, compact properties that don’t require a lot of upkeep or waste space. He cited the forerunner, Seaside, the Florida “new urbanism” styled beach community developed in the 1980s. Brown quipped that sometime it was wise to “follow the rich people” who may be trendsetters.

He commented that there were a lot of important lessons to be learned from hurricane Katrina, and “all bets are off for endless freeways and endless, sprawling suburbs.” With 65,000 homes destroyed in a three-county area by the storm, at the current reconstruction rate of 2,500 homes per year, it would take 30 years to rebuild. But, the upside is that the Katrina tragedy is fostering the emergence of innovative, exciting design ideas and construction techniques. Houses are being downsized without sacrificing design. High-end designers have been brought together in think tanks and the result is the creation “Katrina Cottages,” clusters of small homes that are comparable but far superior to FEMA prefab houses, and can be joined together to form whole, new neighborhoods. He also mentioned that Lowe’s is now offering “Katrina Cottage Kits” for quick housing construction.

Brown said he was honored to be included in this conference and hoped it would serve as a catalyst for the formation of new intentional communities.

Examples of how cohousing works

Zev Paiss and Neshama Abraham, co-founds of the Elder Cohousing Network based in Boulder, CO, spoke on “Communes for Grownups: Emerging National Trends.” They defined cohousing as an innovative, non-institutional housing option for aging in community and characterized it as “a lighter way to live on the planet.”

They pointed out that cohousing is not a new concept, but started in Denmark 30 years ago. The idea, transplanted to the US in the 1990’s, “isn’t about having it all yourself – house, yard and having to take care of all that,” but a return to community and a way of sharing resources, rather than maintaining a big house that was wasteful of resources.

A series of community examples were pictured and described, including Muir Commons, Harmony Village, Eastern Village, Pleasant Hill, Hearthstone, Yalupa, Swans Market and other cohousing villages across the US. The similar characteristics of these cohousing ventures were the provision of common areas, such as courtyards central to home clusters that were off limits to auto traffic and that encouraged people to connect with one another as well as the sharing of meals periodically during the week in shared community areas. “Breaking bread is one of the basic ways that we commune,” they said.

Most of the people being drawn to these type of clustered communities, said Paiss, are well-educated individuals who are concerned for the environment, involved in spiritual and personal development, apt to volunteer for causes, such as health, social justice, and who were advocates of personal development.

Paiss mentioned geriatric physician Bill Thomas, the author of What are Old People For? as a pioneer in elder cohousing concepts. He pointed out that there were three phases in life: childhood, adulthood and elderhood, and associated with the latter are three plagues: loneliness, boredom, and a sense of helplessness. Sadly, many institutions created to serve the elderly reinforce these plagues, only increasing their suffering with their lives revolving around “service moments,” and robbing the elders’ sense of empowerment and ability to do things for themselves.

Elder cohousing is thought to be a return to community, to the village and to the tribe. “Neighborhood life unfolds just outside the door.” Following on Neshama Abraham’s introduction and group meditation exercise, he emphasized it’s also a path toward open-hearted communication and the return to honoring the much-needed voices of the elders who are viewed as persons who are not just awaiting death, but are vital human beings who are still growing and learning.

“These people are our national treasures, and they need to be reintegrated into our society,” they said. And, rather than people aging “in place” in isolated homes, elder cohousing offers a way of aging in community, surrounded by a close-knit group of neighbors.

The main features of cohousing communities are: engaging in a participatory process, creating shared values (“weaving your personal vision with others”), designing a physical environment with emphasis on community rather than on isolation and privacy, fostering opportunities for engagement enhanced by pedestrian and walking paths, and shared common areas, such as a shared dining area, a media room, workshops, a large living-room style area, a lifelong learning center, and indoor and outdoor recreation areas.

“Typically, there are shared meals 2-3 times a week with community members preparing food, cooking and eating together.”

Other features of cohousing communities include: community responsibility for residence management, often handled through regular business meetings; hiring out of some services, such as cooks, transportation, and landscapers to help with the workload; a collaborative decision-making process that includes the use of consensus to reach the best solutions for the group as a whole. In some communities there is also a shared community economy with monthly dues used to support the homeowners association.

These communities strive to create a balance between privacy and community, so there’s “not too much of either.” A sense of feeling secure is important, too, and the closeness that elders achieve with one another helps to create the security like an “ungated gated community” with everyone keeping an eye on their shared ground.

The value of such communities is that they provide ample opportunities for camaraderie, mutual regard and the development of close relationships. They also provide a sense of family and belongingness and give residents a sense of identity and accountability – the ingredients of “the good life.” Or, as one resident put it, these communities can create “a good place to live, and a good place to die.”

There are many ways that elder cohousing is being configured. It could be placed on the campus of a large church or on a nearby property so parishioners can pitch in and support. It could also be located on the property of a preexisting continuing care retirement community (CCRC); it could be contained within a “new urbanist” neighborhood; or implanted adjoining a multi-generational cohousing community containing a variety of families at various stages in life, with a mix of ethnicities and children and adolescents.

According to the speakers, one way to start planning a cohousing project is to create a discussion group of 8 to 10 people. That, in turn, can lead to the formation of a social community, and ultimately to a residential community. The group can then create a roadmap, find a developer who is aware older persons’ physical needs, and join together to create a sustainable vision, seek financial backing, get engineering help, and work with local authorities and dealing with zoning laws to obtain needed approval for building cohousing facilities.

In the question and answer session following their presentation, audience members expressed concern about how to deal with the inevitable conflicts within communities, and what happens when an elder community starts to collapse as members die or move away.

Paiss said that he knew of no cohousing community that had collapsed once it had been formed. Abraham emphasized that by implanting the group process from the very beginning of community formation, people learn how to deal with conflicts and make decisions together. That ability needed to be supported by on-going training and retreats so that the collaborative process could be helped to improve over time. Naturally, people could be expected to die and the community change, but the process is usually gradual with new members moving in to take the place of lost ones.

Paiss emphasized that,when surveyed, most people expressed a desire for a multigenerational lifestyle and desired to be around children and youth with all of their energy. The speakers asserted that there were joys to being with others of a different age, but the quality of life had a chance to deepen “when you were with your peers.” The “eldering time” had its own characteristics that were different, say, than the childrearing years. Mid and later life is characterized as a time of contemplation and an opportunity for doing deep inner work. Another reason for an age-segregated elder cohousing community, Abraham pointed out, is because “there comes a time when you just get tired of stepping on plastic toys.”

In contrast to nursing homes, where people have been found to get only about 10 minutes of skilled nursing care during a 24-hour cycle, elder cohousing presents the opportunity of forming care teams -- a circle of neighbors -- who could serve in the place of assisted living offered by for-profit settings, and, in some cases a “greenhouse model” is being developed in cohousing communities that brings together groups of elders in homes setting with a hired caregiver.

“Aging in Place” & NORCs

David Schimmel, the National NORCs Director for United Jewish Communities in Washington, DC, spoke on “Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs): Variations on a Theme.”
NORCs are adults over 60 living in the same community in their own residences, called “aging in place,” with programs and supportive services being delivered to seniors where they reside and wish to remain.

NORC service communities can be found in a variety of locations: large, high-rise buildings or a combination of buildings filled primarily with seniors that are arbitrarily clustered into one community. These are called “vertical” or “closed” NORCs. “Horizontal” or “open” NORCs consist of the seniors living in a defined geographical area, such as those grouped together because they live in freestanding or semi-detached homes or apartments that fall within a given geographic area, such as neighborhood-dwelling seniors living within a four-mile radius.

Generally, the delivery of services in NORC programs is created from broad-based partnerships forged by a lead agency. The startup work consists of outreach to identify the needs and strengths of the seniors in the defined territory, either vertical or horizontal; community organizing through assessments, interviews and questionnaires; the creation of the programs and services based on the needs assessment; the empowerment of representative seniors to serve as co-creators in the design of the services and how the “basket of services” that will be delivered.

The menu of low-fee, reduced fee, or free services could include recreation and community activities, social services, social events, nursing support, learning opportunities such as wellness and health maintenance classes. Other services could include escorted transportation, and information and referral services, or simply opportunities for neighbors to meet and network with one another. The ultimate mission of the services is to assist seniors in achieving a high quality of life while enabling them to remain in their own homes for as long as possible.

“Location, location, location is everything in planning NORCs,” according to Schimmel. “You need to be really sure you have a high enough concentration of adults to make the program work.” With high-rise apartments, common meeting areas can be created to encourage community activities, and with seniors living near one another in neighborhoods, hubs can be established as meeting places located in churches, senior centers, libraries, or “warm homes” -- houses where seniors are invited come together in a close atmosphere.

According to Schimmel, the needs of seniors can be expected to change over time. While a 60-75 year-old person may need assistance with transportation and welcome social and advisory programs, later, his or her situation may focus around medical problems.

“Usually, they don’t come to us until they reach a crisis point,” said Schimmel. “We call it ‘helping people one broken hip at a time’.” “But what we ultimately hope to create is an ongoing presence in people’s lives before they hit a blip – a health or emotional crisis. And research shows that the health and emotional benefits of these types of services can help to prevent social isolation, which has been linked to heart disease and a higher rate of mortality.”

One example of an aging-in-place program is Beacon Hill Village in Boston, Massachusetts that has gotten a great deal of press coverage lately. It could be called grassroots organizing. Seniors living in their own homes got together to create a virtual community of neighborhood residents who wanted to arrange for ancillary services so they could stay in their own homes. The mostly affluent members of the “village” hired a staff person with a background in aging services to coordinate services for members, such as overseeing the delivery of concierge and healthcare services. Community members paid annual dues, something like $500 per couple and $400 per individual to access the services. The Beacon Hill model is considered a “one-stop-shop” to deliver services through a variety of partners.

Sustaining a NORC requires on-going funding of some type, whether it’s the contributions of individuals, such as the Beacon Hill model, or through Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) on the county and city levels, federal funding for special demonstration projects, the services of non-profit agencies, or foundation endowments that enable programs to survive.

In some cases, building owners and management in high rises have provided the dollars needed to provide services to residents. Member/residents may also pay dues or help to underwrite their own services. In some cases, states have provided earmarked funds for NORCs and other senior services in communities. For example, New York State and New York City both are providing funding to organizations that apply to set up NORCs.

Schimmel cited these factors and made predictions for the future NORC trends:

[1] Over 80% of aging adults report that they want to remain living in their own homes and to “age in place.”

[2] The need for community-based programs can be expected to grow as the huge “baby boomer” population ages.

[3] Increasingly more efficient delivery of services will be needed. Federal initiatives are focusing increasingly on ways of encouraging senior independence, such as enhancements for consumer-driven choices, including vouchers that allow seniors to make their own choices of physicians.

[4] The emphasis on preventive programs can be expected to grow, such as using health professionals to promote healthy living.

[5] The concept of resource centers for seniors and demonstration programs to provide technical assistance for programs in a variety of settings, such as in urban, suburban or rural areas can be expected to expand.

During the question and answer period, audience concern was expressed about how seniors are often treated by agencies and organizations in a “parent-to-child” relationship, and how agencies often resist inviting seniors to serve on their boards out of self-protection and a fear that “they” will take over.

One respondent pointed out the “social capital” that already existed within natural communities – the grocery bagger, the pharmacist, the waitress in the café – all of whom needed to be recognized as providing social networks for seniors. Schimmel said that some NORCs were actively creating partnerships with community-area businesses to give members discounts, to deliver meals, and with the medical centers and senior centers in their communities.

He closed by emphasizing that community organizing to establish NORCs is hard work and requires not only a social worker and a nurse, but also an outreach worker.

Constructing a cohousing community

Don Tucker, who helped to develop the Takoma Village Cohousing units just outside Washington, DC, and a member of the Eco Housing Corporation, spoke on “Building Affordable Green Communities,” meaning communities that were eco-friendly.

He stated that his first cohousing project began with an ad he placed in the local City Paper. “A number of people turned out,” he reported. He did outreach to form a group of seniors who could collaborate with him to develop a multi-family cohousing project.

“When it comes to creating low-end housing, we’re always developing and designing for an anonymous end user. On one hand, doing that allows the architect to use an open hand. But building conscious community is more of a collaborative process. You have so much input from others in that process, so the question becomes: ‘What do you do with it all’?”

“We wanted input, but reserved ultimate decision power in certain areas. There is only so much customizing you can do,” he noted.

He felt he was “pushing the envelope” on sustainable design with his projects with the end goal of using a collaborative process in order to build stronger communities. His idea was to create neighborhoods like building blocks that could be put together to form larger units. “The question is: How big can you get and not become anonymous?”

Some of the features of his model were: pedestrian-oriented walking areas; housing that offered privacy, but also supported community; and building structures and creating an environment that created a sense security without the need for gating. Affordability was also important, and the units needed to be near transportation, in this case, the Washington area Metro. An urban infill site of 1.43 acres was aquired, and it was designated as a co-housing PATH, or demonstration project. Seventy percent of the buyers were first-time homeowners.

Strategies were needed to make the cohousing units affordable. The area was zoned for multi-family use. It was located on a small infill site that had serious environmental issues (some toxic soil that had to be removed), and previous proposals for the land use had been opposed by the neighborhood. Fortunately, the seller was willing to subordinate the loan to the lender and the environmental issues were cleaned up.

A group of designs were created for the project. The concept was a piazza surrounded by stacked condos and bungalows. It was important to control car traffic in favor of a pedestrian orientation. All of the units were designed to face in toward the center, The Green. A common house was created as an entry point for the units from the parking side of the structures. There, residents could get their mail or share a meal if they chose. For a sense of security, The Green was designed to be a “defensible space,” a place where the “eyes of the community are upon you” to provide natural surveillance to secure it for both adults and children from unwanted intruders.

Key issues for the structures were their quality and durability that included energy efficiency delivered by the use of geothermal heat pumps that used wells dug deep under the green; environmental performance in other areas; affordability; and safety/disaster mitigation.

Early buyers into the community were required to provide sweat equity. They did all of the marketing, since 70% of the units had to be presold before construction could begin. Residents-to-be created and distributed Takoma Village flyers. The original lock-in price for the units ranged from $135 to $200 per square foot. Upside apartments were used to help underwrite the downside, less-expensive units which were “builder grade models.” Special financing was made available for first time and moderate-income buyers. Target Area Building Bonds were used to help buyers access special financing, which was employed by 60% of the buyers.

Eco Housing was another project initiated by Tucker. A1970s era office building was converted into a multi-unit, cohousing community. Fifty-six cohousing units were created, which came out to 35-40 units per acre. The concept was to maximize land use while controlling the population sufficiently to prevent anonymity. The conversion task required changing facades and interiors in order to create environmentally sensitive, affordable residential housing. The parking lot between two adjoining buildings was converted into the “greens” area and was transformed into a landscaped garden.

Materials torn out during construction, such as walls and metal were recycled. Again, geothermal heating was created using the deep drilling of wells 650 feet underground. Low VOC paint and other environmentally friendly materials were used in the remodeling process. A play area was created, a hot tub installed, a meditation garden added. A roof garden was created that used the hydrotech flat roofing system, which included a waterproof frame for drainage. Special funding was obtained through the MC Housing Opportunity Center, and Green Building tax credits were used.

During the question and answer period, a participant asked what was in the recreation hall. Tucker noted that the common house was a two-story space. He said that how that area was used was up to various community groups. There was a dining/meeting room, a shop, a game room, a media room, a mediation room and a library. There were also shared laundry units in the community, as well as storage facilities and a parking garage built by the county.

Another person wondered how the cohousing venture could help to prevent price skewing when residents began to sell off their units to ensure that future prices didn’t skyrocket and edge out low-income buyers. Tucker stated that the prices of the units were locked down early in the process, depending upon the size of the unit. Prices ran from $135 per square foot to $220 per square foot, depending upon the size of the unit and upgrades. A mix of housing options were offered from 1 bedroom with a den, to 4-bedroom, 2-story townhouses. He noted that it took one year from the acquisition of the site location to the ribbon cutting.

Creating a spiritual-based cohousing community

Dene (Geraldine) Peterson, Founder and executive director of ElderSpirit in Abingdon, Virginia, spoke on “How We Created an Affordable, Beautiful and Spiritual Community: ElderSpirit.”

“This talk is about aging and about living and housing and eventually about dying,” she said. “It is about all these things not as an ending or as a failing but as an opportunity and a new found freedom! Why not have a good old age?” she asked. “As we age, we become a whole lot more the same,” she asserted. This commonality, she suggested, could serve as the foundation for building an intentional community.

“Federation of Communities in Service,” otherwise known as FOCIS, was instrumental in helping Peterson found ElderSpirit Community. Initially the group wrote a vision, mission and value statement. Some of those shared values included creating a participatory (“being with”) environment, an environmentally conscious lifestyle, and one that reflected a simple lifestyle and offered arts and leisure activities.

Then began the process of finding land. The location needed to be walkable to town, and to offer good educational resources nearby. She noted that once the community got going, it created “College for Older Adults,” offering 13 classes on a variety of topics from living the simple lifestyle to interpreting enneagrams. Community work was important, and community relations were helped by a bread baker who was willing to distribute loaves of bread to each neighbor in the surrounding community that is a traditionally Black neighborhood near the Barter theater.

The community sought funding and was awarded a $100,000 presconstruction grant from the Retirement Research Foundation in Chicago. It also accessed $1.6 million in public money including a grant from HOME sponsored by HUD and Community Housing and Development authorities. “There’s a whole system of affordable housing,” Peterson said. Approximately 50% of applicants for residence met AMI (American Median Income) levels. ElderSpirit held its grand opening in June of this year after eight years of planning and construction.

“We build very good and moderate priced houses,” she said. One-bedroom homes sold for $90,000, while 2-bedroom homes were $113,000, and fee-simple deeds were offered. We wanted to help residents keep independence, save money and live an active lifestyle with something to do. Spirituality was an important area of pursuit, too. “We were looking for significance and meaning, especially for later life,” she said.

“There are basically three Western models for successful aging,” she said. (1) The medical model: you stay healthy as long as you can, then you come to a doctor] and to treat your illness. “That’s a dysfunctional model,” she said. (2) The production model says: “I’m not going to get older. I’m going to stay middle-aged. This model does not prepare one for diminishment when it occurs. And, (3) the leisure model that pictures elderhood as mainly a consumer lifestyle of shopping and playing golf. After a short time, this lifestyle grows thin and one longs for more meaning in life.”

In contrast to these models, “aging is for growing your soul, and living in community is a spiritual exercise,” she said. In her case, Peterson said she “learned to sand off some of my rough edges. It’s for asking questions, such as: “Why were you born?” “What have you done?” “Where are you going with it?” Face-to-face groups were created to allow people to talk in a regular way with one another. The groups share what’s going on in their lives and the ups and downs of their journeys.

“At ElderSpirit, we are committed to supporting and caring for each other,” she said. “People are encourage to act in such a way that others want to help them and those who offer help must do it willingly and not be at a sacrifice for helping.” Learning to ask for support is also a part of the soul-growing process,” said Peterson. Consensus is a whole process. As long as we’re listening to each other, we are growing our souls,” she said.

“ElderSpirit is made up of everything from Buddhists to Baptists,” said Peterson. She explained that residents still go to their own churches. Open-mindedness toward people of different beliefs is a special skill that is cultivated at ElderSpirit where consensus is used for all decision making. “We have to learn to listen to each other,” she said, “because that way we are growing our souls.”

Peterson demonstrated how a care committee operates within the community. A community member was dying, so a doorbell was installed that rang next door so she could call her neighbor when she needed help. Someone came each day from 4 to 6 pm. That person would take care of the mail, including writing to friends and relatives. Others would schedule to read out loud to the person, talk with her, and pray with her. Someone was responsible for feeding her cats and eventually staying overnight. A community member would do the transportation duty and convey the person to the doctor and stay around afterwards to talk about what the doctor said. Yet another was on-call as needed. “The relationships were so rewarding that it wasn’t a sacrifice,” she said.

Twenty-one community members have just moved in. “Pods” were created for small groups so people could get to know each other better, and they share meals together. “Each time another person moves in the community spirit gets better,” said Peterson. The groups share what’s going on in their lives and the ups and downs of their life journeys.

“We’re in the honeymoon phase,” she said in closing, “and I hope it lasts for 10 years!”

The Eldershire concept

Alex Mawhinney, who works with the Eldershire concept, has spent the last 30 years developing and running assisted and continuing care retirement communities, spoke on “Eldershires: What are they? Where do I sign up?”

Alex observed that many elders live alone and in relative isolation. They have a strong desire to make a connection. “It’s something we all need,” he said. Many live for years in contact only with a caregiver or they live in a facility cared for by an underpaid, overworked staff. Even under these circumstances, Alex has watched positive relationships emerge. Alex believes there has to be a better way than the “care in a box” approach.

He and his partner, Marianne Kilkenney, began their search with a Second Journey Visioning Council event where they explored the concept of cohousing.

According to Mawhinney, developing a co-housing community is like choosing a whole new family.” Last year, he and his partner discovered a 1901-vintage, 6,000 sq. ft. Greek revival house situated on 14 acres close to the main street of a town near Asheville. They believed the home could serve as the common house for a cohousing community and other housing units would be built in close proximity – a variation on the usual cohousing approach that starts from scratch. They site met all feasibility parameters and they attempted to buy the property but were outbid at the last moment. Still, the experience helped them clarify what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives.

During this experience, they discovered their plan closely matched the model of the Eldershire concept developed by Bill Thomas, the geriatrician who invented the Eden Alternative used to humanize nursing homes. For Thomas, the antidote to loneliness was providing loving companionship, both human and animal, as well as plants. The antidote to helplessness was people helping one another. The answer to boredom was to make space in life for the unexpected and the unpredictable.

“It’s amazing how a set of principals can transform a nursing home,” Mawhinney noted. “Think what it feels like to walk into the doors of a home and be greeted by a golden retriever, to hear birds chirping form someone’s room, and to see people playing with kittens and tending to plants,” he said.

Bill Thomas then envisioned the Greenhouse Project, as a replacement for the traditional nursing home, a place where people can grow, and in which assistance and care is not the main focus of people’s existence. Twenty-one Greenhouses are in existence at present and 380 in planning stages thanks to a $10 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The next step for Dr. Thomas was an outgrowth of Eden Alternative and Greenhouse principles – Eldershire. These communities are for the well elderly who seek to live in a community, enjoy a sustainable lifestyle in their own homes that are part of an intentional community that includes caring for one another. Thomas began the process were he lives in Sherburne, N.Y. Key concepts include civic involvement, social engagement, education and expression.

According to the Eldershire concept, “Elders are part of a greater neighborhood,” Mawhinney said, “and they share their accumulated wisdom while they are pursuing growth.” Mawhinney proposed that a network of elder cohousing neighborhoods be developed in the local (Asheville) area. Communities need cross-pollination, and people need a way to share their laughter, skills and joys with others. Being in a community requires skills, and so group formation and development are important, along with resident training opportunities.

Question and Answer Period

In the question and answer phase, a participant asked Peterson: "How are you divvying up responsibilities among residents? Do you farm out some of them?” She replied that all community members are expected to participate in committees. There is also a monthly residence meeting for dealing with anything that needs to be brought to consensus. There is also a residents’ budget to outsource help.

“We’re kind of a hardy group,” she said. Community members, for example, hustled trees, flower and other plantings from a local nursery for the yard. But, they’ve hired someone to mow the lawn.

“How do you keep the housing prices from escalating?” she was asked. She replied that a portion of the appreciation of property when it’s sold is applied back to the community in order to help maintain affordability. But he said it’s difficult to get appraisals and comps on housing like this. Residence values are between $90,000 and $113,000, but recently a unit sold for $130,000.

“Do you have a screening process when people apply to the community?” another participant asked. There is a consensus process used. An interview protocol is used. The applicants are shown a film and asked to attend a residents’ meeting.

“In the interview, we are looking at the “goodness of fit,” she said. “We’re open in expressing all of our hesitations.” We also have a participation agreement to be signed that includes some type of spiritual practice, and agreeing to share common meals.

“Screening is a hard process,” she said. “At least we let people know what our hesitancies are about them.”

Another questioner wondered about how the neighbors felt about having the community move in, where cars were allowed to park, and whether neighbors were concerned about the extra traffic. She replied that parking was built into the side of a mountain, and that units had parking right at their doors. Regarding property values in the neighborhood, research has shown that cohousing appreciates at a much faster rate than market values. In fact, one neighbor expressed the thought
that “if you’re willing to move here, then maybe others will, too.”

“Have you created a foundation for ElderSpirit?” Peterson replied that they had created a non-profit 5-01-C3 as a “private development project.” In closing, she reported that one of the residents said: “I can’t believe that anything THIS good could have happened at this stage!”


Closing panel

A “panel of experts that included Julie Uritus, Coordinator of AARP SNI-Livable Communities-Housing Options, Paula Robbins, a resident of Westwood Cohousing in Asheville, NC, and Ben Brown, presented “Critical Issues, Challenges and Opportunities Ahead for Cohousing.” Each of the panelists was to reframe what they had heard during the day and to tease out critical issues.

Julie Uritus opened with comments about the work of the AARP in the housing area. She affirmed AARP’s findings that most retired persons resist moving from their current homes into new locations. But sometimes this would be to their advantage. How do we help them see that there are viable, positive options?

Regarding models, “we tend to be reactive and to look at change from ‘one broken hip to another’,” she said. “Often, most of us don’t think about (end of life issues) until something happens to our parents. Then we say, ‘I don’t want to put my children through that.’ That’s when we begin to think about options.”

AARP on the national level is concerned about transportation options for seniors. A “Rebuilding Together” project rehabs homes for families and the elderly. Affiliates have hired executive directors who help to mesh volunteer efforts together. The organization is also working with home remodelers through the American Council of Homebuilders to create “certified aging in place” structures that are user friendly, since many seniors are just “one fall away” from losing their homes.

“People don’t want to find their contractors by just using the yellow pages,” she said. The Easy Living Home Coalition is helping to promote universal standards for homes that apply not only to the handicapped, but also to seniors and children, such as having primary living facilities on the first floor, having easy-access front doors and “visitability;” that answers the questions: “Is my entrance safe for me? Is it accessible if someone wants to visit me?” “If they can’t get into my home, how can I make that possible?”

North Carolina, as other states, offers a variety of services at the state levels, such as through the state cooperative extension service that provides training on elder caregiving and home modifications.

Paula Robbins, of Westwood Cohousing shared her story about developing cohousing on a dilapidated flower farm that had only a one-bedroom cottage. A group got together with the family that owned the property and planned how they wanted to live. Many hours were spent helping to market and plan the community 8-1/2 years ago.

“We’ve gotten to the point where the community is well formed,” she reported. “Cohousing is not utopia. The bell-shaped curve is very much at work when it comes to community responsibilities. At one end of the curve are the people who are extremely involved. In the middle are people who are moderately involved, and at the other end are people who are barely involved. There are people who do a lot of work, and others that don’t do much,” she said.

“Unfortunately, there’s no effective way to screen for people in advance. So you can have all those questionnaires and screening tools, but I don’t know that it will work. Sometimes people that just drop in on the scene end up doing a lot more for the community than those that went through a detailed screening process,” she said.

The land values at Westwood have gone up. There are a variety of townhouse units of various sizes. Each resident pays a monthly assessment of $218. The homes use solar heat and radiant heating so the utilities average just a little over $100 per month. There is carpooling into Asheville, and residents even share the Asheville Citizen-Times – one reads it in the morning, another in the afternoon, and a third in the evening. There are 37 adults and 11 chiildren with an age range from 4 to 89. Some residents are still quite active, and most residents are in their 50’s and 60’s, although 2 are in their late 20’s.

“There are long waiting lists for people wanting to live here,” she said. “I could sell my place tomorrow,” she said. “When you build a livable community for seniors, you can also make it comfortable for everyone else, and if it’s comfortable for children and seniors, then it works best for everyone,” she said.

“Co-housing doesn’t offer a cure for cancer,” she said. “The challenge is affordability. What you get back is that if you bring in good people, you get good solutions.”

In the question and answer phase, a person asked Uritus, “What’s it going to take to get cohousing on AARP’s Web site?” The answer was: “We’re working on it.”

Ben Brown was asked whether he had come across a Kibbutz model of cohousing that offered opportunities for economic development and commercial possibilities. Brown said that the shared community model might not work very well with the 25 to 35 year-old set who are generally off by themselves living an island-like existence. But living together in a community can make chances for economic growth better. He spoke of urban environments with cohousing in upper stories over retail environments, or that offered work space for artists. He spoke of the Holiday New Urbanist model in Boulder, Colorado, that combined housing with office space, artists’ lofts and retail space. Cabinet makers and other workers agreed to share space and work together and formed economic partnerships.

Another question was asked about using urban infill. The concern was about how cohousing would fit into an existing neighborhood and a community, and the concept of isolation versus how cohousing related to its neighborhood and engaged in the greater community, including the issue of transportation and having a place to ride a bicycle.

Brown commented on the fact that as the cost of living continues to go up, connectivity will become increasingly more important. Compactness will be increasingly more important where services are pulled together, as will completeness – the creation of a full ecosystem that brings together a diversity of species to make the community more complete.

“If you don’t have diversity, then you are lacking,” he said. “If you’re plugged into community and use the community to advance community, then everybody wins.”

Brown spoke about the zoning battle that cohousing projects face. In many places the high-density, compact housing concept is considered illegal. And, zoning is hard to change.

“Zoning is one of the battles you will have to face, along with cars and traffic. It’s the mindset of city fathers and councils that the more people you have around you, the less livable a place is. Most communities have bought into the idea that as privacy is sold off, value decreases, but the cohousing model is that by adding more people, it gets better and you’re working to build community.

“Funding for affordable housing needs strong advocacy,” Brown said. “We can’t use the ‘workforce’ argument, since many of the people using cohousing aren’t working, so we have to argue for affordability and accessibility.

One participant pointed out that the American Institute of Architects and the U.S. Conference of Mayors agreement that by 2010 the US would reduce to half the use of fossil fuels in building new housing. Energy use and the use of fossil fuels needs to become part of the conversation. LEED certification was also brought up in neighborhood design. One way to cut down on fossil fuel consumption is to cut down on driving, which compact, walkable communities built near grocery stores, banks, and other services can deliver.

One participant, a professor of gerontology noted: “Sometimes I feel like Paul Revere, yelling: ‘The aging are coming!’ ‘The aging are coming!’” Right now there are 70,000 people over age 100. In 1980, there were only 30,000 people that age. By mid-range 2030, there will be as many as a million people over age 100. Our world is going to look different. This is the beginning of a new movement, and it’s going to take a new community to maintain the old-age population with elders taking care of one another, “she said.

Another participant, an architect, commented on the rise in gated communities – developers buying 50-200-acre tracts and building for people in their 50’s who planned to retire there. But, he asked, what happens when these residents grow older and need more medical services?
He asked: “How can we promote cohousing to this community that’s not up on a mountaintop with a wonderful view?” Ben Brown responded that at least 30% of pre-retirees say they would prefer to live in walkable, pedestrian, urban-style communities, so there also needs to be downtown, easy-access living spaces. Unfortunately, most cities are still structuring their downtown rules; plus, transportation serves people badly.

He noted that developers have all the regulatory hurdles to cross and hearings to attend if they want to build in cities.

“It’s incredibly easier to build out in the woods, and hard to build in the city." There’s the city council, and the planners, and the environmental issues. The answer is simple: ‘Don’t make developers jump over 200 hurdles.”

Another respondent said that banks could be a problem, too. She shared the story of a really good urban cohousing plan that had to be dropped because local banks refused to finance it.

Someone else posed that it is possible to form groups to address the zoning problem on the local level. Brown responded: “Let’s make it easy to do GOOD development. All the city council hears is their constituents screaming ‘NO development!’ But it is possible to organize people and show tremendous community support for good development, even though it is very dense and has mixed use. Bring in the neighbors. Let everyone be in on the plan. Use the new urbanist approach. If all the neighbors show up and they're there in support of the project, then that takes the city council off the hook. Support good developers; don’t just complain about bad ones,” he said.

Julie Utritus of AARP spoke of a move to recognize “Senior-Friendly Communities,” by creating a survey that helped communities to assess their livability. The survey isn’t just about housing, but also about available transportation, support systems and health services. Unfortunately, the guide is thick, but there’s a hope that a more user-friendly version can be developed that will help people to evaluate the “livability” of their communities.

“We know a lot of snowbirds are moving back to be closer to their kids,” she said, so having a way to assess a community could be a useful tool.

Critical Issues

The following critical issues emerged from the conference:

1] Screening. How to screen for community members and deal with inevitable conflicts within the community and tolerance issues. (Solutions included: residence screening and training for participation, requiring tolerance as an "admission issue," and teaching people the consensus process).

[2] Turnover. How to maintain communities when people are dying from old age, or moving to get closer to their families; and, how to deal with price escalations when units are resold in these high-demand communities that could threaten their affordability for the low-income families they were originally designed to serve.

[3] Community acceptance. How to deal with community issues surrounding the development of these communities within neighborhoods and cities. Topics include: getting neighbor acceptance, traffic issues, articulation into the community (spreading the "elder wisdom"), and dealing with government issues (zoning and ordinances and the officials who may deem such dense projects to be illegal.)

[4] Privacy versus community. How to ensure that individuals' needs for privacy are met while providing opportunities for functioning in community.

[5] Diversity. How to keep communities from becoming isolated, and how to provide opportunities for engaging in the wider community with diverse ages, including children, and diverse ethnicities.

[6] Funding and services. Where to find funds to build communities and how to leverage services and funds from pre-existing federal, state and local agencies.

[7] Empowerment. How to ensure that service agencies allow seniors to be vital participants in the formation and provision of services, don't succumb to "parent-to-child" ageism or contribute to the three plagues: isolation, loneliness and boredom.

[8] Elder needs. Unspoken, but probably needs addressing: What to do when senior residents' medical and care needs overtax the ability of the community to provide, and how to deal with the "lower end of the bell-shaped curve" -- residents who fail to live up to their promises to share participation in the community.

Saturday Visits:

On Saturday, July 29, conference participants could visit Westwood Cohousing in West Asheville and/or ElderSpirit. Twenty-eight took the Westwood tour and twenty-two drove to ElderSpirit, a two hour journey from Asheville.

Conference Summary Compiled by
Sandy Jones, MA
Edited by Ron Manheimer







 

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