It`s difficult enough for a couple to find a house they both like. So imagine the challenge of finding the kind of home a dozen or more people can agree on.
That`s the task of the Urban Core Group, which has been meeting for the last year to put together a plan for creating a co-housing community.
The co-housing movement was started in Denmark in 1964 by architect Jan Gudman-Hover, who conceived the idea of a planned community that would combine private living units with ”common areas” to be shared for dining, laundry, day care, repair shops, libraries and other needs.
Central to the co-housing concept is that the residents participate in the design of the community`s physical layout, which would emphasize pedestrian rather than vehicular traffic.
Word about this experiment in social design spread from Europe (which now has developments in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France and Germany) to the United States in 1988, with the publication of ”Co-Housing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing” by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett (Ten Speed Press, $19.95).
There are now half a dozen American co-housing communities that have purchased property on the West Coast and in Colorado. Whether the idea will successfully transplant to the Midwest remains to be seen, but the Chicago Co- Housing Network is doing everything it can to promote the concept.
A loosely knit, not-for-profit organization, the Chicago Co-Housing Network provides information and serves as an umbrella group for the Urban Core Group and a second group, called Chicago CoHousing `91, which has a short-term goal of renting rather than purchasing property.
Getting off the ground
Getting from the idea to the reality in a meticulously democratic fashion can be an arduous process, as the members of the Urban Core Group demonstrated at a recent meeting. The dozen people in attendance, mostly college-educated professionals in their 30s, spent a good hour hashing out the exact wording of a one-page ”Initial Organizing Agreement.”
Jane Leven, an Urban Core member who works as an architect for the City of Chicago, acknowledged later that arriving at a unanimous decision ”takes a lot of getting used to, and it takes a long time. Right now, we`re still organizing ourselves, still in the first process of figuring out who we are and how we want to operate, almost like using a teething ring.”
But for Leven, who grew up in the Westchester County suburbs of New York and now lives in a one-bedroom Uptown apartment, the process is worth spending time on.
”The waste that goes on, the duplication of resources-I never understood why everyone had to own their own little everything-washer and dryer, lawn mower, lawn,” she said. ”Why not share resources?
”Being an architect, I see co-housing as a design solution to a social problem, a way to address a broad spectrum of issues that is not usually dealt with now. I think co-housing can alleviate issues of segregation, lack of affordable housing.
”Also, co-housing gives you a choice, built in structurally, between individual comings and goings as you like, and community. It`s built-in, in a very thought-out, considered way, to foster community and the potential to at least communicate, if not be best friends, with the people you live around. It boils down to community.”
Knowing your neighbors
If the feelings of the Urban Core Group members are any indication, this yearning for ”community,” more than financial concerns, seems to drive the co-housing movement.
Bob Lyon, manager of a Loop advertising agency`s computer graphics department, attended the meeting with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. He moved here from Minneapolis seven years ago and recently bought a home in Rogers Park, but he is still looking for ”a sense of belonging,” he says.
”One of the things I`ve encountered is that you rarely trust, and certainly aren`t friends with, your neighbors.”
”When we moved into this neighborhood, there was a block party. All these people I`d never even seen were there, and the next day-that was it-we`ve never spoken to or seen any of them again.”
Lyon says that ”co-housing would be like (a block party) all the time. The lots on our block are deep and narrow. Gee, wouldn`t it be great to have no fences and give the kids some room to run?”
Lyon`s wife, Penelope Thrasher, a psychotherapist, believes that a co-housing community would be a safe place to bring up her child.
”As a mother, there is the consideration for my daughter who is only 2. It`s getting to the point where I don`t know the parents of the kids she plays with. I feel like in co-housing, I would know all the other parents, and I would feel better about letting her out. Also, co-housing architecture has no cars near the buildings, so I wouldn`t have to always be warning her about traffic.”
Realtor Ed Zaleski is also interested in an environment where his two children, ages 11 and 16, can feel comfortable. ”I`d like to find a situation where there were similar-minded children,” said Zaleski, who currently owns a Lake View two-flat. ”And I like the idea that each person has a certain input, and you can build the space together.”
Zaleski, 52, recalled an earlier adventure in cooperative housing that he experienced in the mid-`60s. ”We had meetings and meetings and more meetings and, finally, three people stood up and leased an 18-room mansion at Lakeview and Wrightwood. As soon as they made the commitment and put their names on the lease, people were lining up to be part of it. So maybe I`m slightly jaundiced.”
The group undoubtedly has a long way to go before its dreams are fleshed out. Group ”facilitator” Hal Mead predicts it will take at least two years. Steps include creating an organizing agreement, assessing each member`s financial resources, hiring a developer and perhaps an architect, locating a site and either renovating or building the housing for their community.
If the experiences of West Coast projects are any indication, one of the biggest hurdles for Chicago co-housers will be arranging financing.
Perhaps they can take some advice from someone who`s been there before, like Tom Gomez, consultant to the Winslow Co-Housing Group, which is scheduled to complete a 60-member community near Portland, Ore., early next year. ”When we went to standard banks, they`d look at us cross-eyed and say `You want to do what?` ” he recalled. ”Instead, we found a credit union that was sympathetic to our project, and they provided the financing.”
Mead said that the Chicago members may wind up structuring their group as a conventional condominium association, with each household taking out individual mortgages.
”I don`t think the banks are ready to deal with mortgages set up as six people at a time buying a property,” added Zaleski. ”We`ll probably need a developer, or else a community group like Organization of the Northeast to help arrange financing.”
The Chicago Co-Housing Network will host a free slide presentation at 7 p.m. next Wednesday at the River North Unitarian Church, 4833 N. Francisco Ave.
For more information, call the Chicago Co-Housing Network at 312-465-3891 or 708-869-8493.
