Kids with wrinkles

As they age gracefully, these Sonoma County adults are exploring how to avoid isolation, to enhance their lives and to build community. Topics include housing, cohousing, health, share-the-care and other age-defying high-wire acts.

Page maintained by Roger Karraker

Windsor cohousing meeting Sunday, March 30

In February while touring the East Bay cohousing, Lorene Romero and I met Bruce Shimizu, a developer who is starting a cohousing project in Windsor. Lorene says Bruce is holding an informational meeting this Sunday; she will attend and report back. But perhaps others would like to attend to…

All,

Would you like to see the site and meet some of the folks on the “interest
list” for Cornell Village?

A get together is planned for Sunday, March 30th, at 10:00am. We’ll get
together for a cup of coffee/tea, find out about one another, talk about the
project, have a look at the “preliminary” plans, and take a walk around the
site (rain of shine).

Please feel free to invite others that might be interested in finding out
more about the project and children are welcome.

Drop me a note to let me know if you’re going to be joining us and let me
know how many will be in your group, so I can determine where we should
meet. I’ll send up a follow up message with the meeting location and map.

Thanks for your interest and I’ll see you soon,
Bruce Shimizu

Bruce K. Shimizu
bruce@cw-homes.com

Clearwater Homes
P.O. Box 1874 . Windsor . CA . 95492
(707) 837-9922 voice . (208) 975-9617 fax . (707) 696-9008 cell

Cohousing Slideshow by Kathryn McCamant

Sun Mar 30 14:00 – Sun Mar 30 15:30

Holbrooke Hotel, 212 West Main, Grass Valley, CA 95945

Meet members of Wolf Creek Lodge and Wolf Creek Commons, our Grass Valley cohousing communities.

The presentation will be followed by a visit to the Wolf Creek Village site for those that are interested.

The slide show is free, but please call to reserve a place at 530-478-1970 or email info@cohousingpartners.com. Visit our website at
www.cohousingpartners.com.

—

Building Autonomy one Co-Op at a Time

Tom Meyskins discovered this article in the Winter 2008 issue of Yes Magazine. It’s definitely related to our attempts here to create intentional communities.

Building Autonomy, One Co-op at a Time by Michael Fox

It’s a social movement and a housing cooperative. A massive self-help program for the poor and a new way of life for thousands. With 20,000 member-families living in cooperatively owned homes in 400 communities across the country, it is one of the largest and most radical housing cooperative federations in the Americas.

The idea of cooperative housing might seem unusual elsewhere, but not here in Uruguay. Ramirez lived in the same co-op since he was seven. Now that he’s starting his own family, he’s building a home in the Housing & Family Cooperative (COVIFAM), a cooperative not unlike the one he lived in as a child. Both co-ops are members of FUCVAM, which is at the heart of one of the most important, democratic, and autonomous housing cooperative experiences in the Western Hemisphere.

The cooperative housing movement got a start in Uruguay in reaction to a growing housing crisis. Grassroots pressure resulted in the passage of the 1968 National Housing Plan, which opened new housing opportunities for Uruguayan citizens. The plan provided the legal framework for cooperative ownership of property, and created the National Housing and Urbanization Fund by taking 1 percent out of every Uruguayan paycheck, with a mandate for employers to match the figure.

The new fund opened the door for some workers to get loans to purchase their own homes. But with unsteady employment during difficult economic times raising the threat of default, many Uruguayans risked losing their newly-acquired homes and ending up right back where they started. The answer: housing cooperatives, that could take out loans collectively, minimizing the individual risk while building solidarity among members.

Link to article

Mar
19th

Wed

Common needs spur growth in cohousing developments - The Boston Globe

Hotbeds for cohousing communities include Denver, Washington state, California, and New England, according to the Cohousing Association of the United States, based in Boulder, Colo.

Zev Paiss, founding executive director of the Cohousing Association, said that over the past 18 months he’s been getting more calls from developers and landowners “who are up against the wall with either a stalled project, land, or huge inventory, and looking for ways to get themselves out of it.”

While Paiss said he thinks that cohousing developments could be an opportunity for builders and landowners to sell something that they normally couldn’t, he cautions that they have to be willing to partner with the future residents.

“We’re taking advantage of the hard economy right now, and they’re poking for new ways to present what they’ve got,” said Paiss, who runs Abraham Paiss & Associates Inc., a consulting company for the cohousing industry, and is cofounder of the Elder Cohousing Network for seniors.

Between 1991 and 1995, 16 completed communities registered with the Cohousing Association of the United States; between 1996 and 2000 there were 31; and between 2001 and 2005 there were 37 more. There are 11 completed communities in Massachusetts and many more are either building, forming, or seeking a site. Not all have registered with the Cohousing Association (for a list of states visit cohousing.org/directory).

A Treasure Trove: the ICWiki

Wow, here’s a treasure trove of information. Cohousing is one type of “intentional community”. The Foundation for Intentional Communities has put together a tremendous user-generated encyclopedia, the ICWiki.

A wiki, for the less nerdy out there, is a user-created compendium of information. The most famous is Wikipedia . Anyone can edit or add information to a wiki. This is a great resource for us. From it, I learned that Diane Leafe Christian has a new 2007 book “Finding Community,” specifically about how to create communities like Kidswithwrinkles. I hope someone buys her book and tells us about it.

Voices of Cohousing. Building Small Villages in the City (NTSC) by Matthieu Lietaert (Video) in Documentaires Here’s a documentary DVD about cohousing. The DVD has supposedly won awards. Perhaps some kind soul might buy it (only $17.99) and add it to our library. Or perhaps someone could get the Sonoma County Library to buy it. Or maybe both things could happen.

First cohousing development in Grass Valley begins to sprout

12:01 a.m. PT Mar 19, 2008

Logging on a wooded corner at Freeman Lane and McKnight Way in Grass Valley is expected to start in April, and construction on a cohousing project there could start in late spring or early summer, development spokeswoman Rhonda Herrin said Tuesday. Exact starting dates for the work depend on the weather.
The plans call for selective cutting of trees.
Members of Wolf Creek Village, the first cohousing project in the city, said they are looking forward to completion of the energy efficient development in mid-2009.

— Nevada County Local News: First cohousing development in Grass Valley begins to sprout - TheUnion.com

Mar
13th

Thu

Summary of May 12 meeting

We had a great meeting last night, with nearly a dozen new faces. We had a lively discussion, apportioned some tasks and agreed to meet in two weeks.

The members said they wanted to visit nearby cohousing projects. New member Judy Wismer volunteered to set up a tour at Two-Acre Wood in Sebastopol (she lives there).
Judi Marley will coordinate with Eloise Tweeten to vist Yulupa Cohousing.
Helen Baum will arrange a visit to FrogSong in Cotati.
Gayle Walz will arrange a day trip to Davis to visit both the senior cohousing and other cohousing projects there.

In other tasks,

Lorene Romero will attend a meeting Sunday, March 16 concerning the Sonoma Mountain Villge cohousing project in Rohnert Park.
Barbara Spain is going to acquire Jay Walljasper’s “The Great Neighborhood Book” and add it to our library.
Judy Wismer is going to investigate the Elders Guild, a new umbrella organization in the East Bay.
Helen Baum and Margo Austin are going to investigate the Elder Cohousing Conference in Boulder, CO May 1-4. With luck, one or both of them will attend.

Announcements:

We have an email address: kidswithwrinkles@gmail.com
Helen Baum coined a neat phrase: she says what we are doing is a Community of Caring. What a great description!
Next meeting: 6 p.m., Wednesday March 26 at Subud Hall, 234 Hutchins Ave., Sebastopol.

—submitted by Roger Karraker

Mar
12th

Wed

Using WorldCat to find books about housing for seniors: Results for 'su:Older people Housing.' [WorldCat.org]

Now here’s a little hack I sort of stumbled across. WorldCat is essentially the library catalog of ALL the public library catalogs in the U.S. It tells you which libraries have which books. And Sonoma County library can request all these books via Inter-Library Loan.

In this case I used its “subject” search and found that WorldCat shows 4,000+ books on “older persons housing”. Click on any one of the books and you get basic information PLUS a listing of all the libraries that have it, with their mileage measured from my place in Forestville.

So prowl the list for anything that strikes your fancy. If Sonoma County Library (or SSU) shws up, you can just request it normally. If not, you can ask Sonoma County Library to borrow the book for you and have it delivered to your closest branch, just as you do with local books.

Enjoy.

Mar
9th

Sun

Reminder: cohousing meeting, 6 p.m., Wednesday, March 12, at Subud Hall

Here’s a reminder: our next meeting concerning aging and cohousing will be held at 6 p.m., Wedensday, March 12 at Subud Hall, 234 Hutchins Ave., Sebastopol. We’ll brainstorm what we want to achieve with a cohousing project. Also some new books available and some suggestions for activities.

Note: it’s a potluck, so bring something to share.

The regular Love Choir Sing-Thing follows at 8 p.m. all are encouraged to attend.