2023 Spring Issue - 92

Glossary of Housing Terms
professionals how to design and build cohousing and
work with founding groups.
Portland, Oregon-based developer Urban DevelCohousing:
Cohousing communities are intentional communities of privately
owned or rented homes, with shared spaces such as a common
house with a communal dining room, as well as joint green and recreational
space. Cohousing residents collaborate to foster a vibrant sense
of community. The legal structure is typically an HOA, a cooperative, or
something similar. There are about 180 cohousing communities in the
United States, typically with 30 to 40 households each. Most cohousing
projects are created by a group of people in partnership with a private
architect and developer.
Coliving: Coliving projects are buildings in which multiple unrelated
people share common spaces, including a living room, dining room,
and kitchen. Typically, each resident rents his or her own bedroom
and bathroom.
Coliving units are generally rented furnished, with utilities included
and cleaning services provided. Coliving developers and operators strive
to provide residents with a sense of community, and to offer benefits
including sustainability, convenience, and cost savings compared with
traditional apartments.
Microhousing: This term refers to housing designed for full-time occupancy
that is very small, typically measuring less than 300 square feet
(28 sq m). Microhousing could be built within an apartment building, as
an accessory dwelling unit or a granny flat, or in another form. The development
of microhousing is restricted in many cities by building code.
Cooperative housing: Often called a " co-op, " cooperative housing is a
type of homeownership where the building is jointly owned by a corporation
made up of all its inhabitants. In cooperatives, all owners own shares
in a nonprofit corporation that allows them to live in the residence. Cooperatives
have some features in common with cohousing, including selfgovernance
and consensus-based decision-making.
Getting to Scale
In Europe, in recognition of the social, economic,
and environmental benefits of cohousing, governments
have encouraged its development. Denmark
is the global leader, with an estimated 7 percent of
the population living in cooperative or cohousing
communities.
The United States is far from that number. For
cohousing to reach more people, Becker-Hafnor
says that more developers will need to get into the
cohousing business. Her organization, Cohousing
Association of the United States, features some
resources for developers, and McCamant runs a yearlong
training program, 500 Communities, to teach
opment Partners (UD+P) has completed multiple
cohousing projects across the Pacific Northwest.
Although there are barriers to getting cohousing
projects built, including liability laws and financing,
UD+P development manager Danny Milman says that
" cohousing projects shouldn't take any more time
than any other residential development, if you're
pushing ahead the way you should be. "
UD+P has created a business line working with
founding groups, who form a limited liability company,
as a development consultant and guarantor
of cohousing construction loans, in return for a
project fee.
Milman says that the company's commitment to
building people-centered housing drives their work.
" Of all the different types of buildings that I've developed
or built, cohousing is the only one where it gets
better over time. There's nothing better than to build
something that is going to be loved like that. "
In lots of ways, cohousing feels revolutionary.
And almost miraculous. It must take a special kind
of alchemy for a group of visionaries to look at a
piece of land and imagine the community that could
grow there.
But there also is something very traditional about
cohousing. People have been living communally, in
villages and in cities, for a very long time. Indeed,
in many ways it is the modern American way of
life-of every family in their own single-family home,
expected to manage largely on their own-that is the
historical outlier.
Becker-Hafnor describes cohousing as " a collection
of homes built around common spaces where
people eat together, make shared decisions, and
share an ethos of living sustainably. "
This shared decision-making model requires
developers to collaborate with buyers in ways that
may feel unfamiliar. It may not be right for every
developer. But even for developers and other land
use professionals who may never be part of a
cohousing project, cohousing offers both inspiration
and a signal: a need and a market demand exist for a
much broader range of housing typologies and ways
of living than most places supply. UL
RACHEL MacCLEERY is co-executive director of the ULI Randall
Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate.
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URBAN LAND SPRING 2023
2023 Spring Issue

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