Article – Twin Cities Cohousing Network

A Visit to East Lake Commons near Atlanta, GA

By Jan Haftek

East Lake Commons (ELC) cohousing community is located in the Metro area of Atlanta, Georgia. It was started in 1997. The initial idea for the co-housing community came from a group of folks at the local Quaker meeting who teamed with developer Jack Morse. East Lake Commons is one of the largest Cohousing projects in the US with 67 units with about ten basement rentals.

Karen, a long time resident, was kind enough to accommodate my (Jan’s) family for a two and half hour walking tour of their beautiful community. Karen was frank about not only sharing the community’s successes, but also their shortcomings.

Geothermal piping under the soccer field provides yearly 68 degree air to the common house making it an energy saver both in cold and warm weather. The common house is the light yellow building beyond the field, with solar panels on roof.

General Features of East Lake Commons in Atlanta

Zero-steps design help make all buildings accessible.
Permanents and temporary signposts to help delivery drivers locate houses easily.
A community provided wagon is available for their local postal worker to deliver mail to the common house.

Housing Units

Maintenance HOA fees of $290-330 per house.
Many homes have multiple floors, but some are single level flats.
With the aging demographics there aren’t enough single level flats to accommodate less mobile residents. Some are equipped with wheelchair doors and wheelchair accommodations inside.
Solar panels are installed on 12-15 homes.
To attract a more mainstream appeal for his investment Jack Morris had pushed for larger residential units, so the units here are larger than would be typical of a Cohousing project.

A view of the Great Room in the common house at East Lake Commons.

East Lake Area Redevelopment

The redevelopment of the whole East Lake area was a unique product of cooperation between government, commercial interests, and social associations. Twenty-five years ago, the East Lake district was one of the highest crime areas in Atlanta. There had been a large public housing project in the East Lake district that was in poor condition and was demolished. See for some more insights on this history.

To be clear, the cohousing project was built on farmland and was not replacing the public housing that was demolished nearby. (See, for example, East Lake Meadow A Public Housing Story, Arizona PBS, 3/24/2020/.) The tragedy of that public housing project does point to the disadvantages of designing housing for one narrow economic class, such as for low income households. Such segregated public housing projects are subject to vacillations of government funds (and their approved designs are not designed for social cohesion). These areas such as the East Lake district were cut off from investment opportunities due to redlining. For more insight into these problems see The Death And Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961).

East Lake Commons was just one part of this revitalization of the area. The community has both home ownership and rental units.

East Lake Commons Website

Social Infrastructure and Outreach

ELC is self managed, and there is a commitment to keep monthly HOA fees affordable. At present, the monthly HOA (Home Owner Association) fees range from $290-330 per month. (These fees maintain the common areas of the community and are in addition to the monthly payments for individual units.) Potential residents are informed of the expectations of participation and consensus decision making.

Common meals are considered the secret sauce of cohousing. For many years, 30-40 residents would attend Sunday community meals 3 times a month. This worked great for a long time with each person volunteering to cook or clean one out of every three meals. However, COVID shut down the common house and the community meals. When it restarted the community meals dropped from 3 to 1 meal per month. Potlucks have been used as a temporary strategy to get community dinners restarted and are still being used. For this reason, the commercial kitchen is underutilized.

The community was better able to withstand Covid than most housing complexes. Outdoor concerts, safe events, help from neighbors, and less stress mitigated the consequences that came with Covid. ELC residents with medical backgrounds formed a Covid task force that made recommendations for the community and helped care for sick residents.

Twenty-five years ago at the start, parents brought their kids to community meetings. The distractions of the children made meetings a bit more noisy but encouraged greater participation. After several years child care was provided in a nearby room in an effort to attract more parents to meetings but it did not increase meeting attendance so was eventually dropped. ELC has struggled with attracting newer residents and families with young children to meetings. People generally volunteer for big events like weddings, funeral services, and birthday parties, but the day to day community participation has steadily decreased over the years and is now a major challenge. It is difficult to ensure members contribute the four-hours per month the community asks of them; there is no system to track community work or any enforcement mechanism. This impacts the bonding that would normally take place when participating in maintenance projects and community meals. A participation task force has been created to encourage community service.

The lack of any selling covenants is a hindrance to integrating new residents into the community. By the time someone wants to leave cohousing (especially if they discovered it’s not for them) they are typically not concerned about the new buyer’s commitment to community values. The larger units bring in a wider audience but the lack of requiring buy-in or education on what cohousing entails means that new community members are likely uninformed or even disinterested in the idea cohousing.

East Lake Commons relationship to the larger community:

Over the years, this community has run summer camps and homeschool groups, organized festivals and big life events, and hosted workshops on pond management, Master Gardener classes, organized live musical performances and end-of-year dinners on the farm. The community is also the location of a 5-acre Gaia Gardens which is a fully functioning farm with tractor, irrigation, the complete infrastructure. The lessee is required to offer residents a CSA option and can also sell to non-residents and local restaurants.The community leases all this for $1/year to a farmer to start an organic farm business or hone their farming skills Gaia Gardens is currently in its 27th year of operation and is on our 6th farmer. At the peak of the prior farmer’s business, the CSA delivered 255 shares and employed 3 full time employees and several part-timers and volunteers. These numbers are lower now because the previous organic farmer has moved onto a bigger project and our new farmer is learning the business. In addition to the greenhouse, there are two hoop houses (high tunnels) purchased with grants that now make it a four-season operation.

Five-acre Gaia Gardens is a real organic farm with tractor, irrigation, & hoop houses. The community leases the farm for $1/year to a farmer required to offer residents a CSA option. The farm also sells to the public & local restaurants.

Five-acre Gaia Gardens at East Lake Commons

Monterey Cohousing – What a village raising children can look like.

I had many questions about raising children within cohousing: how does it work? Does co-housing come with co-parenting? Can community be an answer to the child loneliness epidemic? A couple of seasoned Monterey Cohousing Community members graciously lent me their time in order to find out.

February 17, 2024
Reported by Maria Delwiche

Image showing the front entrance Monterey Cohousing Community with tall pillars flanking the entryway and fall grasses and colorful trees in the foreground. — Monterey Cohousing Community, front entrance.
Photo credit: Rick Gravrok

What I found interesting is that both parents and children may exercise a great deal of autonomy from the group. While Monterey is gathered around the idea of community, it does not step over the line of dictating behavior or values associated with parenting or the behavior of any one child. Children are not forced to do chores for the community, this function of behavior regulation falls to caregivers. While there have been formal and informal groups dedicated to the affairs of children in which certain issues are discussed, they are constantly changing and being reformed with the new people who move in to Monterey; furthermore, the only baseline standards which do not change have to do with children’s safety (using the elevator or the woodshop).

Is this a solution for the loneliness epidemic? Not necessarily… Like any neighborhood, there are children of different ages inhabiting at different times. While some years there may be many children of similar age groups, there may be other years where there are very few children. On the other hand, being connected through the wider community there is ample space for spontaneous connection with residents of a variety of ages. Through shared meals, passing each other in halls or yards, or learning how to garden or use the wood shop they are open to conversation and mentorship from a wide variety of perspectives. People of any age may never feel lonely here, as long as they are open to connection.

Parents said the experience of growing up in the community was very important to their children. More than anything, children who grow up in cohousing spaces learn important values and skills: sharing, conflict resolution, respect, and empathy. A few different times were shared with me when both children and adults were involved in problem solving so that all community members felt they were heard and understood. This is not an easy skill to learn, but it is needed most now! While their children haven’t gone on to cohousing communities of their own, they are all aware of the importance of community and have implemented it in their lives in their own way.

We will discuss these topics and more in our upcoming information session on the 22nd of February! If you would like to learn more please join us!

A visit to a recently completed cohousing community

Through photos, Becca gives us a sense of the building–its exterior and interior spaces–at Portland’s PDX Commons cohousing.

Photo Essay of a Visit to PDX Commons (Portland, OR)

By Becca Brackett

In July, I got a chance to visit PDX Commons, a mixed-use senior cohousing community. Lew Bowers, a member there, gave me a tour about five days before their move-in day.

I was especially interested in PDX Commons because their site is quite small: half an acre. How did they fit it all in? The Bassett Creek core group anticipates a similar tight fit in an urban location.

Here is a view from across the road. Food carts used to be in business on their lot. Now, those have moved to a parking lot across the street.

Here, Lew is in front of the gate leading to a sidewalk on the west side of the building. It can be locked for security.

Aaron, the construction manager for Abbott Construction, stands in a retail space on the ground/sidewalk level. They do not have a tenant yet, but there are other small shops nearby as well as the food trucks.

Here is the parking. One can drive in off Belmont Street. Note that the “open” window actually has a metal security lattice. Unlike some areas, Portland did not require one car parking space per unit.

Portland did, however, require bicycle parking. Here I am in the bike area. Also, each unit has a cage of general storage, here shown above the bikes; additional storage units may be in another area.

The main entrance for PDX Commons is to the right of the garage door and to the left of the retail. It brings you into a “living room” of common space. Lew is standing under the skylight in the center, and beyond to the right is a fireplace. They plan to make this inviting with couches, bookshelves, etc. The stairs (and elevators, not shown in my photo) lead up one level to the patio and the dining and kitchen areas.

At the far end of the living room is a door to a small amount of outdoor space, the use of which is as yet undetermined; because this area is possibly a future hot tub location, another door goes through to a restroom/changing room.

Lew took me up the elevator to the second floor patio. All the units look out onto this patio. This shows the rooftop patio looking towards the street. A table is spread for their opening celebration.

The walkways, with wooden railings going in front of the units, serve as corridors to get to one’s unit and social space. Two bump outs on the fourth level will be conversation areas.

The design with the common patio on top of the lower level gives a very connected outdoor space to the residents. At the same time, it is a very private space, not visible to people going by on the street, or even to their neighbors out the back.

Here, we are looking toward the dining room with big sliding glass doors.

Going into the dining room and straight on into the kitchen, I am opening the oven in their kitchen.

Lew on a walkway–you can see a bump-out of the walkway on the top level for a conversation area.

This photo shows the width of the walkways.

I got a view looking west towards Downtown Portland, which shows the solar panels, and how the end unit on the “arms” of the building are wider. Where the wooden framework ends and the siding of the unit begins, those are the big units.

On the other arm of the building, see how the dining and kitchen area are attached. PDX considered a green roof, but ended up not doing it. However, all their drainage water goes into planters on the back perimeter of the property. Conforming to federal water-quality protection standards for runoff, Portland building code says you have to contain your drainage.

I left energized with the possibilities for the Bassett Creek location in Minneapolis!

Becca Brackett is a board member of Twin Cities Cohousing Network and a member of the Bassett Creek Cohousing Core Group.

Visit to Oakcreek Community senior cohousing in Oklahoma

A TCCN board member and her partner visit a senior cohousing community in a midwestern college town. Take a look at their photos and observations.

Text and photos by Lynn Englund

My partner and I were fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit Oakcreek Community in Stillwater, Oklahoma this spring. Oakcreek is a senior cohousing community not far from Oklahoma State University.

interior view of common house with vaulted ceiling and fireplace
We arrived in the middle of the afternoon, and soon were talking with residents as they came and went through the common house.

group of chairs in Oakcreek common house

After we had settled into one of the three lovely guest rooms, a resident offered us a tour of the grounds and explained that the community is made up of three “pods” of eight houses each. The pods are clustered around the common house.

several houses and a walking path

Homes come in four sizes, ranging from 702 square feet to 1190 square feet. Their arrangement is specific to cohousing. One of each design is laid out in a 4-unit, townhome-style block which faces another similar unit of four homes across a gently curving sidewalk. Our guide stated that by doing this, they intentionally located the facing units much closer than typical construction of units across a roadway, making it easy for people to talk to each other from their front steps.

Bright colors set off each unit from its neighbor. The garages and parking areas were to the side, easily accessible by all. Oakcreek is situated on more than 7 acres of land in a residential area. The common yard has a park-like feel with shade trees, large areas of lawn, wildflowers and garden plots. Blooming shrubs and flowers landscape the small front yards.

wildflower field at Oakcreek cohousing
After returning from a tour of the Oklahoma State campus given by a resident who is a retired faculty member (who discovered common interests and connections with my partner), we were invited to join “happy hour” at 5:00 in the common house. A handful of residents gathered with a beverage of choice around a table to catch up with each other and share news.

table and chairs in common house at Oakcreek
Since there was no common meal that night, we dined out, then returned to our comfortable room. In the morning, I put our sheets and towels in the washer in the common house and slipped a note of thanks with the small fee for lodging into the envelope that had been left for us.

There do happen to be units for sale, and if you’re curious, feel free to check out their community’s website for details.

outdoor labyrinth at Oakcreek cohousing

Community + Privacy = Cohousing

Can we disrupt the isolation of modern life with a newer form? The word “cohousing” is translated from the Danish, where these clustered, intentional mini-communities are fairly common (and in fact are encouraged by government policies in Denmark).

What defines cohousing? There are some aspects that are bricks-and-mortar: each household owns its own private home–sometimes a detached house, more often a townhome or condo unit–and a share in the yard/gardens as well as a building for optional group meals and other activities, the “common house”.

It is the social aspects that disrupt our society’s typical way of life. People who live in cohousing do so with a commitment to building community among their neighbors, sharing some equipment (such as lawnmowers and snowblowers) that gets used infrequently, and helping each other.

Housing density and housing-unit cost

How Much Land is Needed to Develop a Cohousing Community?

by Lynn Englund

When I first became interested in cohousing, one of the questions I had was: how much land would a cohousing group need to purchase in order to develop their community? I’ve learned that it depends on several factors, including the values and lifestyle that a cohousing community desires, the amount of money the group can pull together, and the zoning regulations of the municipality.

For example, a community that values extensive green space and gardens probably will seek more land than a community that values living Continue reading “Housing density and housing-unit cost”

Potluck next step after the Durrett talk

by John Kalmon

We had a great turnout for the presentation on cohousing by Charles Durrett, who took us through a verbal tour of many cohousing communities, accompanied by great photos and punctuated with stories that were engaging and enlightening. He described how cohousing improves peoples’ lives by bringing a new level of social connection into their day-to-day activities.

As an example, Durrett recalled an elderly woman who moved from the home closest to the parking area to the furthest away because it improved her relationship with her neighbors, which she described as more important than her relationship with her car.

The idea of resource sharing was explained—not only lawn mowers and common-house amenities, but more importantly the opportunity to share one’s time, knowledge or emotional support. All this can and does happen easily because of the arrangement and design of the structures, and because the people who have chosen to live in cohousing recognize that their social well-being and connections are among their highest priorities.

durrett_talk_lynns_photo_fb_sept2016_even_smaller

Durrett spoke of “social tax” as well, the work a community needs to put in to assure long-term success. This needs to be addressed early in the formation of a core group by establishing their goals and values, and learning how to make decisions as a group, often by some form of consensus. Stories of specific challenges faced by groups and how they overcame them were very informative.

The audience asked good questions. Stimulating conversation continued among attendees long after the presentation, and many pitched in without hesitation to stack the chairs!

To learn more about what is happening locally in cohousing, please continue to check our website and sign up to receive TCCN News, our e-newsletter, which will bring you all the latest news and events. We hope to see you at our next event on October 20th.