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.
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.
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.
