Cohousing: Joining Affordable, Sustainable and Collaboratively-Governed, Single Family Neighborhoods

Abstract:     
For many Americans now, and in decades to come, purchasing a home in a conventional single-family subdivision is and will remain impossible. Credit challenges facing this population mandate rethinking why, where and how we build, and occupy, dwellings and neighborhoods, and understanding how our choices affect growing sustainable and supportive communities. If local government officials, planning and design professionals and construction industry leaders fail to respond, sensibly and swiftly, to declining renewable resources and downward-spiraling personal net worth, social and ecological equilibrium will be mightily disrupted. This essay urges new behaviors that challenge persistent urban planning, development and neighborhood governance conventions. It affords one example of new strategies, conjoining themes of affordability, sustainability, safety and rational neighborhood governance, in devising a housing market for a changed dwelling-owner class.

This article was published in the summer of 2010 by the Real Estate Law Jounral. It has been updated in late January, 2011 only for the purpose of indicating the facts of the report of the TARP Inspector General to Congress in January, 2011 on the inefficacy of the HAMP program and the consequent introduction of federal legislation to terminate the "loan modification" features of the Act..

Number of Pages in PDF File: 18

Keywords: affordability, housing, sustainable, real property, shipping containers, cohousing, communities, community governance, homeowners association, alternative housing, ISBU

JEL Classification: H81, K11, K23, Q15, Q32, R14, R21, R31, R52

Accepted Paper Series