The very first cohousing in the US, Muir Commons in Davis, California would not have happened if the book Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities had not been in every Davis bookstore and library. A dozen bookstores, new and used, and every library (almost 10) carried it. That project took exactly two years from the night of the public presentation to the morning of move-in. Every adult in the group read the book and we were always on the same page (at least figuratively).
State-of-the-art Southside Park Cohousing in nearby Sacramento would not have been built without the activism of my mother, Rosemary, the ultimate grassroots organizer (she organized her bra-making union during WWII!—“It was hard to get support for that project,” she would say...). She went to every Sacramento bookstore (about two dozen in 1991) and asked, “Do you have this book?,” “Can you order this book?,” “Can I leave this book on consignment?”
I know that I’m going counterculture here, but there seems to be a big correlation.
In this era of information chaos, it’s time to bring a little balance back into our information consumption.
A young journalist, Hannah Quinton, called about a month ago with a new and provocative question: “Why did cohousing have a much more rapid growth when your first book came out in 1988 than it does now?” She began to answer her own question. “Is it because in the beginning, there was only one book available, a book with a beginning, a middle, and an end? That is, a full story, a complete scenario of how to make it? It told readers: this is how you start a new project, launch it, manage it through rough seas, land it, and settle.”
Now, it’s common for folks to just go to the internet and get a helter skelter, mumbo jumbo, and almost entirely gobbledy gook of information. Some of it is by experts, most of it not. Most of it is anecdotal and under-considered. Some of it is contradictory to cohousing standards, but who knows the difference? People call things cohousing that are not. Nobody but The Cohousing Company seems to help nascent groups or developers course-correct when they say they are cohousing but are not. Luckily, Sage Cohousing, the senior cohousing nonprofit, certified what senior cohousing is and what it isn’t so that people can no longer get away with fooling seniors (see the book Cohousing Communities). One successful cohouser, Janet Palmer from Quimper Village, put it bluntly: “Get the books and read. Don’t get caught in a project with pretenders, imitators, and fakers.”
Hannah, the journalist, also observed, “Communication in getting projects built is the big complication.” Books make it easy to get on the same page with each other, compared to the worldwide net of infinite complications.
Hannah was entirely correct. Without the right books, the cohesiveness of the information about cohousing is gone. Random, incomplete, chaotic, and piecemeal would best describe the info on the net at best. I notice that, when asked about the same community, one person on the internet will say we have too little parking, and another person from the same community will say we have way too much parking. One data point or even two does not make legitimate data.
By contrast, in book form, work is checked and double-checked. I have a new book coming out about cohousing for the I/DD population (people with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities). That book is now sent out to 15 different expert reviewers. Every statement is being checked, double-checked, and triple-checked.
You can barely find the definition of cohousing on the internet—and if you do, it’s usually not a smart one. See it on page 8 of Creating Cohousing, and in the introduction to Cohousing Communities. You can’t find the definition of Study Group One on the internet, but it’s in chapter 7 of The Senior Cohousing Handbook. Study Group One is the number one way that the Danes use to help seniors get into cohousing, because the various books set them up for success. There is no good important discussion of the optimal size of a cohousing community on the net. It’s on pages 99 of The Senior Cohousing Handbook, and 49, 101, 145, 175, 255, 295 of Cohousing Communities. (In Denmark, the size of the community is the number one consideration for the long-term success of a cohousing community). There is no discussion about the important metrics which ascertain whether a cohousing is functioning or not. See pages 364-392 in Cohousing Communities.
Read a book, know something. Search online for something about cohousing—get confused. Social science is harder to find on the net. The story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The challenge is more than getting the book into bookstores. I guess you have to imagine helping people realize the benefits of reading the book, because we are so far away from the habit. Quimper Village Cohousing asks everyone who is considering buying a house there to read the book first. Everyone that I have asked there that read the book said that it helped them segue into cohousing successfully. They have plenty of copies to loan out. And there are many reasons why that project is considered “State of the Art of Senior Cohousing” in the US, but the fact that everyone comes to the table with foundational information, wedded to the notion and the understanding of a high-functioning neighborhood, and has both feet in the future, makes a huge difference.
Books have played a major role from the beginning in terms of getting cohousing to this country and built in your town, starting with our first book, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (The European Story). Bookstores play a key role in culture change in general, and cohousing is no exception.
I’ll bet $100 that the next group that embarks on a project just based on the following three books: Creating Cohousing, Senior Cohousing, and Cohousing Communities, will finish their project in two to three years—just like the good ol’ days. Anyone want to take that bet?
Many groups have contacted the publisher (New Society Publishers and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) directly to get bulk discounts, and I find that successful projects get started when lots of folks do this fun homework. I usually need to give a dozen copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities, The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living and Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods away to planners, banks, neighbors, mayors, new residents, local architects, builders, and so on for any new project—to give them context. It saves the group thousands and thousands of hours, dollars, and delays, and most importantly makes for a better project. I just did this in San Luis Obispo County, including the Chair of the Board of Supervisors, and in my view, it got the project off to a fruitful beginning.[1]
Cohousing is more than a sound bite; it is cultural pivot, and it takes folks with curiosity doing some fun research first. Seattle and the surrounding areas have about a dozen cohousing communities today largely because the bookstores in town have sold more than 1,000 copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities. The San Francisco area has over 20 cohousing communities largely because the book has sold more than 2,000 copies there.
Read a book, know something, share the book, and start the discussion—it is still worthwhile.
[1] See also Hannah Quinton’s article “It Takes a Village” in Klipsun Magazine, April 2024 (klipsunmagazine.com/spring-2024-connection/it-takes-a-village). It features Bellingham Cohousing, which arranged three book signings in the local bookstores when that project was being organized. Bellingham moved in full upon completion, all very affordable houses in a high-functioning neighborhood. They were affordable because all 33 households had read Creating Cohousing and knew how to do it. And it’s a very handsome cohousing.
