Latest news with #cohousing
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
‘A vastly superior way to live': why more seniors should choose cohousing
Earlier this year, Angela Maddamma, 72, loaded all her belongings into her car. She drove from a house in suburban Richmond, Virginia, where she had lived for 20 years, to her new life about five hours west, in a senior cohousing project called ElderSpirit. Cohousing communities are 'thoughtfully designed neighborhoods with private homes' arranged around common areas, where people may gather and build relationships with their neighbors, according to the Cohousing Company design firm. Cohousing is typically multigenerational – of the roughly 170 total cohousing units in the US, most are home to people of all ages, from young families to seniors. But about 12 are senior-specific. After retiring last fall, Maddamma came across the concept of senior cohousing online. She liked the sound of ElderSpirit, a collective of 29 individual units and a common house surrounded by garden paths, which was near enough to visit. What she saw was not – as her friends and family asked afterward – some kind of cult or commune. 'It's your average 55 and older community, where you're living independently' in a rented or purchased unit, Maddamma says. But the members share a 'foundation of what's important to us in our senior years, and here, it's mutual support' plus other values like environmental care and a broad interest in spirituality and the 'mysteries of ageing'. 'I realized that I spent a good part of my adult life searching for community,' Maddamma says. When Maddamma lived in the suburbs, she waved at neighbors as she came and went to work. But she didn't meet many people. 'I had to search. I joined various clubs; I started a book club,' she says. That helped, but it didn't create the proximate, tight-knit community she was really looking for – where people might spontaneously pop by to say hello, or you could bump into a friend while going about your day. By contrast, the evening she arrived at ElderSpirit, the sun was setting, her porch light was on and neighbors were waiting to welcome her with dinner. If she was tired, she should turn off the porch light, they told her; otherwise, people would see it and keep stopping by to greet her all evening. 'That's the kind of community it is,' says Maddamma. Now when I ask Maddamma if her social needs are being met, she replies: 'Heck yes.' The day we spoke, she walked the Virginia Creeper Trail with a friend, met with other volunteers from the ElderSpirit membership committee and finished a book. She still has plenty of time to 'veg out' undisturbed at home, which is important to her, she says. For the growing number of people seeking out or forming dedicated senior cohousing communities, such configurations offer a joyful and fulfilling experience of ageing. It's 'a vastly superior way to live', says Maddamma, compared with alternatives such as moving into a retirement home or ageing in place – which means staying in your own home rather than moving to a facility or nursing home. The latter can end up being isolating, especially for seniors who live alone and lack nearby support. Margaret Critchlow, 78, began thinking about starting a cohousing project while helping put her own mother in care around 2010. She realized she couldn't afford an institutional retirement home herself, and, moreover, didn't want to be in one. One major issue was the unreliable standards of care. Furthermore, institutions 'take away the ability to decide what your day is going to look like', offering scheduled activities ('bingo at 2 o'clock') and mealtimes that reduce individual agency, Critchlow says. An anthropologist, Critchlow has taught courses about cohousing at York University in Toronto, and considers a village-like arrangement the ideal way to 'do everything from growing up to raising children to growing old'. So Critchlow set out to find land in the oceanfront town of Sooke, British Columbia, Canada, where she had been taking a sabbatical, and embarked on a first-hand education in cohousing development. She began collecting a group of friends and like-minded individuals who envisioned the same ideals. These covered logistics (separate dwellings, strata titling, decisions by consensus) and ideology (mutual support, honoring privacy while facilitating friendly socialization). Harbourside Cohousing opened in 2016, a community of 51 people living on a 3-acre plot of land in a 12-unit configuration, with communal spaces including a wharf with a cute gazebo. Critchlow helped write a research guide to assist others with cohousing dreams. While developing her approach to cohousing, she read the 2005 Senior Cohousing Handbook, by the Nevada-based author and architect Charles Durrett. Durrett, 70, is a pioneer of American cohousing, and has helped develop over 55 of the US's cohousing projects. He first became interested in the topic when he walked past a cohousing community on his way to school at the University of Copenhagen in 1980. Having grown up in a California town of 325 people, he feels that living in and serving community is 'ennobling at a very basic level'. Denmark is an international leader in the cohousing movement. The practice began catching on in the country in the 60s. It gained momentum thanks to early success stories and news articles such as Bodil Graae's Children Should Have One Hundred Parents (1967) and Jan Gudmand-Høyer's The Missing Link Between Utopia and the Dated One-Family House (1968), which presented visions for supportive living environments. The Danish government and financial institutions supported the concept with favorable zoning laws and financing options, and cohousing developed into a fairly well-established living arrangement. According to a 2024 Danish survey, 80,000 of the country's seniors are planning to move into cohousing within the next five years, making it the majority choice over alternative housing options such as a house, condo or assisted care. To Durrett, who lives in a Nevada-based cohousing community he helped create, the challenges of popularizing cohousing include the fact that over the last century Americans have grown steadily more socially isolated, developing a culture of independence that can veer cynical. 'What if I don't get along with people?' is a common worry, Durrett says. 'Well, you're not gonna get along with everybody, but if we do this right, you're gonna have five or six best friends living next door.' Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion There's also little awareness of cohousing itself. 'Sadly, in the US most seniors, by a huge margin, have no idea what senior cohousing is,' says Durrett. 'They think they're going to age in place, but they end up in a nursing home.' Cohousing projects may choose to employ senior caregivers or health aides, but they are not care facilities. Residents at ElderSpirit and Harbourside explained to me that should they develop a disease requiring full-time care, such as Alzheimer's, they would move into a facility. But for many other challenges that arise with age, other older people can help. 'Contrary to what society may believe, older people are really quite competent,' says Dr Anne P Glass, a retired gerontologist and researcher of self-directed communities for older adults. Given proximity and familiarity, 'most older people can help each other, and that's a source of support that hasn't been recognized very well'. To Glass, seniors themselves are an untapped resource in easing the looming eldercare crisis. America's 65-plus population is surging toward 82 million by 2050 – a 47% jump from 2022 levels. Meanwhile, the number of doctors specializing in senior care is declining, and care homes are turning away residents due to staffing shortages: a 2024 survey by the American Health Care Association found 72% of more than 400 nursing homes had fewer staff than before the pandemic due to burnout and wage stagnation. 'The care crisis in our whole country is just going to get worse,' says Glass. 'That's not even getting into the fact that most older people haven't saved money to pay for their long-term care.' Nadthachai Kongkhajornkidsuk, a 28-year-old architectural designer who works with Durrett and lives in the same Nevada cohousing project, believes financial accessibility is key to expanding cohousing and boosting racial diversity. Currently, many such projects are predominantly white. Some projects involve the Community Land Trust, a non-profit organization that owns land on behalf of communities, 'to keep the land the housing is built on affordable in perpetuity', Kongkhajornkidsuk says. Other communities prioritize financial and racial diversity in their core values. For instance, ElderSpirit has a progressive ownership plan and allocates some homes for lower-income people, and its mission statement lists diversity as a core value. Increasing opportunities for cohousing would mean more people could live, and die, among people who care about them. Over the decades that Glass has worked as a social researcher, many have confided their loneliness to her. 'I've had people say, 'I was afraid I would die in my apartment one day and nobody would know,' which is a very real thing. It happens probably every day in the US,' she says. At Harbourside Cohousing, one of Critchlow's neighbors recently chose to die by medically assisted suicide in her home, and in the days before, members of her family and community came by 'so she could say how much each of us had meant to her', says Critchlow. 'And there was joyfulness, because we could see that this was what she wanted': to be surrounded by friends until the very end.
CBS News
20-06-2025
- General
- CBS News
LGBTQ+ seniors find safety and joy in North Carolina retirement village
Durham, North Carolina — There's more than just wine and cheese on the menu at happy hour at Village Hearth in Durham, North Carolina. The retirement village serves up a safe space for people 55 and older who identify as LGBTQ+. It's one of the nation's first co-housing developments created specifically for an aging, queer population — like 73-year-old Barb Chase. "I lived my life pretty much in the closet, and I was ready for an experience that was super affirming," Chase said. The 28 single-story pastel-colored cottages are individually owned, but connected physically by walking paths and ideologically by acceptance. "As we age, community is one of the most important things to ensure our continued health," Chase said. Over seven million LGBTQ Americans will be over age 50 by 2030, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Fewer than half of states have laws prohibiting housing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity — and there is no federal law. That's why Margaret Roesch and her wife created Village Hearth more than five years ago when they couldn't find somewhere to retire. "I know if we ever ended up in assisted living or in a nursing home that we would have had to go back in the closet, potentially," Roesch said. Patricia Stressler and Tami Ike moved to Village Hearth from about an hour away in Greensboro, where they lived hiding their relationship. "We're still in that generation where we don't want to make people feel uncomfortable," Ike said. Like many gay and lesbian seniors, the couple doesn't have the traditional safety net of adult children for connection and care. With this community comes built-in support from each other. "I think there is a small percentage of people who are very close-minded, and I think just for day-to-day living, wanting to be comfortable every day, not having to be on guard for anything or anyone," Stressler said. "I feel like we're going backwards, and so I think this type of community is needed more," Ike said. For these seniors — trailblazing for decades — it's a chapter with fewer struggles and more happy hours.
Globe and Mail
17-06-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
For these seniors, co-housing offers autonomy rarely found in long-term care homes
Brian Fernandes recalls growing up in India surrounded by kin. 'We lived with extended families – grandmother, grandfather, uncles, auntie, all in the home.' Now, the 57-year-old Torontonian is planning to replicate that collective life for his own retirement. Single and childless, in 2015 he bought a 17-acre property near Bancroft, Ont., with the dream of turning it into a home for 40 other LGBTQ seniors. 'Co-housing is where people of all different backgrounds come together and see how we can age well together and how we can support each other,' Fernandes said. In a culture that assumes the companionship of living with a roommate is only for the young, researchers and residents of collective housing have found it offers seniors a sense of belonging that can lead to higher life satisfaction. Why finding the right retirement home means asking the right questions Fernandes worked for years as a facilities supervisor in long-term care and learned how lonely those spaces can be without visitors. He worries in particular about LGBTQ seniors. 'Who's going to take care of this whole group of LGBT2SL people because they don't have their children to take care of them?' he asked. Despite the drawbacks of institutions, 'a lot of people get pushed into that because they don't have nowhere to go. There's no social network.' In planning for his Bancroft property, Fernandes took inspiration from other co-housing projects across Canada, such as WindSong, a multigenerational community launched in Langley, B.C., in 1996. Another is set to open in Langley in 2026, and similar places are popping up across the country. Two seniors' co-housing projects, Harbourside and West Wind Harbour, have opened in Sooke, B.C., over the past 10 years, while Vancouver Cohousing opened in 2016. A co-housing community focused on sustainability, Treehouse Village Ecohousing, opened in Bridgewater, N.S. in 2023. Fernandes connected with OCAD University professor Sarah Tranum to imagine options for the Bancroft compound. Together with some other members of LGBTQ outdoor social club Out and Out, they assembled a working group to explore what living arrangements would make sense for them as they age. The group collaborated with Tranum's participatory design students last fall to fill in speculative details for Fernandes's vision. Tranum said her students, accustomed to the inclusive environment of OCAD and the acceptance of their own generation, were surprised to encounter the fears of their older working group collaborators, who remember fighting more severe homophobia than most Toronto students today have witnessed. This retirement home is redefining what it means to grow old Many LGBTQ elders fear that living in nursing homes could send them back to those days, Tranum explained. 'I've lived this whole life out. I want to make sure I'm in a space where I'm not just safe, but I'm celebrated for the diversity and community I've created,' she said, describing the perspective of many of the working group members. For her, such concerns strike close to home. She and her partner opted not to have children and are now caring for their own elderly relatives. 'Our succession plan is going to look very different than what we've been doing for our parents,' she said. 'What does a nursing home look like for a lesbian couple?' She explains that the social design of co-housing projects is as crucial to their success as their architecture. They need to be built with a shared understanding that people are free to grow and change within the group – that they have autonomy within the collective setting – and that takes thought and planning. Such communal life may prolong seniors' healthy years, according to Simon Fraser University social epidemiologist Kiffer Card. He explained that people feel best when 'they exist within social networks that support their autonomy.' In a 2022 brief, Card and his colleagues concluded that seniors on their own become frail more quickly. Yet care homes, because of the nature of their services, don't always offer the feeling of independence that residents still need and crave. Unlike living alone or in long-term care, collective housing can offer elders some healthy social churn, particularly, Card said, when the roommates 'are interested in supporting each other's autonomy and belonging needs.' Feeling part of a group can actually increase your sense of independence, Card realized: 'When you have more autonomy, you also have more belonging and vice versa.' With co-housing, Fernandes said, 'this is friends taking care of friends,' where chosen families are looking ahead to becoming caregiving families, too.
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Homes for sale in England with swimming pools
There is much to ogle at in this four-bedroom, ground- and first-floor apartment – part of a striking 17th-century manor house that has been sensitively carved up as part of a cohousing community. Every room is cavernous and light pours in through mullioned stone windows. There is a cellar, now a workroom. The property sits in 2.8 hectares (seven acres) of grounds which ramble through lawns to woodland. The communal open-air swimming pool is shrouded by trees. It is a seven-minute drive to Bradford-on-Avon station and town centre. £785,000. Inigo, 020 3687 3071 Photograph: Inigo This grand Edwardian home, to the south of the city centre, has three reception rooms, four bedrooms and a conservatory. The light-filled hallway leads into a sociable kitchen, a dining room, a conservatory, and the drawing room, which has an arched window seat under the stained-glass windows. Outside, the rear paved terrace is south-facing with a swimming pool at its centre. The garden is part-walled and bordered by mature flowers and trees. This detached house sits on a large a corner plot twice as wide as the neighbouring terrace homes. £725,000. Sowerbys, 01603 761 441 Photograph: Sowerbys High above sea level, and on the private North Foreland estate, is this restored Edwardian villa. It is thought to have been the original show house of the estate, and has views of the lighthouse and east across the sea. Built in 1902, it has only been occupied by four families. Spread over three floors, there are five bedrooms. The dining room leads on to the terrace and BBQ area, sheltered by raised flowerbeds, and beyond is the sandstone-bordered, heated swimming pool – fitted with a concealed, automatic cover . £2.5m. Inigo , 020 3687 3071 Photograph: Inigo A short walk from the green space of the park and lido is a corner building on Mentmore Terrace. On the third floor is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, warehouse-style apartment with exposed concrete ceilings in the open-plan kitchen-dining-living area, and a private balcony with a protective half-height glass screen. Atop the building is a communal heated swimming pool with decking, flowerbeds and views over the City of London. The terrace runs alongside the railway line and parallel to London Fields, and the overground station is nearby. £730,000. Dexters, 020 7247 2440 Photograph: Dexters On South Quay Plaza, a Berkeley Homes development, is the 68-floor Hampton Tower, which is home to 627 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. There is a one-bedroom flat for sale on the ninth floor with an open-plan living-dining-kitchen area and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to Canary Wharf. The tower has a gym, a swimming pool, a games room, a co-working space, and a bar and a roof terrace on the 56th floor. It's a five-minute walk to the DLR, a seven-minute walk to the Jubilee line and a 13-minute walk to the Elizabeth line. £727,500. Dexters, 020 7590 7299 Photograph: Andrew Beasley /Dexters
RNZ News
09-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
$9 million co-housing development in works for Auckland suburb
housing Auckland Region 29 minutes ago A co-housing development group has shelled out $9 million for two neighubouring sections in Auckland's Grey Lynn, where the plan is to build thirty or more homes with shared facilities, including a communal garden. The goal of Cohaus is to build affordable sustainable housing in consultation with potential home owners, while encouraging people to be less reliant on cars and share more resources. It will be Cohaus's second Auckland development. The first was finished in 2022. Architect and project manager of the new development Thom Gill spoke to Lisa Owen.
