Gathering Together: Communities That Serve People and Planet

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3. Cohousing

In these housing developments, which are often ecologically friendly, homeowners design, manage and maintain their community cooperatively, holding community meetings to determine everything from new memberships to garbage collection. Cohousing communities frequently center around a common house, where residents may gather to eat, socialize, do laundry or participate in playgroups, classes and crafts. Houses generally are clustered around a large open space and the common house, with parking on the periphery. According to the Cohousing Association of the United States, 194 of these communities exist nationwide (www.Cohousing.org).

Cohousing Spotlight: Cobb Hill, Hartland, Vermont

Although Cobb Hill is less than five years old, there’s already a waiting list to buy one of the 22 houses, duplexes and studio apartments on the 260-acre homestead in eastern Vermont. Potential residents visit and meet extensively with community members to discuss shared interests and community needs before mutually deciding to move ahead.

“It’s a big decision to move to a place like this,” says Judith Bush, co-chair of the membership committee, who estimates residents devote as much as 10 hours a week to sustaining the community. “You have to make a pretty extensive commitment to this community’s work, but you gain so much in return,” Bush says.

Residents volunteer to make group meals at the common house, and they work one day a month maintaining community land and buildings. Each household also is responsible for stoking a wood-burning furnace that delivers heat and hot water to all the houses via an underground duct system.

The homes have composting toilets; water comes from a community well. All the houses, which range from 1,100 to 1,600 square feet, are clustered on a 4-acre hillside plot, leaving the lush meadow below for a dairy farm, a community-supported agriculture enterprise and family gardens. The remaining 200-plus acres are community owned and will be conserved through a local land trust.

Contact: www.SustainabilityInstitute.org/cobbhill

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