Yesterday’s exploration of the interesting experiment of co-housing, based on a sympathetic Boston Globe account, had reached the point of a completed development, using as an anti-snob crowbar the powerful lever of Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B law to produce a development that the founders swear up down and sideways ‘will’ be green. 

Future green? The Mosaic Commons site at Sawyer Hill

Will?  Nothing about co-housing makes it inherently greener than any other form of higher-density living. 

There are 74 communities in various stages of development, 25 in California alone, according to the Cohousing Association.

“The web of life that we have created through driving is just eliminated in cohousing,” said an association spokeswoman, Neshama Abraham Paiss. “You’ve got a real village.”

Except you have to drive to your job, and to your groceries.  All of this sounds merely like a plea for higher-density new urbanism, not a breakthrough innovation in its own right.

Emerson Chandler, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, said Sawyer Hill’s contention that it is environmentally sustainable is “baloney,” because the clustering has caused water to run onto a neighboring property.

In the long run, the greatest threat to residential property is water.  It can rot building envelops, drain into standing pools that rot siding, submerge property and breed expensive mold, and weaken building foundations.  Grade a site and you change the runoff, often to someone’s detriment.

But he cast the deciding vote in January 2007 to allow the project, avoiding a lengthy fight.

That Mr. Chandler voted yes reveals, despite his misgivings, another power of Chapter 40B that we saw in my two-part post: developers generally prevail on appeals, so local zoning boards sometimes hold their noses and acquiesce to something they dislike.

Vote yes and think of New England

Tony Valchius has lived for 35 years on his 23-acre Pleasant Street property, downhill from the western side of the development. He said since construction began at Sawyer Hill, he’s had at least a 200% increase in storm-water runoff cascading over his land, and has spent more than $60,000 in legal and engineering fees trying to prove that the development’s runoff controls are inadequate.

Mr. Valchius has visual evidence on his side.  Against him are those who believe the future will be different:

Journeay said engineers representing three different parties – Sawyer Hill, the town, and Valchius – all have said the arrangement in place should work.

‘Should’ – not even a future-tense verb, a future-tense conditional verb.

We always did all our chores, didn’t we?

What if it doesn’t work?  In a co-housing development, who’s responsible for making it work?  Who will pay to fix it?

Cohousers also may face cultural challenges as they move in over the coming months.

Berlin is so committed to its agricultural roots that it recently approved a bylaw protecting farmers from complaints about noise, odors, and dust. Many of the Sawyer Hill residents have jobs that stray far from the land – it’s a “geek-heavy” crowd, said Journeay.

Who, despite their desire for a walking community, drive to work.

“We have lots of people in the computer industry,” as well as a large number of Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduates, in Camelot, said Journeay, who is a business account manager at Tufts Health Plan. “We have an honest-to-God rocket scientist.”

Who drive.

I have nothing against those who drive to work.  But if your search for a sylvan walkable community takes you so far from your work that you are unable to use public transportation, how green are you really being?

But the village’s residents say they are committed to contributing to the community, through politics, schools, or by just being good neighbors.

How angelic, contributing to the community

Being good neighbors is not limited to co-housing residents.

“One of the things we’re so excited about is that we were able to put so much of the land into conservation,” said Ginny Maki [involved with the property since 2003 – Ed.], referring to the 28.5 acres that Sawyer Hill has set aside as open space.  

Sorry, Ms. Maki, no points for that.  That the residents have set it aside does not mean it’s legally deeded into conservation.  That land could be redeveloped later – and before the co-housing property arrived, it was undeveloped.   

[Update – in the comments, see below, commenter ‘dbang’ adds something omitted from the Globe’s article: “The conversation land is, in fact, legally deeded into conservation in perpetuity. It can’t legally be redeveloped later. Before, that land was undeveloped because no one had developed it — now it is undeveloped by force of law.”  That is a conservation benefit.]

Not that I oppose development. 

Rather, I think you get little credit for using a zoning override to create higher density than the town allows, only to pat yourself for having left undeveloped what your permit required you to leave undeveloped.

Residents will build and maintain trails for public use.

More future-tense verbs.  Building and maintaining trails is hard work.

Blogging’s even harder

When we’re young, we read and write science fiction, because the imagined worlds are more interesting than the experienced ones.  When we’re old, we read and write history, because what has happened is both remarkable in itself, and real.

This month, Maki will be moving into her three-bedroom unit with her family. In addition to her husband and two young children, her mother will be there.

And her younger brother, Ethan Bickford, was able to buy a reduced-rate unit in the community because his income falls within the 40B guidelines.

I’m all for income-mixing.  (You can see details of the affordable units, designed by Stockard & Engler & Brigham, here.)

Maki said her children are ecstatic about their future home and she loves that Sawyer Hill is multigenerational. After the death of her sister eight years ago, she said, she realized even more the importance of a tight-knit community and being close to loved ones.

“Once something like that has happened in your life,” she said, “it makes you take stock and remember what’s important.” 

I wish them luck.  Travel hopefully, but read the signs.

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Character is what you are in the dark

Thus it was with a fair dose of jaundice that I read a sympathetic Boston Globe account of a new approach to affordable housing, co-housing:

Co-housing?  Bah, humbug!

The idea started small. Kathy Journeay and a few close friends wanted to buy houses together on a cozy street so they could pool resources, raise their children together, and share their lives.

Long day’s journeay into housing

Is community something we bring to virgin territory, or what we make of those who become our neighbors?

More than seven years later, those same friends are about to realize their dream – albeit on a much larger scale than they ever imagined – and move into Sawyer Hill EcoVillage, a 68-unit development in Berlin that is the largest cohousing project in the country.

Far west of Boston, but spiritually close to Cambridge and Walden Pond?

As in a traditional condominium complex, each unit will be individually owned.

You might think this is a traditional Planned Unit Development, but the founders have idealist visions:

In most places, “maybe the only time you ever see your neighbor is when you’re pulling your mail out of your mailbox. You don’t find excuses to interact with each other. You don’t have the opportunities to get to know each other’s lives,” she said. “Did you just have a baby? Then I should be making you casseroles and bringing them over.”

Bringing casseroles?

On my street, a neighbor whom all of us have nicknamed the Mayor of Francis Avenue handles the social infrastructure for us – for which we neighbors are all grateful.

They learned how architecture is used to promote frequent interaction among residents. Homes are clustered around walking paths and a common house, where shared meals and events are held throughout the week. Social activities are centered on the property, child care is shared, and knowing your neighbors is inevitable.

Any shared-burden, shared-benefit environment faces the free rider problem.  Inevitably, some do less than their share – or what their neighbors consider ‘their share.’

We’re doing our share

At Sawyer Hill, responsibilities and costs will be apportioned as presented in the six defining characteristics of co-housing:

Business is predicated on value chains – disaggregated sequences of actions where each participant has a discrete function, for which it is paid.  Co-housing challenges that presumption, preferring instead an egalitarian utopia, a socialize community:

And at the center of their social lives will be shared meals – like the recent gathering in the development’s central common house, organized while awaiting the official occupancy permits that will let them move in for good.

The kitchen in Camelot Commons, one of two neighborhoods within Sawyer Hill

Sawyer Hill EcoVillage is composed of two 34-unit communities with distinct architectural styles – Mosaic Commons features multifamily buildings in the New England saltbox design, while Camelot CoHousing, where Journeay’s family will live, offers modern duplexes and standalone homes.

It makes good sense to offer multiple configurations to accommodate diversity of family situations.

Shared meals will be at the heart of each neighborhood. As daunting as cooking for 34 households may be, it’s a duty that rolls around only every month and a half, said Journeay.  

Want to eat what others choose?

You’re in the co-housing now, son

In exchange, residents can enjoy two cooked meals per week, while using only one kitchen on those nights instead of 34.

I don’t know about you, tovarisch, but my experience with group cooking involves lots of pasta and simmered meats. 

Don’t forget the grilled cheese and tomato!

For many of us, being at home is where we can be apart, private.  We cook what we like, eat what we like, do what we like.  The right to privacy begins at home, yet in a co-housing property, such privacy may be considered antisocial.

“Ideally, for me, community is where I can get support in my times of crisis and I can give support,” said Journeay, 39, who expects to move in with her husband within a few weeks. “When no one is in crisis, I have friends who I can spend time with.”

Although idealism ushered in the cohousing dream, Journeay and her friends quickly learned that it takes tenacious will to master all the technical, legal, and regulatory aspects that come with building a housing development.

Development is a real business: it takes real work, and there are real responsibilities.  After all, they call it real estate.

They also had to convince Berlin – a town with deep agricultural roots – that they would be good neighbors.

Presumably they picked Berlin because the land was relatively inexpensive.  Which means that the residents probably live far away.

Cohousing is still a novel idea in this country, though the model has been around since its 1964 birth in Denmark. There are 10 of the developments in Massachusetts and 114 across the nation, according to the Cohousing Association of the United States. Sawyer Hill is the largest, beating out a development in Decatur, GA, by one unit.

I suspect that co-housing, like birds, is scale-limited.  (If I did the cut-paste-total right, the site lists 129 properties and 3,243 homes, an average of about 25 per site.)  Too small and there isn’t the critical mass of people to assure that every function can be covered at one time or other.  Too large and governance will break down. 

Any bigger and I couldn’t fly

Intriguingly, the Berlin property was a marriage of convenience:

Soon after finding the land, the people who formed Camelot CoHousing banded together with the people from Mosaic Commons, who had also been searching for a site, and formed Sawyer Hill EcoVillage.  But they still had to persuade the town, and its residents, that this new arrangement would work.

The developmental and permitting challenges are non-trivial.  In fact, the neighbors didn’t want it:

Berlin’s bylaws require new homes be built on at least 2 acres.

Since zoning is destiny, large-lot zoning is a convenient means of being the righteous snobs by keeping ‘those people’ out of your bucolic town.  Except when inclusionary zoning can be compelled, as in Massachusetts:

To have homes set up in the clusters they envisioned, Sawyer Hill’s organizers obtained a permit under the state’s Chapter 40B law, which allowed them to work around the local zoning regulations.

‘Work around’? 

I’m not buying your story

That phrasing is sympathetically euphemistic.  Chapter 40B allowed the developers to override local preferences, so we have the community-oriented neighbors using a property law to cram a community:

In exchange for the leeway provided by its comprehensive permit, 40B requires that at least 25% of a development’s units be set aside as affordable housing, based on income and price restrictions set by the state.

It’s not leeway, it’s superseding zoning!

Is planning when I get to decide that you’ll do?

Of Sawyer Hill’s 68 units, 51 are under purchase agreements. And of the 17 still for sale, 10 units are earmarked as affordable.

So congratulations to them – they’ve made it past the development danger point of having a large unsold inventory.  Now they have the challenges of operations:

As green living becomes mainstream ethos, cohousing may skyrocket.

Oh, you think it’s green?

I don’t think so

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

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