With dramatic demographic and economic societal changes, common values that we once took for granted such as family, community, and a sense of belonging, must now be actively sought. Today's smaller households face a child-care crisis, social isolation, and a chronic time crunch, in part because their housing no longer suits them. Furthermore, as more forests and fields are converted to suburbs and single-family homes, the land looses the capacity to effectively recycle nutrients and water.

I spent six years living in two different alternative communities in the 1970s and early 1980s that tried to address these issues. I have also visited several of the pioneering cohousing communities in North America and talked to members of several initiatives.

CoHousing is a movement that started in Denmark in the 1960s as a cross between an alternative community and a well-designed condominium complex. They are designed by future residents, in conjunction with professionals, to build community with common activities (such as meals) and facilities. CoHousing communities are resident-managed and have a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood layout with self-sufficient individual dwellings, but also with a community common house. They almost always accent ecologically sound design; all the cohousing groups in the Triangle, for example, include passive solar homes.

The uniting cohousing link is the desire to live in community, while in intentional communities, as described by Linda Felch's accompanying article, there is also an underlying philosophical tie. Cohousing members need only to purchase a home, whereas in an intentional community you usually have to go through a membership process.

Living in community encourages a healthy informal interaction, particularly enriching for children. When visiting the Nyland cohousing community in Boulder, Colorado, I was very impressed at how open and friendly the children were. They easily initiated conversation with strangers and sought support from adults. Adults had the convenience of being able to informally rely on neighbors, such as by watching children or borrowing a car.

Cohousing groups and intentional communities are usually vegetarian friendly and accomodate special meals. Though not mandated as in intentional communities, cohousing groups often also center around some common themes; for instance, Solterra has a macrobiotic accent (See Grapevine v9#2, Spring 1995, for an article on Triangle Macrobiotics Association and further information on Solterra -ed).

Intentional communities and cohousing groups both accent a consensus process for decision-making that builds strong interpersonal bonds. However, this process costs time, and often a group wearies of seemingly endless meetings by the time they move in (often five years or more from initiation). Groups will often spend hours debating issues that they later find are completely unimportant. Nyland residents told me that guidelines and rules that they had spent days debating are rarely looked at.

There are several cohousing communities in our area. Here are the ones that I know about:

Blue Heron Farm (115 Blue Heron Farm Rd., Pittsboro 27312, erickson@emji.net) is planning about 15 households on 64 acres they own. Of all area cohousing groups, they are probably the most focused on living in harmony with the environment.

Eno Commons CoHousing Neighborhood (406-8366, nealc@cphl.mindspring.com, http://www.employees.org/~enoweb/ in Durham is building a 22-family neighborhood. They have been actively recruiting new members and plan to begin construction this spring.

Mimosa Grove Cohousing (544-7475, derek@email.unc.edu or gpye@unity.ncsu.edu) in Chapel Hill is working to develop about 20 households in the Triangle area.

Solterra Cohousing (Carol Brown Eilber, Triangle Housing Community, LLC, P.O. Box 2755, Durham 27715, 383-4265, 71167.2716@compuserve.com) is building a 40-unit solar community on 20 acres of land in Durham and is hoping to begin construction this year.

Arcadia in Carrboro is currently operational and, I believe, fully occupied.