Great Oak and the Ann Arbor Cohousing Communities
Jan, 2019 – Cohousing Communities of Ann Arbor, Episode 4 of Planet Community
Foundation for Intentional Community
Cohousing communities are collaborative neighborhoods created with intention and a little ingenuity. They bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable and community living. That means residents actively participate in the design and operation of their neighborhoods, and share common facilities and good connections with neighbors. Cohousing Communities act as innovative answers to today’s environmental and social problems.
In this episode of Planet Community, travel to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where three adjacent cohousing communities have formed over the last 20 years, and are now home to over 300 people!
Jan 2020 - Cohousing: The Future of Community and Human Connection | Trish Becker-Hafnor | TEDxCherryCreekWomen
Trish is the owner of StorySpring Consulting and Director of Community Engagement at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. A social worker to the core, she advances social change by connecting leaders to resources, opportunities and each other. She is a passionate advocate for housing solutions that address both affordability and the global loneliness epidemic. At the University of Denver, she leads community engagement initiatives and creates gatherings that advance social justice. As a consultant with StorySpring, she provides strategy, facilitation and coaching to nonprofits, social changemakers, and intentional communities. Fueled by her own suburban loneliness and a desire for community, Trish became a founder of Denver’s newest cohousing community. She believes that we are most alive when we are connected, and that intergenerational communal living offers an alternative to our increasingly isolated world. Drawing upon years of experience living communally throughout the world, she urges us to find one another and build our own micro-villages. Trish supports people and organizations advancing social change by connecting them to resources, opportunities and each other.
Forgebank Films: COHOUSING FAMILIES: Raising children in community
Filmed at Forgebank, Lancaster Cohousing UK, an intergenerational community next to the river Lune at Halton, 3 miles away from Lancaster.
Dec 2016 - TEDx Talks: Co-housing, a Future Way of Living Together | Eef Tanghe | TEDxLeuven
Here is an unsettling question: Our population and our cities are growing. How will we handle our needs for sustainable housing? Here is one solution... In this talk Eef Tanghe explores the widely varying benefits of living together in more tightly knit co-housing communities. Eef Tanghe is a manager for Cohousing Projects, a cooperative that supports people to build their own cohousing community in Flanders. While initiating her personal project near Ghent, she acquired expert knowledge by hurdling many obstacles and visiting other communities in Belgium and abroad. Today, more than 20 groups of neighbors rely on her financial, architectural and legal advice to get their own community up and running.
October 2015 - TED Talk: Co-housing—Community at its Best | Erica Elliott | TEDxABQ
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to live in a place where you’re surrounded by a supportive network of neighbors who share with you the joys and sorrows of life? Dr. Erica Elliott found such a place, a co-housing community in Santa Fe, NM, where she has remained rooted for almost 25 years. Living in co-housing has often been compared to an old-fashioned neighbor where there’s plenty of privacy, but at the same time, there’s a sense of belonging and mutual support. Co-housing can provide a safe and happy place to raise children, while at the same time, a supportive place to grow old. Dr. Elliott practices medicine in her clinic right within her community. Her patients love the peaceful setting. Dr. Elliott says her move into her co-housing community was one of the best decisions she’s ever made—the perfect antidote to feelings of isolation and disconnection. In fact, she can no longer imagine returning to the old way of living.
May 2009 – “Co-housing – A Look at Ann Arbor’s Three Thriving Cross-Generational Intentional Communities”
I may have more familiarity with intentional community than the average person since I’ve had friends living in university co-ops and have visited three communes over the last decade. However, though I knew Ann Arbor was home to three co-housing communities, I wasn’t really sure what co-housing was until I took a tour of the Sunward, Great Oak and Touchstone communities and began talking to the residents this autumn.
Sunward founder Nick Meima says the communities are technically a condominium association but with many differences from the typical condo development. These differences start with community members being heavily involved in the design and architecture of the community and include the prominent role of the common houses.
Though a few residents moved into co-housing after having been members of a spiritual community, the members of Sunward, Great Oak and Touchstone don’t share their income as in a commune, and they don’t share a spiritual or religious dogma. In fact, a wide diversity of religious faiths is represented from Judaism and Christianity to paganism or agnosticism. What all members do share is an interest in creating intentional community and sharing resources.
March 25, 2009 – “Home But Not Alone”
Nestled behind a typical suburban strip of car dealerships in Scio Township, at the end of a road that winds between the type of faceless office parks featured in Office Space, is a cluster of condo complexes that, at first glance, look as if they might house those glassy-eyed office workers. Sure, they’re a tad more aesthetically unique, but nothing unusual.
But park your car and look around, and you’ll see that the reality is very much different.
For starters, the “park your car” sign is the first clue that things are different here. The interior of the complex is dedicated solely to pedestrian walkways, with parking for residents and visitors relegated to the perimeter of the homes.
And what appears to be a big clubhouse/office building at the center of each community is actually a common house — a welcoming building with a big open kitchen and gathering spots that are used by everyone in the community.
Which is the magic word here — community. It begins to tell the story of what goes on at these three developments in Scio Township: Sunward, Great Oak and Touchstone are cohousing communities.
July 11, 2001 – “Creating community”, about Sunward
Now forming: An eco-friendly community where neighbors know one another by name, share meals and care for their homes and children together.
This ad may sound too good to be true. But Nick Meima says this is what cohousing is all about. He is anxious to show visitors the 40-unit development in Ann Arbor where these ideas have been playing out for three years. And he’s busy recruiting residents for three more developments.
Cohousing – which originated in Denmark – means neighborhoods where people jointly purchase land, design and develop individual and family dwellings, and work together to care for them and for one another. In the past decade, cohousing has flourished, with dozens of communities springing up around the country. In Michigan, Meima is the pied piper for the fledgling movement.