So, it turns out, audaciously building a cohousing community together—i.e., a new neighborhood essentially from scratch—is hard work and can take a long time. Who knew?
But Richmond Cohousing just passed an important milestone that’s suddenly brought our end goal into sharp focus: we’ve chosen a site, are planning to share a brand new 4-story condo building in Manchester, and are working out the details with our developer, Miller & Associates. We’re getting close now!
Anyone who’s followed our progress knows that we have been at this for some time. A few of our members joined the group as early as 2011 and 2012. Most came later, once we got better organized in late 2014.
And what a journey we’ve had! We’ve gathered for countless meetings and potluck dinners. We’ve sung, biked, played games, tabled at festivals, and volunteered together. We’ve eaten scrumptious community dinners in each other’s homes. We’ve read cohousing books together, attended cohousing conferences, visited cohousing communities in other cities, sent members of our group to facilitation trainings in neighboring states, and hosted facilitation trainings here, too.
We’ve articulated our core values and created agreements about processes and policies to govern the way we want to live together as a community. We’ve honed our meeting format to a fast-paced, no-nonsense structure that helps us accomplish a lot in the limited time we have together. We’ve developed spreadsheets and databases and circumnavigated the city to check out possible sites for our future home. We’ve pooled some funds and kept careful records. We’ve created our own website, logo, budgets, and bank accounts – the works. We’ve also laughed a lot—at almost every meeting. We’ve watched each other’s pets and younger children. We’ve helped out each other with some significant home projects and a few minor emergencies. Three babies have been born since we started. A new romance is blossoming, too.
Through it all, we’ve become a genuine community. In a word, we’ve gotten really close. So close, that we can’t wait to be moving in together in 2019.
And we can’t wait for more people to join us.
Our next Informational Session & Site Tour is Wednesday, September 19th at 5:30pm. This is a great time to get involved—we’ve laid the group foundation, now it’s time to build (membership and the structure)!
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Richmond Cohousing 