Cohousing is an intentional community with an emphasis on shared community space. Similar to the condo model, cohousing includes private ownership of individual homes and a strong commitment to personal privacy. But unlike most condos, the cohousing model supports social interaction and environmental sustainability. Best of all, we design our community together.
Canopy was a labour of love that lasted 10+ years and we did some great work, including: a feasibility study and business plan, incorporating as a cooperative, learning how to have productive consensus-based meetings, and meeting with developers, builders, architects, urban planners and other visionaries.
Most cohousing groups do not succeed and the cooperative decided to fold recently, due to land prices and insurmountable challenges in buying and developing land as a small independent group. Be in touch if you’d like to connect about the work we did, as we’d love to share our lessons learned.
Although housing is extraordinarily difficult, as we wrapped up Canopy some new ideas and models were unfolding, which gives us some hope. Some to point out are:
- public community housing is starting to add in significantly more robust food garden infrastructure into their projects (and Hoffmann Hayes is working on some of these)
- there are more organized opportunities for people to co-purchase homes now and even floors of condo building, for those who can afford it – send us a note if you want a referral to one of these
Also, you can get onto lists of housing coops here and there’s the foundation for intentional communities here. For more information on co-housing, see https://cohousing.ca/. For an ecovillage nearby that made it and inspired us, see https://www.wholevillage.org/. They have regular work bees and open community days, so it is a good place to meet others and take heart.