On October 19, 2007, the organization hosted a one-day conference called Crafting Intentional Communities: Cooperating Living Along LifeGuv,!v,,us Journey. The event was designed to explore new housing and living innovations for seniors to live, grow and age in community.
In this panel on cohousing communities, Peter Lazar of Blue Ridge Cohousing & Shadowlake Village Cohousing and Janaka Casper of Community Housing Partners tell the story on the creation of three Virginia cohousing neighborhoods. They explore the topics of affordability, accessibility and sustainability in communities.
Peter spoke from the perspective of a current cohousing homeowner creating a new community with future neighbors. Janaka spoke from the perspective of the developer and promoter of affordable community-oriented housing. Janaka’s company was builder of Shadowlake Village Cohousing in Blacksburg, and ElderSpirit in Abingdon, and is currently developing a wheelchair-accessible cohousing community in Crozet, Virginia. A rezoning application for Blue Ridge Cohousing was recently approved by the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.
Hi, we just published a documentary on the cohousing phenomenon. It won an award at the 34th Ekotopfilm festival 2007 and was designed to show what is cohousing “from within” as a complement to the existing books.
The trailer can be watched at http://notsocrazy.net/video.html
Enjoy!
Matthieu
Director of “Voices of Cohousing”