Last month Sarah and I began in earnest our solemn procession down the prescribed path to homeownership. We moved beyond browsing Zillow and Redfin and we called a real estate agent. We set up a time to meet, talk about our desires, and view a few listings. This will be the largest purchase we make in our lives, and yet, as I prepared to discuss what I wanted in a home, and compared it to what is available on Zillow, I noticed that the available options were all missing something critical. At times, looking at pictures of a 3 bedroom, 2 bath craftsman with an adorable yard and mountain views, it has been hard to put a finger on the missing variable. Isn’t that what we moved here for (instead of back to San Francisco): so we could actually afford a house just like that?
I think this article by David Roberts on Vox points to the problem. Roberts writes, “In America we have settled on patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built.” The affordable (for us, with two incomes, some savings, and a baby on the way, that means less than $450,000) 3 bedroom, 2 bath homes in the Denver area are all in neighborhoods that were wholly designed for the automobile. This is the pattern of land use Roberts is talking about. As he writes, “when we marry and start a family, we are pushed, by custom, policy, and expectation, to move into our own houses. And when we have kids, we find ourselves tied to those houses. Many if not most neighborhoods these days are not safe for unsupervised kid frolicking. In lower-income areas there are no sidewalks; in higher-income areas there are wide streets abutted by large garages. In both cases, the neighborhoods are made for cars, not kids. So kids stay inside playing Xbox, and families don’t leave except to drive somewhere.”
Relocating our missing tribe
Sarah and I moved here from Washington, D.C. Over three years of graduate school (her) and working in a small nonprofit (me), plus some great luck with where our best college and high-school friends had gone to grad school and started careers, we had amassed a solid crew.
And so I would like to pursue a different option.
That option is called cohousing. If you are interested in talking about this with me, I would like to get started. I will be posting more about this idea, and the steps I’m taking to make it real. Please, join the conversation: your concerns, thoughts, connections, and encouragement are all welcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohousing
https://www.theurbanist.org/2014/05/08/ready-set-build-collectively/
Louis Wertz 