What Is Cohousing?

The term cohousing or housing cooperatives is gaining traction. In our country, we face a serious housing accessibility problem among young people and a lack of access to financing.

Who hasn’t felt alone at some point? Even surrounded by people, we can experience the social isolation that modern dynamics impose upon us. Social media is a prime example of this false sense of connection constantly being sold to us.

The current housing model is based on two types of developments: on one hand, private development by large real estate companies that build residential buildings in both major cities and metropolitan areas, offering apartments with communal gardens and swimming pools; on the other hand, the self-developer model, where individuals purchase land and build a detached home.

In both models, the formation of a community of neighbors is entirely random and responds to the sales strategies of the developer or, in the case of detached private homes—as the name suggests—these are isolated developments where forming a community beyond immediate neighbors is often difficult.

Whether we buy an apartment or build a house, we encounter a lifestyle model in which the community of people around us is secondary. The neighbors living across from our door or in the house next door came into our lives by chance and may have interests, lifestyles, needs, values, and cultures different from our own.

Questioning the Model

Human beings are social creatures; our happiness depends on the quality of our relationships with family and friends. It is therefore strange that we leave the relationships in our everyday environment in the hands of a real estate developer’s interests.

We buy apartments and live in houses where our neighbors are a genuine lottery.
A developer primarily concerned with their bottom line is the one selecting the groups of families that will live together and the types of homes they will occupy.

We are doing something wrong.

Groups of families should come together beforehand, determine whether they are compatible, and seek a place to live while deciding what their homes will be like. This is nothing new—it is called cohousing, a housing model that emerged in the 1960s in Denmark as a response to real estate speculation.

In Denmark, this housing model represents 10% of the real estate market and has expanded with various iterations throughout Europe. In Spain, the first groups of families self-developing their homes in the form of cooperatives or community property have recently emerged, such as La Borda.

Living in Community

Yes, it is true. We already live in community. Our cities are full of residential buildings with more or less harmonious communities of neighbors. So, what is the difference between a community of neighbors and cohousing?

Precisely the intentionality of the community is the success of a housing cooperative or cohousing. The reality is that virtually all communities of neighbors that exist in our country are communities formed randomly: a developer carries out the construction of a residential building and puts the apartments up for sale through a real estate agency or, more recently, on an online platform.

The neighbors who arrive join randomly. What are the chances of forming a cohesive group of neighbors if we do it randomly? They likely all belong to different generational groups, have different sociocultural levels, needs, interests, or lifestyles.

In cohousing, the group of neighbors is formed prior to the construction of the building or housing complex. All families know each other and participate in the development process, which not only improves their relationship and sense of belonging to the community but also allows us to know and assess whether we want to live with the group of people who will form our future community of neighbors.

Sometimes these groups emerge from already established circles, such as families who send their children to the same school, groups of friends, or coworkers. The options for forming a cohousing community are many, and the most important thing is that the entire group shares affinity and common interests.

Community living is possible—it is neither a utopia nor a bed of roses. What is clear is that the unsustainable model in which we live, even if it could become sustainable in the medium term thanks to renewable energy, would still be a development that hinders relationships between neighbors and family members due to the considerable distances between homes and services.

Future projects must have a threefold relationship: the public, the common, and the private, and cohousing encompasses this spatial diversity. It is the meaningful communal spaces—without sacrificing the amenities of conventional housing—that promote the social interactions that generate a sense of community.

Thus, a dining room can become a focal point of social connection that radiates to other spaces. The careful and collective selection of furniture, lighting, and acoustic conditions invites people to eat together. Community organization also plays a role, ranging from dining together once a week to shopping collectively. All these dynamics improve efficiency and allow for cost reduction or, better yet, reduced resource consumption.

Ecological Housing Communities

To understand what cohousing is, we must understand what an ecological housing community is—a type of cohousing that goes a step further by adding efficiency and health criteria to the design. Since the amortization of investment in energy efficiency or water consumption installations and systems falls on all owners collectively, it is faster.

The distinguishing feature of an ecological housing cooperative or cohousing is the goal of achieving zero-consumption buildings, constructed according to passive architecture principles, with zero or near-zero carbon footprint, and built with healthy materials.

Furthermore, the management of these communal services, such as through community work, ultimately generates the spirit of community, which is so positive for improving the quality of life of the residents of these types of developments.

As an example, below are some of the communal services that ecological housing cooperative developments may include:

– A centralized parking area to free up communal spaces such as green areas. This can include an electric vehicle charging zone, with the possibility of car-sharing for those who do not use their vehicle daily. The same can be done with zero-consumption vehicles such as bicycles.

– A community workshop, that is, a work area with tools for repairs of communal services, each home, vehicles, etc.

– A children’s play area, either indoor or outdoor, designed with visual access for community members so that any of them can supervise the youngest. Additionally, generational diversity allows profiles of people with more free time, such as the elderly, to relieve other users of childcare responsibilities, enriching themselves through this exchange.

– A central communal garden, whose greenery brings users closer to nature, like an oasis that embraces the community and enhances their quality of life.

– A community vegetable garden and composting area, with the possibility of keeping animals such as chickens to supply the community with eggs, thus generating more self-sufficiency strategies as mentioned.

– Communal guest rooms, which avoid having an extra room in each housing unit and the additional cost of heating this space daily for the few times someone visits.

– A communal laundry, which again makes energy expenditures more efficient and even facilitates user interaction around everyday tasks.

– A training area, gym, or sauna, which once again fosters social interaction while saving us from paying for or traveling to a private gym.

Urban Planning, Legal, and Regulatory Viability

Hockerton Cohousing was self-developed by the landowner, Nick Martin, who proposed that half of the project be the result of self-construction by the families involved, while the remaining 50% would be left to contractors.

Additionally, each family had to commit to dedicating approximately 300 hours per year to the community free of charge. The architects who designed the complex, Brenda and Robert Vale, are experts in the field of ecological architecture, so the complex has exemplary technical and social development.

Technical Development

The design of what cohousing is prioritizes solar gain, proposing an elongated floor plan in which all main rooms are oriented south, while corridors and service areas are relegated to the north façade.
Some passive strategies on the south façade include leveraging the thermal mass of brick, as well as creating an intermediate space that accumulates heat, such as a greenhouse.

On sunny days, the windows on the main façade are opened wide to let the heat accumulated in the greenhouse into the home. Additionally, it has a heat recovery ventilation system that draws warm air from it.

High-quality windows with triple glazing and argon-filled chambers are also used, and the thermal mass of the earth is leveraged by burying the north façade to form the characteristic green roof. Such thermal mass provides a constant annual temperature of 15°C.

Interior finishes were also carefully selected to minimize the ecological footprint: VOC-free paints, PVC-free piping, clay flooring, formaldehyde-free wood panels, and kitchens made from recycled panels, among others.

It has a double roof: the green roof of the homes and the greenhouse roof, where rainwater is collected and directed to a treatment and storage tank for consumption, since when we have a green roof, water collection is very inefficient.

Liquid waste from the homes is directed to a biological treatment plant located at the rear of the property, whose recycled output is used for irrigation. The option of independent sanitation is possible if we have space, conditions typical of rural developments.

Regarding active strategies, the community has 2 wind turbines and 7 solar panels that provide electricity not only for the community but also for 54 people in the municipality. Appliances are low-consumption, and toilets only use 1 to 3 liters per flush.

Social Development

Hockerton residents are self-sufficient in organic food production for approximately two-thirds of their total daily needs for vegetables, fruits, and eggs. They have chickens, poultry, bees, and sheep that are used not only for food but also to maintain the fields. Additionally, they fish from the lake.

The rest of the food is purchased from local producers or through cooperatives. They have organic compost and maintain a zero-waste policy, attempting to minimize the use of plastics and single-use containers.

All this joint management of food production and purchasing generates many hours of socialization, thus increasing the spirit of community. In fact, daily dedication exceeds 2 hours in gardening work, collective food shopping, and maintenance of self-sufficiency facilities.

Other dynamics as simple as joint billing allow that, by having a single energy contract, everyone sees the consumption of others, so each neighbor can compare their usage with others for the same house and become aware to reduce it. Consumption meters are also installed on taps pursuing the same objective.

In terms of transportation, Hockerton stands as the ideal case where there is an active policy of vehicle sharing, which are usually pedal-powered. It is admirable to see some of the videos of the daily life of its residents and how they move around in all kinds of self-made pedal-powered carts and contraptions.

Biodiversity

A lake, several ponds are designed on the land, and 4,000 trees are planted, encouraging the arrival of a wide variety of bird species, small mammals, and insects. The roofs of the houses have also helped improve biodiversity, as they have been colonized by local species of wild plants that serve as habitat for small mammals and frogs.