Steve and I have sort of decided to take a break from real estate (tho we still crane our necks at every for sale sign that we pass on the road) and we've been lightly talking about cohousing, something I saw an article in Mother Earth News about. This is along the lines of what I want - it doesn't require a guru or anything. I spent some time at The Cohousing Network's website last night and was both encouraged and discouraged. It is awesome to see the vision realized, but there were a couple of parts in the FAQ that bothered me:

Why is cohousing so expensive? The simple answer to this question is first, that most cohousing communities are new construction and second, that cohousing communities have very extensive common facilities considering their small size relative to conventional housing complexes. Also, remember that although you are not getting a custom-built individual residence, as a group you are getting a custom-built community for your money. Many cohousers are getting an opportunity to work more closely with the architect(s) designing their future home(s) than they ever imagined they would have. Given these factors, it is remarkable that, in most areas cohousing units do not cost any more than other market rate housing. So why do costs keep going up during the development phase? Despite dire warnings from cohousing professionals about the cost of customization, there is a tendency in every group for people to plan too much customization of the private homes. Even if only some households want to customize their homes a great deal, it raises the costs for everyone. In addition, many groups have a desire to build as "green" as possible, and they are often surprised at how much additional these environmentally sound materials and building techniques can cost.

See, I was under the impression that co-housing would be LESS than regular housing. Here's the other one:

How does cohousing provide for residents of different economic means? In some states, counties or municipalities, developers of multi-family housing are required by law to have a certain percentage of the new units meet a standard for "affordability." People in cohousing usually welcome this, and as a matter of fact often wish they could make even more than the required percentage affordable. Unfortunately, unless the developer can get public or private subsidies or grants, there is a limit to how many affordable units can be built without driving everyone else's costs sky high.

I don't understand why smaller - lower income housing needs to drive other people's costs up! And what about a whole community made up of affordable housing - like an alternative to trailer parks - that's what I'm thinking about. Boy, we'd like to have some diversity and invite those people with higher incomes, but they will drive our costs sky high!

I'd also like to be a little more DIY than this website suggests - like have people involved in the actual construction of their own homes in whatever ways they are able.

And the number one discouraging thing is that it seems to take many years (seven in the example I read about) to get a community off the ground!