Co Housing (CoHousing) or conscious community living San Diego

[Shervin Esfahani]

Hi BG Community. I am reaching out to ask if anyone has explored avenues of building or remodeling a structure into a Cohousing situation here in SD? Covid has me reimagining a lot of things and I wonder if anyone has any knowledge to share regarding building a Cohousing or conscious community in San Diego. It doesn't make sense to me that we all live in isolated dwellings and pay an arm and leg for separate utilities, not enough room to grow and share crops and rooms we mostly use to hibernate in. The human connection is lacking in our current communities and our living arrangements do not foster connection. 

I have done some reading from the CoHousing Association and have not received much correspondence from the city regarding a cohousing situation. I imagine the possibility of building some large communal areas (living, dining, kitchen, work out, study/office, playroom) which will be central to some clusters of 2-3 rooms for sleep mainly. Sharing  some resources and responsibilities, the ability to care for another and our talents and gifts would be ideal. 

If anyone is interested in exploring this idea or has any knowledge to share with regards to part of SD where the city may be more open to allowing a build like this, if the zoning would absolutely restrict this due to Sq ft builds or number of dwellings, or maximum number of rooms, please reach out. This is not my area of expertise but I think it is a worthy cause worth possibly exploring. 

Here are a couple of articles if anyone is interested in learning a bit more :

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

https://www.cohousing.org/abou...

https://www.schemataworkshop.c...

Thank you in advance. 

[Justin R.]

@Shervin Esfahani I don't have direct experience building them myself, but I have some exposure to SRO uses and applying them to new builds.  I don't know the lingo that you're using (a "conscious community", for example) so perhaps you're thinking about something other than this.

Big picture, I have thought along the same lines.  At the moment I'm working on a new-built project (a largish urban apartment building) that has small units but devotes significant valuable space to indoor and outdoor common areas.  It's an exercise to think about how to intentionally design those spaces to imagine what they'd be used for ... while keeping flexibility in case I'm wrong.

My interest is certainly in the same ballpark as you - namely, building communities and not just private spaces for people to live.  There are many others with similar interests, to one degree or another.

I'm open to the space, have the projects where we could implement some of the concepts on a decent scale, but don't know enough to really apply it.  So, I dunno ... thoughts?