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Cohousing tends to conjure up images of a happy but homogeneous group of communitarians - middle-class, highly educated, and culturally similar. This picture may feel out of reach, or even distasteful, for many people who don't have significant financial resources, whether due to choice or circumstance.
The fact is that this picture represents only one segment of the cohousing movement - the segment that gets the most press. There are many cohousing or cohousinginspired communities that are partially or totally populated by single parents, workingclass singles or families, seniors with fixed incomes, and students. Successful homeless shelters and affordable housing complexes have been built using cohousing principles.
However, very few people have heard about these projects, which don't fit the stereotype. Affordably priced cohousing homes are snapped up so quickly that their community's members don't go to great lengths to seek publicity in the way that the higher priced communities do when they're trying to market their units. Were these low-income communities to seek media attention, the story would likely be less compelling to journalists and their predominantly middle-class audience than the more culturally relevant (to them) story of middle-class-oriented cohousing. So the stereotype remains.
Cohousing is intrinsically an affordable model: one of its main purposes, outside of a strong sense of community, is limiting resource consumption by sharing resources. The savings in energy, maintenance costs, and food outweigh the apparent up-front costs due to new construction. A survey of 200 cohousing residents showed minimum cost savings per month of $200 per household, with some even saving over $2,000. With the addition of solar systems, residents at Nevada City Cohousing are actually earning money on their electric bills instead of owing it.
In senior cohousing, proximity to friends and shared resources means that residents can live independently for a longer time instead of having to spend money on costly retirement homes, and have less need for professional caregivers. Cohousers also get more amenities for their dollar: instead of investing in an individual facility that may rarely get used, such as...