Britta Jongkind's Page

If you haven't met him already, go to Alan Carpenter's page.  Then maybe check in with Louise Trusler Mangan.  Finally, search in the search box in the upper right corner of this page for cohousing.  You'll get a number of hits.  

Our housing group has mostly been involved in energy efficiency retrofitting and renovations, active and passive solar installations, grey-water systems, green roofs, etc.  Since almost everything is either illegal here or too expensive, the group has barely gotten off the ground.  

This of course goes equally for alternative housing tenures, such as co-housing and even co-ops.  The cost of land--maybe soon to plummet--is destroying almost all possibility of creative solutions to shared housing.  The City and the banks are another obstacle.  We've never even been able to launch a Habitat for Humanity project here.  

That said, there IS interest, everywhere.  I know many people who desperately want to live in co-op or co-housing, and also many who do--Louise is one of the latter group.   

I hope you can find some connections here.  We all know that a co-housing site is automatically a Transition Village in almost every sense.  One of Village Vancouver's first directors, Kathryn, moved into a great co-housing development in North Vancouver, and many of us had Christmas dinner there last year.  

I can tell you that the opportunity to build co-housing will come in this City, but only after a brutal crash.  It's coming soon, but of course that is no consolation when you are looking now.

Good luck making connections and finding your way.

Randy