Consumer Focus Column: "Putting Consumers in Charge"

Thanks for asking that very important question, Katie. Cohousing has been a grassroots movement over the last two decades in the U.S., with individual communities (or “neighborhoods”, as we often call them, to distinguish from the centrally-run developer-driven “communities” for aging and the broader “intentional communities” movement) sorting out on their own, with some professional guidance, what really matters to them, and the on-the-ground results look and feel different.

Where I live, a small San Francisco Bay Area intergenerational cohousing neighborhood built using mostly existing homes, we are definitely dealing with “aging in place” issues of both accessibility and changes in priorities and function, with our Boomers (our median age is near 50) and beyond.

While there’s lots of community activity centered around the ten kids living here and their visiting friends, our members also host Older Women’s League and Elders’ Guild meetings, house concerts and political-organizing groups. We are collectively redesigning our kitchen to better support our 79- and 80-year-old members to be able to continue to fully participate in cooking and cleaning if they choose, as well as making it easier for families and people with babes-in-arms to efficiently serve themselves.

As someone who has taught the “Successful Aging” (Study Group I) course adapted from the Danish model, and visited more than 90 of the 117 up-and-running U.S. cohousing neighborhoods, including all three built senior cohousing (age-specific) ones, I’ve found that there can be a significant difference between what people think they want, and what they end up knowing they need. “Senior Cohousing” book author Chuck Durrett, who imported the model to the U.S., taught me how to help people look beyond the conventional concerns and connect on a deeper level, to their neighbors and their futures.

I believe that a key factor of the success of the cohousing model is the way it helps people become more engaged with their neighbors as part of the process of developing and managing their own communities. The relationships with providers are different when the members are the ones doing the hiring, and creating the spaces so that care and other providers are peers, living in their own spaces, rather than the tension that comes from being forced to have a “stranger” living in your own home.

We’ve been conditioned by marketing to believe that our significant choices are about physical amenities and quantity of private space, when what really can make the difference in not just quantity but the quality of our elder years is having a social structure of supportive neighbors that care for each other, with enough shared space, experience and vision to have common ground for conversation, a context that creates the opportunities for personal growth, an awareness of not just the realities of aging, but also the benefits of sharing our accumulated wisdom.

My wife Betsy Morris and I are currently teaching the class to senior staff at an enlightened operator of several communities, helping them shift their essential question from “How can I help you?” to “How can we help you help each other?” It is exciting seeing the new consciousness arising from them participating in the process and acknowledging the personal challenges and opportunities, breaking free of the institutional health-care model which dominates the lives of so many providers.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach, Planning for Sustainable Communities
Aging In Community chapter author, Audacious Aging (2009)