East Bay Cohousing - Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville/SF

February 26, 2010 5:00 PM - 12 attended

Dwight Way Potential Community House - Tour

Dwight Way Mansion (map)

Tour 1545 Dwight Way (near Sacramento St.) in Berkeley, a huge, historic, and somewhat funky house for sale - formerly the commune known as The Ark.

Showing 5-6pm Friday Feb. 26 with Raines and Betsy. Our buyer's agent for this, Mickey Tenenbaum will be on hand. (Other dates to be determined.)

The downstairs has very large common LR, DR, and double kitchen plus an office. Baths and bedrooms (plus former kitchenettes) are split across all 3 floors. (Most currently hold two beds, so they are comfortably sized, but in Betsy's opinion the place needs plenty of new paint and TLC, and ideally reconfiguration of walls.

The extensive grounds (9,000 square foot lot) include a sauna and hot tub. It's zoned for three units and has housed up to six households.

Owner will finance up to 80% for several years at 4.75% interest. That would be roughly $200,000 down payment. Renovation loan would require a separate budget and source of financing most likely.

Let us know if you are interested in the followup discussion on next steps (this would be a paid event).

To move this forward, we invite EBCOHO members to contribute to a "free look" payment (returnable), so we can get more information, such as better idea of any needed nenovations. There is a termite report indicating up to $40,000 of work is needed.

Thanks to EBCOHO supporting member and long-time communitarian Lotus Allen, we've now talked with two different cooperative housing developers who may be in a position to help finance or manage the renovations, for the right kind of group.
Another EBCOHO member actually owned and rebuilt parts of the house a decade ago, so we may have some "inside information" as to what's in the walls.

If you can't make this afternoon's tour, no problem - RSVP "No" by clicking on the link below and indicate your interest so we know to follow up with you.

****If you speak with the seller's agent directly, we encourage you to identify yourself as part of EBCOHO so they increasing the price because they see that multiple groups will bid against each other. This will help avoid a bidding war such as happened with Berkeley Cohousing 16 years ago. ****

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12 attended

3.503 (3 ratings)

Event Host

Raines Cohen
Cohousing Coach and Aging In Community Author, Co-Organizer
Event Host

Mickey Tenenbaum
Cohousing-friendly buyers' agent &supporting member til 7/3/2010
Betsy Morris
Cohousing Coach, Organizer
Linda Lewin

+1 guest

Interesing house, good for communal living. But it needs some work to fix it up.
Werner Rust

Great house, felt like Winchester Mystery house in San Jose or mansions I knew used by communes in Berlin in the 60s. To make it work for cohousing or something similar with multiple families will take some major remodeling and work. In the future it would be good to organize a meeting before or after by the cohousing people interested.
A former member
A former member
A former member
A former member
+1 guest

Berkeley, CA

Founded Oct 22, 2003

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Imagine lively people-scaled communities dotting the San Francisco Bay Area - places co-created by their residents for raising kids, for retirement, for growing food or simply living well by sharing more. The Bay Area already has ecovillages, and cohousing neighborhoods, resident-owned housing cooperatives, and group houses -- real world places where we can live more sustainably through a more cooperative way of life. You can have both privacy and community when you know your neighbors on purpose, in day-to-day relationships based on common vision and values.

East Bay Cohousing (EBCOHO) is a Bay Area-wide MeetUp. We connect a wide variety of kindred spirits and resources. We support individuals wanting to learn more, forming groups looking to create community together, and members of existing communities. We are mostly in the East Bay and San Francisco; others are from the North and South Bay, Los Angeles, Nevada, and other parts of the US and Mexico.

There are over two dozen cohousing communities in the greater Bay Area, (more cohousing in Oakland than any other U.S. city). There are also dozens of other emerging and long-established intentional communities. EBCOHO members have recently bought or rented homes in cohousing neighborhoods and cooperatively owned apartment buildings in Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland , Pleasant Hill, Grass Valley, Santa Rosa, and Nevada City. We have members living in Swan's Market Cohousing, Triple Point, Temescal Commons, Berkeley Cohousing, Parker Street Coop, Berkeley Town House, Addison Court Coop and established forming groups like East Lake Cohousing (formerly North Oakland Cohousing).

Extra bonus for 2012: The National Cohousing Conference is coming to town in June!

We host EBCOHO events for members, and link you to other events featuring a global network of friends and allies: pioneers in cooperative culture and sustainable communities: urban farmers, affordable housing developers, green builders, and creative visionaries in the movements for more open, user-friendly and collaborative technologies, economies, and governments. There's a global reinvention of communiies going on - both on the ground and online -- and the Bay Area is one of the world's epicenters.

EBCOHO has more events than our MeetUp-based home page can show fully, so please click on our Calendar to see more. Join for free to get involved! There's no charge for basic membership, but supporting members get discounts on some events, including socials, and workshops, cohousing books, and Cohousing Coaching.

Join us for an orientation, for social events, discussion, talks with exciting speakers, and hands-on workshops to learn the tools for developing good group relationships, and the real estate development process.. Find others who share your vision for supportive neighbors. Do it for yourself, for your family, for your parents, do it for the Earth! Make 2012 the year to deepen YOUR community connections.