Please join us to get to know our little community, share a potluck lunch and tour the property, and if you have time, stick around to work in the garden.

We every so often have a one bedroom apartment available to rent, ready for new members! Come join us at this real, in-person open house, see our cohousing community and tour the apartments. When we have openings, they usually go to people who have been coming to our gatherings. We like to meet someone at least 3 times before they submit an application.

This is an opportunity to and learn more about this cohousing project, an EBCOHO Supporting Member Group. Please check the group's website for more about the community and the apartment, and more pictures:

http://www.brookdalecommons.org/

The Open House:

Potluck lunch at noon (bring food for yourself if you're not comfortable sharing yet). Bring a mask, but you don't have to wear it when outdoors. Keep in mind that not all of us are vaccinated, so only come if you're comfortable with mixed company. We're fine with you, whatever your vaccine status!

Two apartments will be open for a tour at 1:00 PM. Please stick around in the afternoon to help us work in the garden, and get to know us.

We appreciate EBCOHO RSVP's but drop-ins are welcome too, if you make last-minute plans. If you get a chance, fill out this form on our website : http://www.brookdalecommons.org/finance/ and tell us something about yourself. Call for a private tour if you can't make it on Sunday, or come next month. We almost always host an open house on the 2nd Sunday of each month.

About Our Community:

We are currently a community of five households with the potential to
grow to 9 and to create a common house.

We have thrived in the time of Covid because we could always gather to socialize in our beautiful courtyard. This has been wonderful in this challenging time, keeping us from being isolated, especially those of us who are single and working from home.

Even in this urban space there are lots of places to grow flowers and food. The bees and hummingbirds love our garden, and we're growing tomatoes, figs, cucumbers, squash, string beans and peas.

Welcome to National Cohousing Open House Weekend — in the East Bay, and Beyond!

Lots of area cohousing neighborhoods, established and forming, are doing events, both in person and virtual, this weekend (and in the week around it). You’ll find events in:

• Berkeley: A rare opportunity to visit Berkeley Cohousing, kicking off the weekend Saturday morning (Boichik Bagels and an orientation by Cohousing Coach Betsy Morris included). Sunday afternoon, an open house for qualified applicants at an affordable housing co-op nearby. Plus a virtual gathering Sunday afternoon for the nearly “shovel-ready” community nearby, Berkeley Moshav.
• Emeryville: Doyle Street Cohousing has a home for sale, with an open house Sunday afternoon
• Fremont: Mission Peak Cohousing will be hosting walks around its site on Sunday afternoon
• Oakland: The retrofit-style knock-down-fences-to-neighbors community, Temescal Creek, will be open Saturday afternoon. And then Monday evening there’s a weekend debrief with an EcoVillage focus at PLACE.
• Pleasant Hill: The first in-person tour in years, with an optional workday, Saturday morning.
• Beyond: Open houses in Cotati, West Sacramento, Soquel, Fair Oaks, and the Sierra foothills will be listed on the Cohousing California website.
• Everywhere: There’s a virtual national gathering this Wednesday morning, and several topic-related ones this weekend, with regional focus, affordability innovations, and more. Listings here.

Below you’ll find a listing of key events (including some national virtual ones) of interest, plus a map of the in-person gatherings.

Please click on each individual event to learn more about it and RSVP. Please note the date/time — these are communities of private homes (or a future community site), and they aren’t equipped for you to drop in unannounced.

PS Special thanks to Cohousing Enthusiasts group organizers Molly and Amy who did the hard work of compiling lists, arranging schedules, and nudging communities, while I’ve been out of town. They’ll be adding a follow-up later in the month. — Raines.

Don't let the rain get you down. Come on in to a Cohousing Common House in Berkeley and enjoy a bagel brunch Sunday (9/18) with Cynthia Tina, Director of Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), the international support group for all kinds of community.

We welcome you to Phoenix Commons

our San Francisco Bay Area 55+ cohousing community.

Our community lives in a modern, environmentally friendly building located in the vibrant Jingletown neighborhood of Oakland, CA and is situated along the beautiful Oakland Estuary.

We often have homes for sale, some with sunset views over the San Francisco Bay.

Please watch this video of our living spaces (embedded below) and feel free to also visit our Website or Facebook page for more information.

If you’d like to drop by for our Zoom Open House on Saturday, please RSVP on this page or via the East Bay Cohousing MeetUp group.

We look forward to seeing you!   

Free, discount and subsided training on effective Aging in Community

An East Bay Cohousing service in development

Made possible by a grant from People's Life Fund
And your member contributions

In our work helping people find and create community, we often discover that the people who most could benefit from senior cohousing can't afford the initial workshop series that we offer to get it started. We want to increase the number of communities, not by going for the traditional "easy" market-rate homebuyers, but instead fostering diversity by getting groups going and linking them to established area programs that can make housing and community more affordable.

So we plan on taking our proven "Aging in Community" curriculum, adapted from the Danish national "successful aging" curriculum, and offer classes at no cost and by donation for groups identified through area senior centers and the group that we helped incubate, the People of Color Sustainable Housing Network (POCSHN), or with scholarships for seats at our general workshops (whichever approach turns out to be more more effective and inclusive, under POCSHN's guidance). We know that we don't have all the answers, and we aren't the world's experts at what works well for different people, so we'll be looking for ways to support what's underway from groups working in these areas, like the Northern California Land Trust (NCLT) Co-ownership Initiative.

The traditional course format is a 10-week workshop, but we have learned from trying out other styles, and based on recommendations from POCSHN and prospective attendees we plan to offer a version of the course that best meets their needs for time and location, and which includes paid POC guest presenters and activities that help make it clear some of the paths and resources and attitudes that have led to meaningful change and opening up new options.

This effort will be led by EBCOHO co-organizer and Cohousing Coach Raines Cohen (left), a Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) and Certified Sage-ing Leader (CSL). He trained with Chuck Durrett in the initial classes based on the Senior Cohousing handbook (upper right), and wrote about Senior Cohousing and related movements in the book Audacious Aging (below right). He serves on the board of Sage-ing International.

We are pleased to announce that People's Life Fund has selected this project as one of its 2021 grantees. This is the second time that EBCOHO has received a PLF grant; the first, several years ago, helped us create the Squirrel Fund, funding some of our initial legal work, partnerships, and outreach for a new way of helping keep fixed-income seniors living in community as costs rise, and to keep their homes affordable after their deaths.

Why this matters now: We have been offered the opportunity to bring a community to a site that could have people in a new neighborhood near BART with new, designed-for-accessibility homes priced less than a third of what even old homes that need work cost in Berkeley. We want to make sure that people who don't already own homes here (or historically were excluded from homeownership or priced out of it) have a better shot at it, and also to be ready to help people who have the least make the most of the opportunities for "build in place" community that Berkeley's new proposed legalizing of 4-plexes will create.

Might this be relevant for you? Make sure to tell us about your interests.

Funded in part by War Taxes Redirected by the People’s Life Fund.

Here’s what’s happening in the world of cohousing around Oakland, California.

Please pay close attention to whether listed events are virtual or in-person, and if the latter, what precautions to observe; in many cases, advance RSVPs are required to attend.

For years, EBCOHO members have asked us how they can buy property and create affordable cohousing and cooperative communities here in Berkeley and Oakland.

Well, the time has come --- both cities are considering a new Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) which will make that more possible than any time in the last 25 years!   TOPA means tenants will get notice from landlords before their building goes on the market, and can band together to make an offer, or designate a community partner to negotiate on their behalf -- and then be eligible for public funds.