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: Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Berkeley Cohousing, Sunday morning (Boichik Bagels and an hands-on Global EcoVillage Network card deck experience with Cohousing Coach Betsy Morris included in the last hour). Plus a virtual gathering Sunday morning for the nearly “shovel-ready” community nearby, Berkeley Moshav.
• Fremont: Mission Peak Cohousing will be hosting walks around its site on Sunday afternoon
• Oakland: Virtual tour Saturday afternoon for Phoenix Commons, the area's only Senior Cohousing neighborhood.
• Pleasant Hill: In-person tour and workday, Saturday morning.
• Beyond: Events in West Sacramento, Fair Oaks, and the Sierra foothills, as well as a talk in West Marin next Wednesday, will be listed on the Cohousing California website.
• Everywhere: There’s a virtual national gathering Sunday afternoon wrapping things up. And don't forget the monthly "Cohousing Commons" national virtual gathering on May 10.

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.

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.

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. 

Over the years, EBCOHO has brought together many people with a vision of creating a community of homes.  Pooling funds and/or government loans to build a new housing cooperative like Berkeley Townhouse, or Savo Island Co-op, was possible in the 1960s and 1970s. Buying existing apartment buildings or cottage court like Parker Street Coop or Addison Court Coop or Berkeley Cohousing was possible without public funds in the 1980s and early 1990s.  

At this point, the prices and the speed and the secrecy of real estate sales with unknown buyers using investment fund cash not available to ordinary people, even with households with two incomes, the majority of people, people with moderate or low incomes.  

TOPA, the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act is the best possibility  Berkeley, like the rest of the Bay Area, continues to face a housing crisis, one driven by a hot housing market and record high construction costs, and a thirty year shortfall in new housing built throughout the state.  New market rate housing, even with density bonuses for a few below market rate units, is closely related to displacement of tenants living nearby as the rents on existing housing stock driving up market rates for new apartments and single family homes.

Realtors and rental property investors have come out strong over the past year promoting misinformation and outright lies against a bill that requires tenants be notified of the sale of their home and be allowed a few weeks to organize a collective bid or request a pre-qualified community housing development organization to bid on their behalf.

The owner is not required to accept that bid, but if they receive a bid they like, the tenants have another smaller window of time to make another offer.  OWNERS choose at all times when, to whom and the price. NO ONE IS FORCED TO SELL AT ANY TIME TO ANYONE except at their own choice. There are even exemptions if for some reason they need to sell quickly for medical or family emergencies. A group called BRIDGE Association of Realtors put out anonymous flyers on the steps of Black Churches claiming TOPA was a racist land grab and a return to redlining (segregated neighborhoods).  Why would anyone want to distort TOPA? Because Realtors don’t want properties taken off the market. 

With 75% of the city’s low-income census tracts at risk of or undergoing displacement and a continued loss of thousands of Black households, Berkeley desperately needs anti-displacement strategies that prioritize low income renters and communities of color. One of those strategies is the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA).

TOPA prevents displacement by empowering tenants with choices for their future housing when the owner of a rental property decides to sell (learn how it works here!). In Washington, DC, TOPA has helped preserve over 3500 units of affordable housing since 2002, and those numbers continue to grow. 

Berkeley’s TOPA policy is designed to:

• Prevent displacement of low-income communities of color and marginalized tenants

• Create permanently affordable housing

• Create pathways to ownership for tenants and promote democratic residential management

• Stabilize housing for existing tenants

• Give tenants choice and voice regarding their housing

• Make sure buildings needing costly repairs for safety and accessibility without forcing prices above what tenants can pay 

• Protect rental housing from speculative investment by keeping them in the community

Now is the time for Berkeley to pass a TOPA policy that helps meet Berkeley’s housing crisis and needs. 

We can’t do this without you. Raise your voice for TOPA today!

we’ll include your digital signature in our attendance at a council committee meeting discussing TOPA this Thursday. Not sure yet? Want to help recruit others? Join our Zoom call Wednesday at 5:30 PM.

What would you like to know?