Four years ago this fall, Jewel Snow picked up a flier at the Unitarian Church. That's how she found out about a local fellow named Scott Cowley who had an idea for something called Wasatch Commons Cohousing. Snow had never before heard the word "cohousing." All she knew was she wanted a community.
She wanted to live in a place where people get together for dinner a couple of times a week. Where they share tools and take turns shoveling everybody's sidewalks. Where they maybe even share a garden. She wanted to live with neighbors as if they were extended family, Snow says. "I just didn't know there was a formal way to do it."Recently, Snow moved in.
Wasatch Commons, located in Glendale, is the first cohousing complex in the valley. The project is about half done. Snow's 1,120-square-foot, two-bedroom condo was one of the first homes finished.
"It's a lovely space to be in," she says of her home, with its radiant-heat floors and its butter-yellow walls.
Cohousing started in Europe in the 1950s. It came to the United States in the 1970s and there are now more than 100 cohousing communities in this country. The Cohousing Network www.cohousing.org/ defines cohousing as a place designed and managed by the residents. A place where people are "committed to intentional community." (Translation: many meetings, everyone has a say). Where the architecture encourages neighborliness and saves energy.
That's the concept. In practice, Wasatch Commons looks a lot like any other condo development. Two-story townhouses, painted in pale colors, are clustered along wide walkways.
The most unusual feature is that there are only 26 homes on the 4.5-acre plot. Parking is on the perimeter. Old trees have been preserved among the townhouses. The site has room to spare for vegetables and vegetation.
The walkways lead to a big building called the common house. It features a large kitchen, dining room, laundry room, library, exercise room, TV room, and shop, as well as extra bedrooms and bathrooms for guests.
Matthew McQuarrie, of the architecture firm MJSA, designed Wasatch Commons. This was his first time working with a cohousing group. He says it wasn't much different than working with a business. The Wasatch group has a building committee. Several members of that committee, including an architect and a lawyer, act as the liaison with McQuarrie.
Over the past few years, McQuarrie has met the entire community. He says Wasatch Commons has lots of academic-types, more than most Salt Lake neighborhoods. Also more ethnic diversity.
Diversity is one of the goals of cohousing -- to include neighbors of different cultures and income. But architects and energy efficiency don't come cheap. So most cohousing complexes end up being middle-income enclaves.
Wasatch Commons is different. The Salt Lake group got help from the state Housing Authority, which bought several units to sell to low-income families under the rent-to-own Crown program.
McQuarrie's task was to design a place where people of different interests and ages can find privacy and also come together. Stone says he succeeded beautifully. Her front door is close to the sidewalk; her back window looks into a forest.
The homes ended up costing $90,000 to $175,000 -- which was more than planned. Those costs include the $250,000 common houses as well as the costs to pave and install sewer lines. But the homes are built with high-quality materials, McQuarrie points out. The owners will save on heating.
The complex has one- and two-bedroom homes as small as 800 square feet. The largest home is a four-bedroom at 1,600 square feet. Residents say you can pack a lot of living space into a home when you don't need a big kitchen, a laundry, a garage or a workroom.
It's a novel concept: simple homes and lots of sharing. In the four years since he started trying to drum up interest, Scott Cowley has explained cohousing to hundreds of Utahns. In addition to the 24 households now moving in, another 10 families seriously considered cohousing, then decided against it. Several of those were low-income families or single people who ended up not being able to qualify for the Crown grant. There was also one major conflict, Cowley says, after which one of the most committed families quit.
In fact, only four members of the final group have been there from the first: Snow, Cowley and Lynne Dickey and her husband, Mike Polacek.
Polacek was born in Czechoslovakia, came to the United States as a boy, but later went back to Europe to study and work. He's seen how cohousing evolves. In Europe, he says, the new generation of cohousing homes are getting smaller, while the common houses get larger and more elaborate.
So cohousing may have caught on. The idea of community may be trendy. Still, the Wasatch members know plenty of people think it is weird. Snow figures a lot of folks don't want to know their neighbors.
Polacek says his parents remind him that these experiments have been tried in Russia with bad results. He says,"They think it's communism."
And then there is Kris Arnold who would have never considered such a scheme except for the fact that she fell in love with Cowley, who was already "committed to intentional community," as they say. Cowley and Arnold married last summer.
Arnold went to her first Wasatch meetings determined to stick up for herself. She would not be railroaded into a home she didn't like or pushed around by a bunch of strangers.
"I was so anxious," she says. "Gradually, over a period of time, I learned to trust the process. I now believe in group wisdom. We don't make stupid decisions."
She learned the people in cohousing want balance. They care about their own comforts, but they care about the group, too. Finally, she stopped worrying.
Arnold doesn't know exactly how cohousing will work. Everyone will give about two hours a week to the common areas -- but who will mop and who will dust and who will till the garden, she doesn't know. She isn't worried.
Arnold believes Wasatch Commons will succeed, though she doesn't necessarily think it will be easy. "I've been given an opportunity" is how she sees it. She sees Wasatch Commons as a chance to grow -- a chance many people never get, living alone, like they do, in their big houses with their high fences.