It takes a village not only to raise a child, but to build a real community feel – especially here in rural Alaska.
And Diane Sly thinks that sense of village can be established with a cohousing community in Haines. The local resident will hold a meeting at the Haines Borough Public Library on Sunday, Nov. 20, to discuss the idea of creating a cohousing effort here.
Cohousing is a form of community with private homes clustered around a shared space, according to the Cohousing Association of the United States. It was an idea imported from Denmark that began in the 1970s, Sly said.
Each family has a private residence with many traditional amenities, but residents also share a common area that often features a large kitchen and dining area, laundry, recreational spaces and guest rooms.
The idea, Sly says, helps bring people together, even in the darkest, coldest Alaska winters.
“It’s not communism. It’s not socialism. It’s like having your own Chilkat Center in your own community,” said Haines resident Cindy Buxton, who lived in a cohousing community for five years in Port Townsend, Wash.
Residents plan and manage community activities and meetings as a group. Families often share meals with one another. They gather for games, movies and other events.
The private houses generally face inward on the shared space with parking spaces on the backside of the buildings. This promotes walking within the community, Sly said.
Sly said cohousing fosters an intergenerational community, where children and seniors are looked after by the entire group.
“It’s for people that recognize we live as a family. This is a way to act like a family,” Sly said.
She described the concept as an openhearted way of living, where people can share skills and tools and work as a group for common goals.
Still, cohousing isn’t for everyone. If you think good fences make for good neighbors, maybe the idea isn’t for you.
“It takes the kind of person who can handle being in a group,” Sly said. All decisions are consensus decisions. Sly said the most challenging process is maintaining group focus for the two years or more it may take to design cohousing plans.
Buxton said she loved her experience living in cohousing and still keeps in touch with many of the families she met.
Twenty-four families owned their own homes in the community, but co-owned the meadow in between them, Buxton said. “It was a very supportive community,” Buxton said. “It was especially wonderful if you had small children.”
She said she could easily call a neighbor to watch her children or let her kids safely visit the other houses across the meadow without crossing a street.
Because all decisions were made by consensus, even “choosing a paint color,” the adults learned conflict resolution techniques and how to be better listeners, Buxton said.
Buxton said the families shared one lawnmower, one barbeque and other similar tools because every family didn’t have a need to own those things individually.
Although Buxton doesn’t think cohousing is as necessary in a small town like Haines as it may be in a larger city like Port Townsend, she would “absolutely” consider living in cohousing again.
Sly became interested in cohousing when she stayed with her sister for several months in a cohousing community in Michigan.
Sly said she thinks cohousing in Haines would help families with young kids, single people and seniors work together and benefit from one another. It’s a solution to the problem many communities have with feeling disconnected from each other, Sly said.
According to the cohousing association, there are two cohousing communities in Alaska: one in Anchorage and another in Fairbanks.
If Sly generates interest from at least four or five families, Haines could be the next.
She said she would like a cohousing community in Haines to be Care-A-Van friendly, possibly with covered walkways near the center of town.
Sly said: “I think this is the way of the future. I really do.”