Homewood Cohousing Vision Statement - Aug 1996 Building the Urban Village - 1996 article for community paper. Newspaper Article about Homewood Neighborhood - Pillars Project Homewood Cohousing description at Fellowship of Intentional Communities 2005 Old Updates for Homewood Cohousing --- Blog --- March 1, 2007 The house at 1215 Russell Av N which has been vacant for about 2 years is being repaired by the son-in-law of one neighbor. The house is adjacent to Fred and Becca so there would be an opportunity for shared yards. We would very much like to have community oriented folks living in this house. The house will be available when it is completed in a few months. The house has 3+ bedrooms, large dining room and living room with fireplace. The kitchen and bathroom will be completely new down to the studs. The house has a stone exterior, and will have a new roof and an attached double garage. The expected price is about $200K. More updates on this see Homewood house Feb 21, 2007 While "Homewood Cohousing" continues to be stalled and we basically do not use that name, there have been some encouraging events on the block. We have some new neighbors on the two blocks that make up our "block club". We had a block club meeting recently and decided to meet about quarterly. In preparation we updated our block club "map" - list of households in geographic order. We also gathered email addresses which we had not done systematically before. We have addresses for about 25 of 35 occupied houses - there are still 3 vacant houses. On the way home from the block club meeting some of us decided to start a informal block club video nights. Our house has been doing this for some time with one one other neighbor and now with email it is easy to invite others. We've watched Brokeback Mountain and are planning to watch, Blue Vinyl, Dream Girls, Tuesdays with Morrie and maybe Oliver's Travels. It's not a block club event but several nearby neighbors are cooperating to assist a neighbor who has Parkinson's Disease. Basically we are organizing extensive "visits" during which we can be helpful. I see it as sort of like Tuesday's with Morrie and feel I am gaining as much as I am giving. The house next door (1215 Russell Av N ) is still vacant but it is being repair and will be available when it is ready. I don't currently have an estimate of when that will be but it will be a while. It is being repaired by a friend who is the son-in-law of our good neighbors the Peterson's whose name is Mike Totall. He is basically doing the job by himself but I may lend a hand from time to time - some jobs go much better with two people. Today we rigged up a way to communicate from house to house suing an extension of my door bell and FRS radios. Feb 28, 2005 "Homewood Cohousing" has largely stalled tho I hesitate to say it is dead. Because of the "retrofit" nature of the effort, it was always assumed to be a long term effort of recruiting interested people to move into houses that become available. We have missed several such opportunities - been unable to recruit people when 3 different houses have become available. And one member has moved away. On the other hand we continue to have a friendly, cooperative block. Tho we have seldom had potluck suppers lately, we did have one about 10 days ago. We used to have these about monthly several years ago but only when I organized them. I never managed to get the group to take responsibility for making them happen. We are so small - now 2 "member" households and 3-6 associated households (very loosely defined) that it takes a fair amount of calling to even pick a date for a potluck that will have reasonable attendance. The recent potluck had 6 households participating. We do have other informal contact, typically one-on-one contacts with neighbors. We do a lot with neighbors. We've exchanged house keys with one neighbor. I do minor house repairs and favors for neighbors, occasionally borrow a neighbor's car; we get prepared food, often leftovers from one neighbor. I helped one neighbor with computer tasks to write a self published book and I sometimes use their printer and photocopy equipment. I'm meeting another neighbor this afternoon to work on a computer programming task for the organization Missing Children Minnesota (my wife, is on the MCM board and recruited me). Several neighbors are coming and some are helping put on a big party to celebrate my wife's years of family doctoring. (Not held on the block) So, do we exist. I've arbitrarily said we do for a recent directory update of Homewood Cohousing description at Fellowship of Intentional Communities But barely. Certainly we are quite different than most cohousing groups. Actually, the term "Homewood Cohousing" has seldom been used here on the block. I think it would be more accurate to say we have done some organizing on the block with cohousing-like goals. There is currently one house unoccupied. (It was purchased by a friend of the former 30 some year resident as an investment. It's unclear what his plans are for it.) There are other houses for sale in the neighborhood within a few blocks, further than we've generally conceived of community members but maybe we need to modify our vision. This page is maintained by Fred H. Olson fholson at cohousing.org Retrofit Cohousing The Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US) Cohousing Minnesota