John de Graaf with Charles Durrett
Wolf Creek Lodge senior cohousing: Charles Durrett
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS:
THE PROMISE OF
COHOUSING
By John de Graaf
Charles Durrett may be the best kind of entrepreneur, offering a product designed to address some of the biggest problems we face in America. With the tireless zeal of a much-younger man, the 63-year old Nevada City, California architect is always on the move, selling a concept called “cohousing” to audiences across the United States. Tall and lanky, but slightly stooped by a back problem he has had since childhood, Durrett describes his product as “the best of both worlds.” “With cohousing,” he says, “you can have as much privacy as you want and as much community as you want, and it has a lot of other advantages as well.”
There are now more than 150 cohousing communities scattered across the American landscape, primarily in the western states. Durrett has been a designer of 50 of them. When he started promoting the idea, there were none. He and his former wife, Katie McCamant, met in the early 1980s at the University of Copenhagen, where they were both architectural students. They returned to the United States determined to help spread the cohousing concept (they coined the term), which the Danes had developed in 1972.
The concept is simple: groups of people come together to design their own community, which includes private dwellings (single homes, apartment complexes and townhouses), each self-sufficient if small, with their own kitchens. But a large “common house” serves the entire community. Meals are offered there to everyone several nights a week. The common house has its own kitchen, and often, various meeting rooms, recreation or exercise rooms, children’s playrooms and other amenities including games and books, and a couple of guest rooms for visitors.
Members of the community are expected to cook at least once a month and share other everyday maintenance chores. Cars are kept outside the main living area, allowing for safe open space for children. Decisions are made wherever possible by consensus. Residents can spend as much time with others in the common spaces as they choose, always with the nearby option of privacy in their own homes.
Durrett and McCamant were impressed by the joy and sense of social connection they witnessed in Danish co-housing communities. The idea was slow to catch on there initially, but after a Danish TV documentary explored the subject, the number of cohousing communities mushroomed. Now the country of five million people boasts 700 such communities.