Desert Dancer started a thread BS: effective arguments that reminded me I was planning to ask the collective Mudcatter experience about living in cooperatives/communities/cohousing. It's a relatively new style of living in Australia Google oz search on housing cooperatives & I know it's well established in the US & Europe.

I've joined a very new cooperative (we're still working on a name & constitution) and would love to hear Mudcatter experiences.

Our community will be in inner Sydney - we have support from a local council & a charitable organisation that helps set up cooperatives - and will be adapted from exiting buildings. We have been fantasising about an empty school complex with a Heritage listing!!

We are singles, families & retired members, aged 2 to 50's, and will have a mixture of rental, rent-to-buy & outright purchase. We will have personal & community gardens, community space, artist space ...

Some of the members have lived in communities, others have worked in & studied the field, & we also have help from existing communities.

I'm looking forward to a bit more room, on the ground floor (no more stairs for me poor old bones!) a clothes line!!!, a place to sit outdoors surrounded by plants (not that I will give up my indoor plants) and really knowing my neighbours.

sandra