Join a Co-Housing Community

Joining a co-housing commnity that already exists, means you do not have to start from scratch. In fact there are many schemes operating in the UK, although not as many as in Scandinavia or the United States due to land prices.

You can join a co-housing scheme or community – in your part of the world you might be lucky enough to have one or more existing co-housing schemes. These could be in the form of an Almshouse run by the local council, or a privately established development like the owch.org development in Barnet.

More recently we have seen the rise of Community Land Trusts, that are created at a local level and looked on favourably by local government when applying for planning. A recent project run by Architects Archio, details what is involved in this sort of local housing community.

Photo: Archio Lewsiham Community Land Trust project

Co-housing communities are very often multi-generational, but there are ones for older residents only. Often these are well-known locally but hard to get into unless you have lived in the area for a while. Private co-housing schemes typically have waiting lists and normally applicants would already be quite well known to some of the existing residents before being invited to join.

Offering individual living units, co-housing communities feature communal living areas, laundry, and gardens, plus of course, like-minded cohabitors. See below for co-housing links:

UK Co-housing – includes a directory of estabished, developing and forming co-housing groups. Although not as developed as in other countries, there is a growing interest in larger intentional communities run by their owners. However these can take a long time to set-up for various financial and planning reasons. https://cohousing.org.uk/

Community owned housing – as a way to try and keep property prices more in line with local wages, Community Land Trusts have ben set-up in a number of urban centres in the UK. Run by ordinary people to develop and manage homes, as well as other assets, these bring financial savings but also a sense of community. http://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/

US Co-housing – Creating community, one neighbourhood at a time is their slogan and it is worth looking at also. As co-housing is much more established in the US, mainly becasue land and construction is more affordable relative to incomes, many of the best schemes around the world are located there. https://cohousing.org.uk/

If you would like to add a listing please contact us.

Back to house share advice >>>