Cohousing Tour, Part Two: Daybreak Cohousing.

At Daybreak Cohousing, the first thing you inevitably notice is the brand-shiny-new, ultra-conscientiously designed architecture: warm bright colors, ample windows, spaces laid out to facilitate eddies and clusters of residents.  A gorgeous old maple towers over a tidy community garden and a circular play area, a perfect peninsula of fresh wood chips on a lake of green lawn.  There's a spacious rooftop deck with a hot tub and a fine view of the humped green spine of Forest Park.  Electronic fobs allow access to elevators and common areas.  The place strikes me as a tad on the posh side, an impression reinforced by the price sheet I pick up off a table in the Common Room: the cheapest unit available, at 665 square feet, is $225,000 (not counting utilities and HOA dues).  To me, that seems like a lot of money for such a little space.

Our tour group is broken up into bunches of five or six in order to be more easily guided around the complex by residents.  Laura, our guide, takes us to see her home.  It's a tiny space, probably another 665-square-footer: just a living area separated from the kitchen by a low bar, with a smallish bedroom and bath.  She decorated it sparingly and painted it a vibrant sea-green, a color she says helps get her through the gray seasons.  Laura chose the unit because it had its own private garden area out back, instead of a deck.  She points out the concrete floors, through which heat is piped, and the high windows that encourage crossdrafts to take the edge off the hottest days.  Insulation is excellent, she adds.  With all this sustainability-consciousness, I'm a little surprised to see that the unit has a full-sized, traditional hot water tank, rather than a solar or tankless water heater.

After Laura's place, we see a much larger unit belonging to a different resident, as well as a smaller, empty unit which has been furnished "for show."  Daybreak was completed in 2009, but only half of the units have been purchased.  More recently, the residents have decided to open them up to a lease-to-own model, and it's clear that our tour today is intended not only to inform, but to market.  I try to imagine, if money were no object, if I would want to live here.  I'm uncertain; the facilities are certainly very nice, but what about community life?

Of the 19 residents of Daybreak Cohousing, 17 are adults ranging up to 70-something; one is 16 years old, and one is 18 months.  One resident gets around by wheelchair (all units are ADA-accessible).  Adult residents are expected to participate in two monthly community meetings, to show up for work parties, and to join at least one "team".  There's a finance team, a facilities team, a food team, a garden team (Laura's on the garden team)... actually, there's a pretty long list of teams.  "You go to a lot of meetings," Laura admits.  There's no minimum work requirement, but it seems like all the residents are very motivated to invest in the community.  Earlier, co-founder Kristin told us that everyone here pulls their own weight, and takes turns bearing the heavy responsibilities.

All decisions are made by consensus, which means you can't just take a vote and let the majority rule; everyone has to be on board.  That translates into an awful lot of group discussion, and an awful lot of time put into each decision.  This method of decision-making is typical of cohousing communities.  Laura says the policies that took the longest to work out concerned smoking and pets.  People who don't fit in with the group's way of thinking, she says, "vote with their feet."

Someone asks what the membership process is like: how does one become a resident of Daybreak?  "Well, we like to get to know people," says Laura.  Prospective members get acquainted by attending group meals (held 3-4 times a week, optional for residents) and work parties; if it "feels like a fit," they can apply to move in.  Though the community needs more residents, Laura expressed some uneasiness about growth, which I could relate to.  Once you've got your community (boat, cabin, etc.) to where it's comfortable, the prospect of  adding more people in can be scary.  The number of ways things can go wrong multiplies exponentially with each personality you throw into to the mix.

So how does the community handle interpersonal conflicts when they come up?  Community policy, says Laura, states that the offended party first addresses the person causing the offense directly, and if they can't come to an agreement, the two of them will meet with a committee.  If the committee can't resolve the conflict, the issue is brought before the entire community.  To me this sounds not only reasonable, but familiar.

Laura takes us back to the wide Common Room, big enough to hold the entire community for a meal or dance, to give us a tour of the building it's in.  The Common Room is adjacent to a large and very professional-looking kitchen, as well as several smaller sitting rooms for quiet coversation.  Downstairs, there's a whole subterranean level of wonders.  There's a room for yoga and meditation.  There are guest apartments, for visitors of residents who don't have space to put them up.  There's a shared laundry room with clotheslines (most residents have not chosen to acquire their own washer and dryer, though the units have hookups for them).  There's a community storage room, mostly empty, with stacks of holiday decor and a sprawling "Goodwill pile," as well as a room with areas marked out in paint for individual storage.  There is a vast bike garage, containing a startling number of bikes (and a canoe), and an impressively well-supplied communal tool shop.  As residents downsized from single-family dwellings to move into cohousing, they donated more than enough to furnish the shop, as well as the guest apartments and common sitting areas (one of which has a flat-screen TV and an old piano).

Daybreak residents pool a lot of resources, and they don't hesitate to offer assistance to one another.  Many participate in informal car-sharing, and the 18-month-old resident has a whole bunch of aunties and uncles on-site who are willing to provide care on short notice.  Needs and offers are communicated informally via e-mail or face-to-face, and so are impromptu party invitations.  Though I still have trouble picturing myself living here, there's a lot about it that appeals to me, and these aspects are probably the most appealing.

I've absorbed so much here at Daybreak that I almost wish the trip were broken up into four separate outings on four different days, to give me time to process everything I've seen.  But Laura's description of the Garden Team is interrupted by a helpful resident who wants us to know the charter bus is boarding for our next destination: Peninsula Park Commons.