Tell me more about cohousing

Send us a message! In Episode 6  Shelly Parks returns for a 3rd visit on the podcast to talk about life post moving into her new community at Skagit Commons in Anacortes, WA. Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview Shelly about the journey from Dreaming ( Season 1 Episode 7: What made Shelly Parks "jump" into cohousing ) to Taking Action a few weeks after they had moved in ( Season 2 E...

Send us a message! In Episode 5  Lynn Morstead shares her experience with the cohousing conference and Trish Becker, outlines all the ways The Cohousing Association of the US (CohoUS, for short) supports the growing cohousing environment. This is an important conversation for forming groups and anybody who wants to move from dreams to action.  Visit Cohousing.org . For more information about cohou...

Send us a message! In Episode 4  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika visit with Trish Becker, Executive Director of  the Cohousing Association of the US. They ask her about the larger trends bringing people to cohousing and what people face when they decide they want a stronger sense of community.  In addition to being a founding member of Aria Cohousing in Denver, CO, Trish has a background in social w...

Send us a message! In Episode 3  Kelli Soika visits with Rebecca Selove, a founding member of a forming cohousing community near Nashville, TN. Burns Village & Farm will sit on approximately 15 acres carved out of a large farm west of Nashville. The community will include a sustainable farm area managed by experienced professionals where community members can volunteer, learn, and obtain fresh...

Send us a message! In Season Three  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika will be focusing on the next phase of their cohousing development. The homes are being framed up (or 'Up in the Air" as the developers call it) and the community is getting busier in preparation for a 2024 move in.  Tune into this next season to get updates on how it's going and what they are learning from others in t...

Send us a message! In Episode 2  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika explore all the ways in which cohousing has turned them away from the current narratives around our future. Six years ago when this project was germinating some of these were faint noise on the far horizon. As time as moved on the drum beat has become louder and seemingly inevitable.  Cohousing gives a new way of experiencing these in...

Send us a message! In Episode 40  Kelli Soika interviews Kate Hand, member of the forming (and building!)  community, Adams Creek Cohousing.  They discuss the how the Hood River, OR community came together and what they're working on now as they near move-in. Learn: what made Kate and her husband decide to join the community; the decision-making model sociocracy and the value it brings to Ada...

Send us a message! In Episode 39   Lynn Morstead interviews Thomas Morstead about his experience playing in the NFL for 14 years. They explore aspects of working in a unique community of a professional sports team that might be interesting to a cohousing community.  They talk about numerous factors, including: Building relationships Leadership  Conflict  Cooperation For more information about our...

Send us a message! In Episode 38  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika interview Danny Milman , Development Manager at Urban Development Partners . Danny has a long history with cohousing starting with her masters thesis, a design and planning case study for a cohousing community in Austin TX. Today she is partnering with cohousing development projects, in her role at UD+P, to help them build new communi...

Send us a message! In Episode 37  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika talk about what happens between the start and end of a forming cohousing group. Most cohousing starts and ends -essentially- as a social club. You meet for meals, go do fun things together, get to know each other: at first somewhere around town and at the end, in your Common House. In between, you have a significant project.  Lynn and...

Send us a message! In Episode 36   Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika interview Liz Parker about her take-aways from a recent Conflict Resolution training with Laird Schaub .  Liz has 33 years of experience dealing with conflict in communities that include training, policy development and facilitating conflict situations. She found new, dynamic ideas in Laird's training that she shares with us in...

Send us a message! In Episode 35  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika talk about how the 3 phases of development parallel 3 phases of building a community. Listen in to hear more. For more information about our project, please check out our website at www.cohousinghouston.com . Let us know if you have any comments or ideas by emailing us at info@cohousinghouston.com . 

Send us a message! In Episode 34  Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika give an update of what's happening with the project, from construction to member turnover to social connections and reflections on how a destination wedding gave a glimpse into community life. Listen in to hear more. For more information about our project, please check out our website at www.cohousinghouston.com . Let us know if...

Send us a message! In Episode 33 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika are developing their "hang out" muscles at Moon Tower in the East End of Houston on a Friday evening. They return to the topic of "hanging out" from a recent  Ezra Klein Show episode - they discussed "The Hang Out Factor" on April 20th. The topic keeps coming up again for them, so they are coming back for...

Send us a message! In Episode 32 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika interview their developer, David Kelley. They wanted to get an update from David since the last interview during the pandemic in August 2021 - Episode 24: Development during the pandemic explained .  They talk about: How’s it going? What are the differences in being a developer in cohousing versus one building in a regular market scena...

Send us a message! In Episode 31 Lynn Morstead interviews a long-standing member, Sandra Tirey , about her journey to cohousing. She talks about how she thought she had a unique idea for a better way of planning for the next phase of life until she learned this had already been done many times and was called cohousing -- and furthermore, there was already a group in Houston trying to do this. Hear...

Send us a message! In Episode 30 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika debrief their reactions to the April 18th Ezra Klein Show podcast: The ‘Quiet Catastrophe’ Brewing in Our Social Lives The Ezra Klein Show He interviews Sheila Liming, an associate professor of communications and creative media at Champlain College about her new book “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time.”  It really resonate...

Send us a message! In Episode 29 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika take a walk through their new neighborhood and discover wonderful destinations all within 15 minutes of home! The 15- minute neighborhood concept has caught our eye recently. We wondered what would be accessible on foot from our cohousing community, so we made a date and set out on foot one morning to see what we could learn. If you wa...

Send us a message! In Episode 28 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika take a look at cohousing through two different lenses. Lynn reflects on the many ways in which our lives have been made easier by devices like auto correct, eBikes, cars that parallel park, etc. and how cohousing is yet another way of making our run more smoothly in our modern world.   Kelli talks about how the rough edges of modern li...

Send us a message! In Episode 27 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika explore what it takes to learn how to adopt new ways of participating in community that are different from what most of us have learned up to this point. They look at this learning curve through the lens of  " The Four Stages of Competence ". They rename the stages: Unconscious incompetence  to "dolt" Conscious inco...

Send us a message! In Episode 26 Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview Bob Francis about his family's move into Haystack Heights , in Spokane, Washington.  His family was part of the first wave to move into their community after several years of planning. He shares some of the mechanics of the move-in process, personal experiences with the start-up and what they are focusing on today, 18...

Send us a message! In Episode 25 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika interview a member, Valentina Hoyos , about her journey to cohousing, how this concept was something they had been talking about before they found out that it was being built in Houston. It feels very familiar to the environment she grew up in, in her home country of Colombia. She shares her experience of how our  forming cohousing com...

Send us a message! In Episode 24 Kelli Soika interviews Shelley Parks about her long-planned, eagerly-awaited, and recently-completed (!) move into Skagit Commons, a new cohousing community in Anacortes, Washington.  Shelly shares how she and her husband came to the decision to move into a smaller home and what it has been like to move in with neighbors in cohousing. Listen in to learn more. Shell...

Send us a message! In Episode 23 Lynn Morstead interviews a more recent member, Phil Berrie , about his journey to cohousing. He talks about his background, how he learned about cohousing, what has prepared him for consensus decisions making and how the Explorer experience was key to helping him make the decision to join. He's one of our members that was an Explorer on two separate occasions...

Send us a message! In Episode 22 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika talk about making new friends in adulthood. Inspired by Marisa Fanco's TED Talk about her book, Platonic, here are some of the key take-aways from her talk that they dig into deeper: "Collective connections are needed to make you feel whole" “For friendships to happen organically you need to have repeated unplanned inter...