Tell me more about cohousing

Send us a message! In Episode 21 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika kick the tires on the new Open AI large language model, ChatGPT , by asking it some questions about living in community and then critiquing the answers. The questions they ask are: How do you screen people for an intentional community?  What should you do if someone joins your intentional community, and you don’t get along with them?  ...

Send us a message! In Episode 20 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika interview Bryn Kanar from Sata Cruz, California, who has embarked on a search for a cohousing community to move to when he retires. Bryn attended one of Houston's recent information sessions on his journey through the various communities that meet his family's initial criteria. They discussed: If you’ve visited with one group...

Send us a message! In Episode 19 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika talk about the challenge of explaining what cohousing feels like. Lynn relates this to the scene in " Vengeance ", a 2022 comedy mystery movie where BJ Novak, a hip podcaster from NYC is interviewing a family in small-town West Texas trying to get them to explain what's so special about Whataburger. It isn't until B...

Send us a message! In Episode 18 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika talk about how cohousing and living in a closer community might serve to downshift the pace of life for those in the community. They refer to recent books related to the topic of how we perceive time: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week by Eviatar Zerubavel  Listen in to lear...

Send us a message! In Episode 17  Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika reflect on their take-aways related to cohousing from the two recent interviews on downsizing and decluttering with Michelle Passoff , author of LIGHTEN UP! Free Yourself From Clutter , and Sharon Staley, FASID, RID of Sharon Staley Interiors . It wasn't the practical tips and tricks that they are still turning over in their mi...

Send us a message! In Episode 16 Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview Sharon Staley, FASID, RID of Sharon Staley Interiors in Houston, Texas . They talk about the emotional journey of moving into smaller spaces and what it feels like when you arrive at that new place. Sharon also shares many design insights about smaller spaces that surprised us!   Listen in to learn more. For more informatio...

Send us a message! In Episode 15 Lynn Morstead and Kelli Soika look back at how much has been accomplished since this time last year and then take a brave and speculative look into the future that will be the year 2023. They each bring their take on CoHousing Houston predictions for 2023. They look at these from varying degrees of confidence, starting with High confidence, then Medium and finally...

Send us a message! In Episode 14 Lynn Morstead interviews two of the teens in our cohousing community, Elise and Gabriel. They approached me about coming on the podcast to talk about cohousing from their corner of the world. They talk about how their family came to cohousing, the things that they are looking forward to when they move in, what they've experienced in our community thus far, as...

Send us a message! In Episode 13 Kelli Soika interviews Michelle Passoff , the author of LIGHTEN UP! Free Yourself From Clutter . She has travelled throughout the United States, the UK, and Australia leading seminars and doing private consultations on letting go of too many papers, clothes and other stuff as a life management tool — opening path to clarify one’s goals in life and opening the space...

Send us a message! In Episode 12   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika talk about their reactions to " Choosing Civility: 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct ", written by P.M.Forni. The conversation originally started via texting over Thanksgiving after Kelli shared a blog post on the topic with Lynn from the Seattle Times: Want to be a better person? Here are 25 rules of civility . Looking thr...

Send us a message! In Episode 11   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika talk about what they've learned about facilitating conflict in cohousing over the past few years in their forming community. They have grouped the conflict types into 4 categories. For each one they describe what they've experienced and how they have tried to help facilitate this. Chaos conflict Anxiety conflict Triggered...

Send us a message! In Episode 10   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika are back again with another quiz. This time they walk through a quiz on "How do I know cohousing is right for me". There are many on the internet, they just picked one at random to go through.   How would you answer these questions? Listen in to find out what they are. For more information about our project, please check...

Send us a message! In Episode 9 Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview community members Beni & Paresh about their recent several month adventure across the country in their experiment with a home on wheels.  They worked and played and visited old friends on their quest to check off all the National Parks. In the process they learned a lot about what they really needed to be happy and the b...

Send us a message! In Episode 8   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika talk about how their Houston community measures up against an assessment questionnaire that helps you determine if you are an Ecovillage.   We’ve been working through our values and one of our values is sustainability. That brought up the question as to whether we are an eco village, so Kelli went searching for a definition and foun...

Send us a message! In Episode 7   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview Karin Hoskin from Wild Sage Cohousing community in Boulder, Colorado.  Lynn met Karin when she attended her talk on "Community Living at its Best" at the Madison National Cohousing Conference in August, 2022. She was so fired up about all the community and relationship building activities they plan at Wild Sage t...

Send us a message! In Episode 6   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview members June and Bob Woest about a recent downsizing exercise they did with their adult children. It's a very touching and informative conversation that offers some new ideas on how to get started, and what it's going to be like to go through this process. Listen in to learn more. For more information about our p...

Send us a message! In Episode 5   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview Cynthia Tina , founder of " Community Matchmaking " and former trustee and Co-Director of the Foundation for Intentional Community . She has visited over 200 communities across the world.    They explore the different models of intentional communities in the US, from ecovillages, to co-living, cohousing and more....

Send us a message! In Episode 4   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika talk about the different kinds of abundance that brings about community. We were inspired by an Atlas Obscura podcast on the Libre Intentional Artist Community:  an interview with Luz Fleming on the place where he grew up—Libre, one of the longest lasting intentional communities that still exists.   Luz Fleming's mother was one...

Send us a message! In Episode 3   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika talk about the introduction to explore their Enneagram at their cohousing Fall Retreat weekend.  Wikipedia defines it as "a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types ."   As our member facilitator guided our group through an introduction of e...

Send us a message! In Episode 2   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika interview Lew Bowers from PDX Commons cohousing community in Portland, Oregon.  As CoHousing Houston begins construction and brings in the last waves of members, Lew helps them think through integration of the new members and the changing requirements for community leadership. Listen in to learn more. For more information about our...

Send us a message! Welcome to Season 2! We're pivoting from design and financing to building. A new phase means a new season of Tell Me More. In Episode 1   Lynn Morstead & Kelli Soika talk about what it means to move into this new era of the CoHousing Houston project and make some predictions about what's to come. Also, we check in about Lynn's downsizing project. Spoiler alert...

Send us a message! In Episode 81 the focus is on the term "co-housing." How does it capture the concept and where does it fail? Based on a Katie McCamant comment in a “Transforming Cities” interview. The interviewer asks her a question about why cohousing isn’t on fire right now. It seems to address all the current pressure points in our society: combats isolation, more sustainable way o...

Send us a message! In Episode 80 Lynn and Kelli discuss how becoming an Explorer is like taking a Master Class in cohousing. If you've read the books and watched the TED talks, they think it is time for you to take a class in the form of joining a group as an Explorer.  They also make a pitch for why to join CoHousing Houston today as an Explorer. Hear Lynn's Five Reasons Why the time is...

Send us a message! In Episode 79 Kelli weaves together the sounds and discussions from the 2022  National Cohousing Conference in Madison that just wrapped up in late August.  Lynn was able to catch up with friends, meet people new to cohousing, and hear from the folks who have been around while and continue to glean new insights about this form of community.  Listen in to find out more For more i...

Send us a message! In Episode 78   Lynn and Kelli talk about a principle they have found to be one of the critical success factors in marketing cohousing, "chop wood and carry water". It's a Zen proverb, that they have internalized as a faithful discipline of staying on task with the plans they commit to. Come rain or shine, whether you feel like it or not, they describe how they si...