By Jocelyn Weatherbe

Cohousing is not just an idea to save money but may be a way to save your life.  Current studies have shown that loneliness and isolation are bad for your health and may even be killers.

Sharing a home in some way will ease the stress of modern life.  You will laugh more, eat better, be more active, and live longer. Hard to find fault with that.

Cohousing, home sharing, cooperative living all have at their core finding compatible people to share and enhance your life.

Cohousing can be group of houses around a common area with a community centre.  It can be as simple as several people buying a large house and retrofitting it to provide modern amenities and often individual bathrooms (we all want one apparently) or to the purchase of an existing apartment building where one or two units are renovated into a large common dining/living area/guest suite.

The first step is finding your community of like-minded people who are in a position to join you in this adventure. This is the most important part of the process. And understanding that everyone is different is essential to success.  There will always be issues but a commitment to the values and benefits of cohousing should allow people to understand and overcome them and grow stronger as a community.

Here are a few quotes from people living in cohousing:

“I think it functions fantastically well – not without problems, but with problems that I would much rather deal with than those one has in an ordinary isolated house.”

“The beauty of cohousing is that you have a private life and a community life, but only as much of each as you want.”

Cohousing is especially valuable as we age. We can help each other and we all benefit.

Interested? Check us out on Facebook at CoHoHo – CoHousing Hamilton Ontario or on Yahoo Meetup at Hamilton CoHousing Meetup