Latest news with #cohousing
CBS News
11 hours ago
- General
- CBS News
LGBTQ+ seniors find safety and joy in North Carolina retirement village
Durham, North Carolina — There's more than just wine and cheese on the menu at happy hour at Village Hearth in Durham, North Carolina. The retirement village serves up a safe space for people 55 and older who identify as LGBTQ+. It's one of the nation's first co-housing developments created specifically for an aging, queer population — like 73-year-old Barb Chase. "I lived my life pretty much in the closet, and I was ready for an experience that was super affirming," Chase said. The 28 single-story pastel-colored cottages are individually owned, but connected physically by walking paths and ideologically by acceptance. "As we age, community is one of the most important things to ensure our continued health," Chase said. Over seven million LGBTQ Americans will be over age 50 by 2030, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Fewer than half of states have laws prohibiting housing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity — and there is no federal law. That's why Margaret Roesch and her wife created Village Hearth more than five years ago when they couldn't find somewhere to retire. "I know if we ever ended up in assisted living or in a nursing home that we would have had to go back in the closet, potentially," Roesch said. Patricia Stressler and Tami Ike moved to Village Hearth from about an hour away in Greensboro, where they lived hiding their relationship. "We're still in that generation where we don't want to make people feel uncomfortable," Ike said. Like many gay and lesbian seniors, the couple doesn't have the traditional safety net of adult children for connection and care. With this community comes built-in support from each other. "I think there is a small percentage of people who are very close-minded, and I think just for day-to-day living, wanting to be comfortable every day, not having to be on guard for anything or anyone," Stressler said. "I feel like we're going backwards, and so I think this type of community is needed more," Ike said. For these seniors — trailblazing for decades — it's a chapter with fewer struggles and more happy hours.
Globe and Mail
3 days ago
- General
- Globe and Mail
For these seniors, co-housing offers autonomy rarely found in long-term care homes
Brian Fernandes recalls growing up in India surrounded by kin. 'We lived with extended families – grandmother, grandfather, uncles, auntie, all in the home.' Now, the 57-year-old Torontonian is planning to replicate that collective life for his own retirement. Single and childless, in 2015 he bought a 17-acre property near Bancroft, Ont., with the dream of turning it into a home for 40 other LGBTQ seniors. 'Co-housing is where people of all different backgrounds come together and see how we can age well together and how we can support each other,' Fernandes said. In a culture that assumes the companionship of living with a roommate is only for the young, researchers and residents of collective housing have found it offers seniors a sense of belonging that can lead to higher life satisfaction. Why finding the right retirement home means asking the right questions Fernandes worked for years as a facilities supervisor in long-term care and learned how lonely those spaces can be without visitors. He worries in particular about LGBTQ seniors. 'Who's going to take care of this whole group of LGBT2SL people because they don't have their children to take care of them?' he asked. Despite the drawbacks of institutions, 'a lot of people get pushed into that because they don't have nowhere to go. There's no social network.' In planning for his Bancroft property, Fernandes took inspiration from other co-housing projects across Canada, such as WindSong, a multigenerational community launched in Langley, B.C., in 1996. Another is set to open in Langley in 2026, and similar places are popping up across the country. Two seniors' co-housing projects, Harbourside and West Wind Harbour, have opened in Sooke, B.C., over the past 10 years, while Vancouver Cohousing opened in 2016. A co-housing community focused on sustainability, Treehouse Village Ecohousing, opened in Bridgewater, N.S. in 2023. Fernandes connected with OCAD University professor Sarah Tranum to imagine options for the Bancroft compound. Together with some other members of LGBTQ outdoor social club Out and Out, they assembled a working group to explore what living arrangements would make sense for them as they age. The group collaborated with Tranum's participatory design students last fall to fill in speculative details for Fernandes's vision. Tranum said her students, accustomed to the inclusive environment of OCAD and the acceptance of their own generation, were surprised to encounter the fears of their older working group collaborators, who remember fighting more severe homophobia than most Toronto students today have witnessed. This retirement home is redefining what it means to grow old Many LGBTQ elders fear that living in nursing homes could send them back to those days, Tranum explained. 'I've lived this whole life out. I want to make sure I'm in a space where I'm not just safe, but I'm celebrated for the diversity and community I've created,' she said, describing the perspective of many of the working group members. For her, such concerns strike close to home. She and her partner opted not to have children and are now caring for their own elderly relatives. 'Our succession plan is going to look very different than what we've been doing for our parents,' she said. 'What does a nursing home look like for a lesbian couple?' She explains that the social design of co-housing projects is as crucial to their success as their architecture. They need to be built with a shared understanding that people are free to grow and change within the group – that they have autonomy within the collective setting – and that takes thought and planning. Such communal life may prolong seniors' healthy years, according to Simon Fraser University social epidemiologist Kiffer Card. He explained that people feel best when 'they exist within social networks that support their autonomy.' In a 2022 brief, Card and his colleagues concluded that seniors on their own become frail more quickly. Yet care homes, because of the nature of their services, don't always offer the feeling of independence that residents still need and crave. Unlike living alone or in long-term care, collective housing can offer elders some healthy social churn, particularly, Card said, when the roommates 'are interested in supporting each other's autonomy and belonging needs.' Feeling part of a group can actually increase your sense of independence, Card realized: 'When you have more autonomy, you also have more belonging and vice versa.' With co-housing, Fernandes said, 'this is friends taking care of friends,' where chosen families are looking ahead to becoming caregiving families, too.
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Homes for sale in England with swimming pools
There is much to ogle at in this four-bedroom, ground- and first-floor apartment – part of a striking 17th-century manor house that has been sensitively carved up as part of a cohousing community. Every room is cavernous and light pours in through mullioned stone windows. There is a cellar, now a workroom. The property sits in 2.8 hectares (seven acres) of grounds which ramble through lawns to woodland. The communal open-air swimming pool is shrouded by trees. It is a seven-minute drive to Bradford-on-Avon station and town centre. £785,000. Inigo, 020 3687 3071 Photograph: Inigo This grand Edwardian home, to the south of the city centre, has three reception rooms, four bedrooms and a conservatory. The light-filled hallway leads into a sociable kitchen, a dining room, a conservatory, and the drawing room, which has an arched window seat under the stained-glass windows. Outside, the rear paved terrace is south-facing with a swimming pool at its centre. The garden is part-walled and bordered by mature flowers and trees. This detached house sits on a large a corner plot twice as wide as the neighbouring terrace homes. £725,000. Sowerbys, 01603 761 441 Photograph: Sowerbys High above sea level, and on the private North Foreland estate, is this restored Edwardian villa. It is thought to have been the original show house of the estate, and has views of the lighthouse and east across the sea. Built in 1902, it has only been occupied by four families. Spread over three floors, there are five bedrooms. The dining room leads on to the terrace and BBQ area, sheltered by raised flowerbeds, and beyond is the sandstone-bordered, heated swimming pool – fitted with a concealed, automatic cover . £2.5m. Inigo , 020 3687 3071 Photograph: Inigo A short walk from the green space of the park and lido is a corner building on Mentmore Terrace. On the third floor is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, warehouse-style apartment with exposed concrete ceilings in the open-plan kitchen-dining-living area, and a private balcony with a protective half-height glass screen. Atop the building is a communal heated swimming pool with decking, flowerbeds and views over the City of London. The terrace runs alongside the railway line and parallel to London Fields, and the overground station is nearby. £730,000. Dexters, 020 7247 2440 Photograph: Dexters On South Quay Plaza, a Berkeley Homes development, is the 68-floor Hampton Tower, which is home to 627 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. There is a one-bedroom flat for sale on the ninth floor with an open-plan living-dining-kitchen area and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to Canary Wharf. The tower has a gym, a swimming pool, a games room, a co-working space, and a bar and a roof terrace on the 56th floor. It's a five-minute walk to the DLR, a seven-minute walk to the Jubilee line and a 13-minute walk to the Elizabeth line. £727,500. Dexters, 020 7590 7299 Photograph: Andrew Beasley /Dexters
RNZ News
09-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
$9 million co-housing development in works for Auckland suburb
housing Auckland Region 29 minutes ago A co-housing development group has shelled out $9 million for two neighubouring sections in Auckland's Grey Lynn, where the plan is to build thirty or more homes with shared facilities, including a communal garden. The goal of Cohaus is to build affordable sustainable housing in consultation with potential home owners, while encouraging people to be less reliant on cars and share more resources. It will be Cohaus's second Auckland development. The first was finished in 2022. Architect and project manager of the new development Thom Gill spoke to Lisa Owen.
