Cohousing community dreams dashed
Group’s effort for collaborative living in Conn. fell short
For Claudia Ruffle, living in a cohousing community was a lifelong dream. She longed for connection with people who shared her values, particularly around concern for the environment. But as an introvert, she found it hard to meet people on her own.
Cohousing, a form of collaborative living that originated in Denmark, provided “a structure where I didn’t have to be outgoing and could still get the benefit of getting to know people,” said Ruffle, 72, a former substitute teacher and administrative secretary. “It compensated for my lack of outgoingness.”
So she was among the early supporters of what was envisioned as Connecticut’s first cohousing community. After more than a decade of planning, the project, called Rocky Corner, finally broke ground in 2018 on a 33-acre plot in Bethany, a suburb of New Haven.
Ruffle and a friend contracted to purchase one of the attached housing units there, and sold their home in New Haven in anticipation of closing in 2019. But their closing date kept getting extended. And then members of the community were told that the project was having a cash flow problem.
“We thought, Oh, OK, we will give them all of our money for our unit with the understanding that once we can move in, our unit is paid for,” Ruffle said.
But instead, the entire project went into foreclosure. And Ruffle’s dream — and finances — were dashed.
“That money is now gone and there’s no way for us to retrieve it,” she said. “We lost about $170,000.
And we both have very low incomes. Ever since, we’ve been living in not good circumstances at all.”
Members of Rocky Corner offer varying views of what exactly went wrong. But in general, most agree that the increasing complexity of the project proved more than the group could afford or manage.
“Mistakes were made all along the line by all parties,” said Dick Margulis, a book designer and editor who, along with his wife, was among the community’s earliest organizers.
What happened at Rocky Corner is not a reflection of the viability of cohousing in general, said Karen Gimnig, the interim executive director of the Cohousing Association of America, a national nonprofit that supports newly forming and existing communities.
In a cohousing model, residents own their own homes, but share common spaces — a structure aimed at fostering connection and community through collaborative living.
The association always advises people planning such communities to partner with experienced cohousing developers in order to minimize their risks, she said.
Though cohousing projects are typically built on properties that have municipal water and sewer, she said, the Rocky Corner project was a rural property and involved reserving a portion of the land for farming.
Only about half of the planned 30 housing units were close to completion when Ion Bank, in Naugatuck, recently took possession of the property through a limited liability company.
The bank submitted the sole bid of $6.9 million at the foreclosure sale in November. Ion filed for foreclosure in 2020, with outstanding loans on the project totaling about $6.7 million.
Housing Enterprises, a consulting firm in Enfield, helped the group win a $2.6 million housing grant from the state to make some of the units affordable. “A lot of people lost money,” said David Berto, the president of Housing Enterprises. “There was a whole group of people who put in money to buy the land, and some of those weren’t homebuyers. They were just people who wanted to help, including me. We have all lost money and that’s just the way it is.”
At Rocky Corner, members managed the project and their community affairs using a process called sociocracy, which organizes people into various circles to make decisions consensually. A small group of founding members, including Brenda Caldwell, of Bethany, as well as Berto, sat on the “project management” circle, and regularly consulted with the construction company and architect. Other members participated in one or more circles focused on various other aspects, such as marketing, design and community relations.
Rocky Corner was organized around the themes of conservation and sustainability, the result of a conversation that began as far back as 2006. The modestly sized homes on the property, all less than 1,300 square feet, are built to high energyefficiency standards.
Laid out in duplexes and triplexes, they are clustered on 5 acres close to a 4,300-square-foot common house designed to have a kitchen, dining area, lounge, woodworking shop and laundry facilities.
Organizers had hoped to grow vegetables on part of the land and preserve the rest with easements.
“We were really trying to protect the character of the land, protecting it from big ugly development,” said Caldwell, an experienced organic farmer. “Now we’re really afraid that we can’t protect it anymore, and that is devastating.”
She blamed the debt pileup on a series of unanticipated costs and bureaucratic delays that dragged out the timeline.
As costs mounted, the group had to raise the price of the housing units, and that, along with a slowdown in the housing market, made it harder to attract the young families that the much-older organizers were hoping would be interested.
Some prospective residents were so optimistic that the project would succeed that they installed their own flooring and appliances before they had closed on their units. (No closings ever took place.) Some people also paid for customized add-ons to their homes, like dormers or a porch.
A professional appraisal submitted as part of the foreclosure proceeding showed prices on the expired contracts ranging from $387,000 for a one-bedroom to $463,000 for a three-bedroom. The income-qualified units ranged in price from about $195,000 for a one-bedroom to $240,000 for a three-bedroom.
The remaining members are hopeful that Ion Bank will sell the project to a developer interested in following through on the cohousing effort.
Margulis, one of the early organizers, still vividly recalls a meeting for the project that took place in his living room over tea and cookies 11 years ago.
“I even remember what shirt I was wearing,” he said. “I think we were naive — probably still are. But we haven’t given up on the dream. We are still optimistic that we can make a change in the world.”