Letter: Cohousing answers need for community

Cohousing harkens to our past; we lived in community because we needed to be close to extended family and friends (for financial reasons and to interact, care for and keep one another safe) and it harkens to the future and the present. We need each other more now than ever because of global climate change, a shortage of affordable housing and because local is sustainable.

Cohousing is simply living in community and can look different across communities, but the ingredients that make a cohousing neighborhood unique are that while everyone has their own private home, there is a common house. This house will have an industrial kitchen where people can cook and eat communally, there will be a shared tool library and laundry facilities, playroom for the kids and/or rec room for all, a meeting room where democratic decision-making happens. There may be a garden, gym or library depending on community wants or needs. Cohousing is a neighborhood designed by those who live there.

Cohousing exists all over the nation and world, but not yet in McLean County. I am part of a group that's been studying it for a year. Now we are ready for the next step: engaging others who are interested in this simpler, more connected way of living and who are ready to create communities here in McLean County.

The bottom line is that we need each other, whether we are young people just starting a family or raising young children, single people of any age or older folks whose children are out of the house and who are retired or contemplating retirement.

We have a small group of interested folks. If you would you like to join in the vision and reality of the first cohousing community in McLean County, you can find us at

Naomi Wilansky, Normal