Saturday 23 July, 1pm-5pm. Come to the marquee and find out what we’re up to.

Bring the family. Bring a picnic. Bring a frisbee. Make the most of this under-used community resource.
 

Bit of work to do yet, but things are changing fast!

Last night Wrigleys Solicitors hosted a get-together in the function room at the Brewery Tap for cohousing groups across Yorkshire. The main purpose of the event was to give us a chance to meet Anna Kear, the new Executive Director of the UK Cohousing Network.

Clearly, there’s a lot going on in the area, and our hosts seemed genuinely surprised at how popular the event seemed to be. As well as the usual suspects – Lilac, ChaCo, ShangriLeeds and Bradford – we also found ourselves chatting to several different groups from Sheffield, where their enlightened city council has been making land available specifically for cohousing.

Everyone seemed excited that things are starting to pick up speed for ChaCo, and there are many groups out there rooting for us to succeed – and some actively encouraging us to approach them for loanstock.

What a great bunch!

It’s time to sign up if you want to live in the Chapeltown Cohousing project!

With the news that ChaCo could have its site for cohousing in 2016, people interested in becoming members and living in this community need to start thinking seriously about joining up. Once the project becomes ‘live’ places are likely to be in demand.

We will have both rented properties and houses/apartments for sale, and we’re reserving two-thirds of them for people who already have a strong connection with Chapeltown. Accommodation available will range from a room in a shared house, one-bedroomed properties through to a 4-bedroomed house. There will be between 25 and 30 accommodation units available and, already, 12 households (involving 22 people) have signed up as prospective residents.

People who join early will make the decisions about all aspects of the project, including design, common space, the common-house etc.

If you think you would be interested in living in this wonderful community then let us know. Now!

Leeds Childrens Services, who own the site earmarked for our cohousing project, have agreed the space they need for a new school and marked out a site which can now be sold to ChaCo. The council’s Asset Management Board have now approved the start of negotiation of terms for the sale, and discussions on this will start in the new year. Once a fair price has been agreed we will have the green light for the project and, more importantly, a physical home for it.

The site includes the building facing Roundhay Road, and discussions are ongoing with the Council about whether to sell the land with these buildings on it or to clear the whole site. ChaCo can work with either option.

Watch this space for more news.

ChaCo and LILAC are joining forces to do a bit of cohousing promotion at Greenbelt Arts Festival this year.

Under the title “Utopiary for Beginners”, Bill Phelps, Laura Smith and the Fishwicks (aka Robin, Sarah, Laura and Grace) will be introducing the cohousing concept and sharing stories of how to build it and what it’s like to live it.

If you’re going to be at Greenbelt this year, we’re in the Treehouse at 5.15pm on the Bank Holiday Monday. Come with a question!

Those wonderful people at LILAC (in Bramley) are happy to show us what a real cohousing project looks like. Various people there have generously offered to invite us into their homes and answer questions about their life together over the couple of years since building was completed.

This is your chance to see the common house, find out what it’s like to live in a house built of straw bales, and discover what the residents think about living there.

If you’d like to take part in one of these visits just fill in your preferred dates here, and we’ll sort out the transport.

After a lot of hard work, we’ve now agreed on our Membership Policy – which means that we can start actively recruiting for members.

If you’re interested in joining us, read all about it here. Right now you can sign up to be a Friend of ChaCo or (if you’re really up for community living) a Prospective Member. You’ll find some application forms at the end of the document.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Last night we had one of our regular Members’ meetings and took another look at our core values and realised we wanted to rejig them a bit. What we eventually ended up with was…

Guiding Principles:

The project aims to create cohousing that is:

• Inclusive and open minded –actively participating in the local community.
• Sharing and supportive – helping each other to create a great community, with common facilities like the common house, car- sharing, a laundry, and food-growing space.
• Personal/private – each person/family has their own front door and private space but also benefits from shared space and shared resources.
• Diverse – includes a wide range of people, for example of different ages, backgrounds and incomes. We want it to include affordable housing.
• Environmentally friendly – supporting and promoting sustainable living. Homes built with good insulation, with eco/green features.
• Empowering – each member having an equal say in decisions and in the ownership of shared resources and facilities.

We now have a Prospectus. We’ve managed to boil our whole-site vision down to a punchy 8-page document, designed to entice developers, decision-makers and potential partners to help make this dream a reality.

We’ve split the site into six development zones – obviously cohousing is Zone 1. Alongside this we’ve designated areas that could be developed by partners such as housing associations, self-builders, other cohousing groups or housing developers. Our plans also include plenty of public space, improved access to the existing field, community facilities, areas for charities and small businesses and educational facilities.

Click here to download the full prospectus