Cohousing Resources

Recommended Reading

Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities

By Kathryn McCamant & Charles Durrett

Written by the award-winning team that wrote the original "cohousing bible" in the 1980's and first brought cohousing to North America, this fully-illustrated manual combines nuts-and-bolts practical considerations and design ideas with extensive case studies of dozens of diverse communities in Europe and North America.

Creating a Life Together                      

By Diana Leafe Christian

By profiling seven successful communities in depth, the book examines the role of community founders; getting a group off to a good start; vision and vision documents; decision-making and governance; agreements; legal options; finding, financing, and developing land; selecting new members; and communication, process, and dealing well with conflict.

Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most

By Ciji Ware

A handbook about the process of planning a new environment, jettisoning a lifetime's worth of surplus household items, and moving painlessly into a more suitable space. The first comprehensive guide to the emotional passage that this winnowing process entails, providing a prescription for the internal hurdles that can easily sabotage sensible decision making.

Reinventing Community: Stories from the Walkways of Cohousing

By: David Wann

Many of the experiments in cohousing are extremely valuable to a society so distracted by materialism and so shell-shocked by the frantic American lifestyle. Consensus decision-making; participatory design; alternative sources of energy; alternative sources of information; shared resources and designs that reduce each person's ecological footprint; aging gracefully and vigorously; neighborhood activism in surrounding towns and communities; and collaborative management of neighborhood resources. An insightful and honest account of the exciting journey that lies ahead for us.

The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter

By: Susan Pinker

Award-winning author and psychologist Susan Pinker shows how face-to-face contact is crucial for learning, happiness, resilience, and longevity. Tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives, and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter, too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal “village” around us. We need the real, in-the-flesh encounters that tie human families, groups of friends, and communities together.

Head, Heart & Hands 

By: Shari Leach

A hands-on activity book for cohousing groups. Aims to empower groups to move effectively through the various stages of development, covering ground rules, defining your community values and vision, consensus 101, conflict and blocks, meetings, creating basic standing teams, positions of power, creating participation systems, naming your community, common house planning, pet agreements, rental agreement, and more.