Making Prairie Hill Affordable

From the beginning of this project, social and economic diversity has been a primary value of ours. When we think of who we want as neighbors, it is important to us that we are not limited to people who have plenty of funds or who are all the same color or from the same culture. Instead, we are looking for people who resonate with the idea of a cooperative community and people who want to live as gently as possible in our ecosystem. We want people who are ready to have smaller homes since we will have a commonhouse for our overflow guests, for laundry, recreation, and frequent meals. And we want neighbors who are ready to accept and embrace differences in others. We want to pave the way toward living harmoniously in our neighborhood on Prairie Hill.

However, building new and building green is not cheap, especially in Iowa City. So we have put a lot of effort into finding ways of offsetting the costs of Prairie Hill Cohousing units. Carolyn Dyer has compiled a long list of sources of aid, and we will be glad to send you a copy of this by email. For this blog post, I especially want to alert you to some of the funds we have already acquired:

• $50,000 for down-payment assistance from the Housing Trust Fund of Johnson County for three affordable homes
• $6,250 tax credits for each of 15 units provided by the Iowa Workforce Housing Tax Incentive
• From Johnson County Soil and Water Conservation District, 50% cost-share for the bioretention cell ($12,804)
• And from the same agency, 20% cost share for soil quality restoration ($17,000)

In addition, there are a multitude of rebates on offer for solar installations and alternative energy, as well as funds for builders of homes heated and cooled by electricity (we have decided to use only electricity as a more sustainable energy source).

Also, a number of state and local agencies offer families and individuals assistance in buying homes: the Iowa Finance Authority, the 2016 Take Credit Mortgage Credit Certificate Program, the Federal Home Loan Bank, the Iowa City Affordable Dream Home Ownership Program, and the Iowa City Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Homeownership Program.

The big message of this post is this: if you are attracted by the cohousing vision, wish you could live at Prairie Hill, but don't think you can afford it, you may be wrong. Check out your options, and let us help you. Come to our next Information Meeting, or contact us to get Carolyn's document on Sources of Funds (you can email me at nanjfawcett@gmail.com). 

The International Cohousing Community, or It's a Small World After All!

By Gloria Zmolek

Plain and simple, cohousing is about community. Cohousing is about building a village where everyone knows each other and shares and cares for each other in their neighborhood. I joined the Prairie Hill cohousing community in February this year for that very reason. I wanted to live in a neighborhood where everybody knew my name and had my back when I needed it and I, in turn, would have theirs.

Since I’ve joined, one of the gifts that I did not anticipate was that I would become an integral part of not only a small community in Iowa City but a part of a larger community, the international cohousing community of the world. Cohousing got it’s start in 1972 in Denmark and initially spread to Sweden and the Netherlands. Now more and more communities are developing in France, Spain, Belgium, the UK and Italy. The concept was introduced to the US by architects Katie McCamant and Charles Durrett in the 80’s. Currently there are over 160 cohousing communities. While I have not taken the opportunity to visit any of these communities in the states, many of our members have and I look forward to doing so in the future. Those communities include Madison, North Carolina………...

Most recently I was visiting in Sweden and decided to reach out to cohousing communities there. I was warmly welcomed to Kollektivhuset Sockenstugan, one of four cohousing communities in Stockholm. Ingrid Eckerman graciously hosted me for the day patiently giving me a tour and explaining in great detail how their community functioned. I got to help cook the meal for the community that evening and met so many wonderful people. It made my visit to Sweden so very special. Quite simply, when you become part of a cohousing community, you are warmly welcomed in cohousing communities everywhere.

Me with my cooking crew

Traditional afternoon coffee (Ingrid is on the left)

Delectable vegetarian dish we prepared

View of the common house from Ingrid’s room

At the first members meeting I attended on returning from Europe, we were informed that we had been contacted by Kuranda eCohousing Community in Queensland, Australia because Charles Durrett had recommended us as a cohousing group who had excellent ideas for promoting our community in order to increase our membership. I contacted Cathy Retter and we decided to meet via Skype to exchange ideas about building our respective communities. Members Del Holland, Nan Fawcett, Barb Bailey and I met an my house and we Skyped with Cathy for over an hour about the challenges and successes of our organization. It was very exciting to get to become acquainted with like-minded people living on the other side of the planet. After the conversation, Cathy wrote me a short note: “That was really lovely of you to arrange this call Gloria. I feel really inspired. Good luck with it all. “ We are now Facebook friends and I know we will remain in contact to share our joys and woes and someday I hope to visit the Kuranda eCohousing community in Australia.

Cathy

Skypin' with Cathy

Work Day on Prairie Hill

On Memorial Day, cohousing members came together to work on some projects at our building site. One task was to carry logs from the cleared site up to the top of the property, the area where our future gardens and orchards will be. These logs will be used for benches, play equipment, fences and lining paths.

Mary Beth's Birthday Cake

Another project was to mark some of the building locations. This was done with bamboo poles topped with white flags. The location of the commonhouse, the northwest stacked flat, and the duplex south of that stacked flat are now all marked off. Also marked are the corners of the townhouses and the most easterly stacked flat. It is great to be able to better visualize the layout of our community. In contrast to looking at a flat map, we can now stand just where each building will be on the actual land, take in the relative height of each and appreciate the different views.  

Dame's Rocket in our patch of woods

A New Book about Sustainability in Eating

One of our newest members, Marcia Shaffer, has submitted the following post about a project that she's been working on for several years. What she doesn't say is that this book was her idea, and she has pursued it with undaunted dedication. It will be fun to see it completed! It's title is Taste a Little of the Summer, from Greg Brown's song "Canned Goods", and it is truly a local collection of wisdom!

A much anticipated book written by some cohousing members and supporters will soon be published. The idea for the book sprang from discussions at the Earth Care Working Group which promotes solutions to environmental problems. The focus for this book is eating locally, not only in the summer but year around. The reason we focused on this is the disconnection between the people who grow our food and the person eating it. There are huge transportation costs in bringing our food to us, and we have no control over the food between the time it is grown and the time we buy it at the grocery.

In our book there are articles by over 30 people who have learned how to live more gently on the earth. Some people have learned tricks to growing fruits and vegetables. Other people have learned how to preserve fruits and vegetables for winter consumption. The book also includes some favorite recipes for using what has been preserved. Reading between  the lines, you will find the pride and satisfaction our authors have in eating locally grown food.

A Lovely Morning among the Flowers

 Despite biting wind and cold temperatures, a hardy group of cohousing members and friends made the trip to Rochester Cemetery Saturday morning. And found beauty. We wandered through acres of wildflowers and gorgeous huge oaks, peered at crumbling old tombstones, and marveled at the resilience and creativity of nature.

Below, we stood around the flat marker for "Granny.." who lived more than a hundred years ago.

And we walked up and over hills covered with shooting stars, columbine, ferns, solomon's seal, daisies, and scores of less well known flowers identified by the several wildflower experts in the group. Then half the group continued on to Cold Spring Pond, lunch in the cabin, and a tour of prairie and pollinator strips.

Prairie and Wildflower Field Trip - Saturday, May 14th!

The first of our two May field trips is coming up very quickly, THIS Saturday morning, May 14th! It is the month for new green and beautiful growth, and we have been noticing all the wildflowers on our housing site as well as in the woods of Benton Hill Park, just north of our land.

We'd like to protect and encourage these flowers! Here are some shots of them taken this morning:

 Jack in the Pulpit

 lush and colorful ground cover

Solomon's Seal

We are also planning to devote some of the area on top of our land to a prairie planting, which will include a wide variety of native plants. With all this in mind, our theme for this Saturday's field trip is Wildflowers and Prairies.

First Site: Rochester Cemetery

This is a must-see if you have any interest in wildflowers or prairie. It is quite famous, drawing people from all over. You can look it up on the web if you want to read more, but here's a line from one of the sites:  "A rare and precious patch of native Iowa prairie, one of the last and most spectacular living remnants of the vast, variegated prairie that once carpeted the state, of which now less than one-tenth of 1 percent remains."

(Above) Close-up and further view at Rochester Cemetery

Second Site: Cold Spring Pond and Prairie

Cold Spring Pond is the Fawcett family gathering spot. Ken Fawcett and friends have been maintaining a plot of prairie there for many years. It was burned just five weeks ago, and the plants are springing back with vigor. Ken is a progressive farmer who has also planted wide pollinator strips through the fields near the pond and prairie, as well as planting thousands of trees as riparian zones along the waterways. It is a beautiful place, and after walking around the site, we will eat lunch there (so bring your own bag lunch).

Third Site: Herbert Hoover Park Prairie

This park, in the middle of West Branch, has over 70 acres of prairie. There are well-maintained trails through it, good for stretching our legs before going back home. At this point, we are only about 10 minutes from Iowa City.

If you have an interest in going on this field trip, please send an email to Nan Fawcett at nanjfawcett@gmail.com. We will carpool from the old Dodge Street Hy-Vee parking lot at 9:30 am, and will probably return by around 2:00. 

Prairie Hill Hopes to Go All-Electric

In our effort to make Prairie Hill Cohousing as sustainable as possible, we have chosen to have an all-electric community. A recent article in the Mother Jones magazine (link below) gives a hopeful picture of how we can positively affect climate change by shifting to electricity, especially as we move from non-renewable to renewable sources.

Below are some quotes from the article, which we urge you to read! And here is the link:
 http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/electric-cars-coal-power-plants-climate-change

"It turns out that one of the most immediate societal changes for average Americans in a climate-savvy future would likely be the electrification of just about everything. In other words, the hope of the planet could lie in a force—electricity—we've known about for hundreds of years."

"We get energy from fossil fuels in two basic ways: either by burning it in a power plant to create electricity that gets used elsewhere, or by burning it directly where it's needed—i.e., your car's internal combustion engine or a gas-fueled stove. Williams' basic idea—which has also been advanced by other leading energy economists, particularly Stanford's Mark Jacobson—is to ax that second category as much as possible, while simultaneously "decarbonizing" the electric grid by replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, and other renewables."

"How do we get on track? Williams argues that policymakers need to start spending less energy worrying about fuel efficiency for oil-powered cars and focus instead on speeding up the transition to electric vehicles. That's something the Obama administration has only scratched the surface of, so it could be an area of focus for the next president. Power grid operators, too, need to start planning for a future in which there could be major demand for electricity in sectors (i.e., electric cars, home heating, etc.) that are small now."