Brian

A Meditation on Stoves

by Cathedral Park Cohousing member Rebecca

As we move ever closer to moving into Portland’s newest cohousing community, all of us Cathedral Park Cohousing members are starting to get excited for all the big and little ways our lives will be changing in the coming years. Several of us are from outside of Portland, and contemplating both the downsizing to come, and a move to a whole new city. We’re loving hearing stories from friends at Skagit Commons and other cohousing communities across the Pacific Northwest as they settle into their new homes.

In addition to getting ready to move north from the Bay Area, where I’ve spent my entire adult life, I’m starting to explore some of the smaller ways my life will change—simple things, like how I cook!

Like many new projects, (and all new builds in Multnomah County) Cathedral Park Cohousing will be an all-electric build, as part of our effort to have a lighter footprint on the planet. While I am all for that in theory, I have to say I’m a little nervous about how that will work in my kitchen.

Portland Real Estate and Climate Change

Is the Affordability Window Closing on Portland Real Estate as the World Heats Up?

Climate change is real. Its effects are being felt currently, across the globe and across the United States. And, those effects will only grow for the foreseeable future. Even with full global participation in measures meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions, we are likely looking at several decades of rising temperatures and sea levels, increased severe weather patterns, and the list goes on. Thankfully, here in Portland, we may escape the worst effects of rising global temperatures. And it isn’t too late to get into a home in our neck of the woods for what is a comparably affordable price. Read More >>

Social Capital and Community

“Upward mobility” by moonbird is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

How Building Diverse, Inclusive Communities Can Help Lift Children Out of Poverty

The New York Times August 1st issue of The Daily focused on “friending bias” and the ways in which growing up in a diverse, inclusive community—along with other factors—can help kids growing up in poverty achieve “upward mobility” across class, race, and other lines.

The piece focused on a recently published study in the scientific journal Nature that examined how various social capital indicators and their ability to foster economic mobility and improved outcomes for children growing up in poverty were impacted by forming friendships across class lines.

World’s Best Places 2022

Time Magazine Declares Portland One of the “World’s Best Places” for 2022

It’s not everyday that your hometown gets called one of the “World’s Best Places.” Though, if you happen to call Portland home, it can feel that way. Add Time to the list of national and international news outlets swooning over the Rose City.

We may have had our fair share of challenges over the span of the last couple of years, but we’d like to think that Portland is still one of the best places to visit or call home, and Time seems to agree. On July twelfth Time published a story by Sucheta Rawal about the welcoming attitude and overall awesomeness of the City of Roses—home to Portland’s newest cohousing community, Cathedral Park Cohousing—where “all are welcome.”

Building Community, Building Traditions

Building Traditions Together

Even as the members of Cathedral Park Cohousing are knuckling down for the work of building community and bringing our neighbors together, we are always looking for opportunities to celebrate the fun stuff! We know that when we are living together in Cathedral Park, we will have lots of opportunities to weave joy into our daily lives, and we’re already starting to sow some great seeds for future fun. These past few weeks have given us plenty of cause for celebration, as four of our members celebrated birthdays between June 25th and July 2nd!

Join us in sending a happy belated to Debbie, Adara, Alicia and Rebecca! You can meet them (and the rest of our growing community) here.

Getting Ready to Move to Portland

Rebecca is Preparing to Move to Portland

Bringing community together at Portland’s Newest Cohousing Community means different things for different community members. For some it will be a move across town into their first home that they own or a home where they can age in place, for others—like Rebecca—it means moving to a community they have visited and enjoyed.

We are rapidly approaching a tipping point at Cathedral Park Cohousing, bringing together members from across Portland, across the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. As Rebecca prepares to move to St Johns she is doing her homework. She is making sure that she is ready to take advantage of all that this amazing region has to offer.

The Value of a Relationship with a creative Architect with Cohousing Experience

In a prior repost from our guest tour of the CohoUS blog, we talked about the benefits of working in close partnership with a developer that has experience developing cohousing. In this post we want to talk about working with an architectural firm that understands how to build community in addition to buildings.

We have been fortunate to work with two architecture firms since launching this project. Both immediately understood that we wanted our physical surroundings to help us live together as a community. In our initial stages, we worked with Johnston Architects from Seattle, WA to get our first set of drawings. Eventually, our developer, UD+P, introduced us to Mahlum Architects of Portland, OR. For the past year or so, we have been working with Mahlum to help solve the challenges brought on by rising Portland construction costs and the need for more density due to the high cost of land in our desirable urban location. We quickly learned that Mahlum also brings a suite of skills and experience around building welcoming spaces for diverse communities, and we realized this partnership was a perfect fit. Mahlum’s “inclusionary design strategies” will ensure a design that will help us to build and maintain our community connections, be accessible to a wide range of ages and abilities, meet our budget, and maximize the use of our sloping urban site.

Soup is Good Food for Community

Bringing Ingredients Together

There are very few foods that are as easy to customize with what you have on hand, that are as nourishing and comforting as a good bowl of soup. Maybe that’s why soup is such a big crowd pleaser at community meals in cohousing communities across the globe. At Portland’s newest cohousing community, Cathedral Park Cohousing we’re still forming community, but we’re already cooking—using the broth of our values and our shared vision alongside spices, herbs, vegetables, and other ingredients to create community among our members. See what we did there with the metaphor?

There are about as many recipes for soups as there are stars in the nighttime sky. But, you don’t need a soup of the day cookbook for the entire year to make a pot of delicious satisfaction for yourself, your family, or your entire community. You just need a reasonable number of ingredients that play nice, a big pot, and some basic skills.

Welcome Colleen to Cathedral Park!

We are thrilled to welcome Colleen Nelson to Portland!

A Cathedral Park Cohousing member since the fall of 2021, Colleen decided to take the plunge and move to St Johns now to get to know the neighborhood before we all move in together.

The Benefits of Growing Up In Community

by Abby Braithwaite

Growing up in Community

There are so many reasons why cohousing is good for your health, and good for the planet. It’s also great for families! So often in this culture we live separate from people who are in different phases of life. But there is a lot to be learned on all sides when generations come together in one space. We know that loneliness and isolation are tremendous health hazards for our elders, and we know that the work of raising a family while working long hours is immense.

At Cathedral Park Cohousing we are building a multigenerational community, where families can raise their children in a supportive, interdependent neighborhood, and our elders can enjoy the joys of other people’s children. As we come together and get to know each other, we are learning the ways that each of us can bring a piece of who we are and how we live to the mosaic of this community.