 Photo Elliott Burr/Town Crier Mountain View residents Susan and David Burwen purchased land on Calderon Avenue in Mountain View with plans to transform the property into a cohousing development. Susan and David Burwen have trekked through the Alps, the Dolomites, Patagonia and Nepal, and they enjoy adventure skiing. David, a former startup developer turned social entrepreneur, said they intend to continue their activity level “while our bodies hold up.” Susan, a retired biomedical researcher, said she’s “saving Paris for when I can’t get around anymore.”
The Mountain View couple thrive on challenge, so it’s no surprise they approach aging with the same energy they allot to mountain hiking. They are reluctant to burden their two adult sons, who live in Rockridge and San Francisco, with their care. David noted that daughters are usually the ones who take on the caretaking role, anyway.
Instead of relying on their children or an assisted-living home, the Burwens and six other families are creating a local “cohousing” community, where households share meals, decisions and chores like gardening and repairs.
The innovative style of housing design began with Denmark’s “bofoellesskaber” communities, first introduced in the United States in the late 1980s by husband-and-wife architect team Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant, based in Berkeley and Nevada City.
“We feel like it’s self-assisted living,” said Susan, who spearheads the Mountain View cohousing group. “We’re mostly postkids, ranging in age from late 40s to 80ish.”
A smaller development, Tortuga, already exists in Mountain View, although the two have different populations. Tortuga’s median age is 35 years old.
After three years of searching for appropriate land, the Burwens, two other couples and three singles purchased the last empty lot in Mountain View, 445 Calderon Ave., in July. Developer Wayne Aozasa paid more than $2.5 million for the plot, and condos will sell for $750,000 to $1.25 million, lower than similar downtown Mountain View properties. Award-winning architect Durrett will design the community, which will feature homes ranging from 1,400 to 2,000 square feet, according to a press release from the designer.
Dubbing themselves the Mountain View Cohousing Community, the group actively seeks new members who want to live within walking distance of downtown amenities like the theater, grocery stores and parks. Its first design workshop is scheduled Nov. 21 and 22, with an expected move-in date in 2012.
Former Brandeis University students who met in graduate school in Boston, the couple experienced communal living, sharing a house with seven others in the late 1960s.
While their sons were growing up, Susan said, other parents felt like “extended family” with whom they traveled and shared holidays. She hopes that cohousing will also expand their friendships.
The Burwens collaborate on many projects. They co- wrote a fine-arts book on artist Carl Roters, “Carl Roters and the Rendezvous Murals” (Venture Development Group, 2004), and have lived part-time in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Only David’s cowboy-style hat remains from the Western influence. They finish each other’s sentences and agree that cohousing provides options of privacy or social interaction to residents. For example, David noted that one could read a book alone on one’s porch or in the clubhouse or other common area.
The cohousing concept originated partly to avoid the isolation prevalent in people’s aging in place in their large suburban homes. The term “cohousing,” reminiscent of the word “commune” popularized in the 1960s, suggests that everyone lives under the same roof, but in reality, each household is separate.
Most American baby boomers have “found themselves drifting far from their childhood homes, never developing deep roots,” wrote Barry Yeoman in the March 2006 AARP Magazine. That may be why aging hippies find themselves longing for “intentional” community, more sophisticated than 1960s communes because it involves consensus, equity sharing and rules. The agreement also requires homeowner’s dues – the Mountain View dues will run approximately $400 a month, and will likely include gardening, insurance, electricity, water and other utilities.
Durrett spoke about the second edition of his book, “The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living” (New Society Publishers, 2009), to a packed house at Books Inc. in Mountain View last month.
Conflict resolution is a key ingredient in living together harmoniously. The Mountain View cohousing group already schedules socials, where potential members can decide if they fit in and want to give a deposit.
Adjacent to Landels School, the 1-acre property includes the 1880s Victorian home of Anne Bakotich, who died in 2007.
The site contains vestiges of an old orchard, with sweeping tree branches and foliage so dense it’s difficult to see the Bakotich house from the street. In 2007, the Mountain View City Council narrowly voted against purchasing the property – on the market for $3.2 million – as a historical site. Some have suggested relocating the house, which would involve considerable expense.
Not all cohousing developments are devoted to seniors, but all involve self-government. The Cohousing Association of the United States (www.cohousing.org) lists 49 communities in California and 228 nationwide.
Many, like Mountain View’s Tortuga community at 850 Williams Way, are intergenerational. Tortuga has 12 residents, including one toddler, living in two four-plexes located next to each other. The median age is 35, with residents ranging in age from 3 to 42. The group depends on 100 percent consensus, stressing “the good of the group as more important than individual opinions,” said resident Molly Stenhouse, an online consultant for the Palo Alto Weekly.
Lack of space makes it impossible for Tortuga to have a common dining room, so “we bond in different ways,” she said.
They might go hear a rock band perform, play board games or eat out together, for example. Using a little creativity, the residents combined two garages to make a lounge.
“We all work and have busy personal lives,” Stenhouse said.
She and her partner, David, don’t have children but were feeling somewhat isolated in their previous San Mateo apartment. At Tortuga, Stenhouse said she felt the potential to make friends.
In addition, Stenhouse pointed to the economic advantages of owning the condos as “tenants in common,” a way to buy a percentage of the building that costs less than owning the entire property. She and her partner, for example, paid $280,000 for a 25 percent share two years ago.
“It’s hard to afford housing in the Bay Area,” said Stenhouse, adding, “part of the point is to save money.”
Stenhouse said people have been trying to create a utopia for centuries, “like with communes in the ’60s.”
“A lot of the cohousing environment is about supporting the principles of people with a common ideology,” she said.
For more information on the Calderon Avenue project, visit groups.yahoo.com/groups/mountainviewcohousing, call 965-9590 or e-mail
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