Antecedents and Effects of Cohousing: A Study of Cohousing Communities and Forming-Groups in the United States—Five Year Annual Survey.
Please join LaDona Knigge, PhD for her presentation: Analysis of health, safety and social cohesion strategies in cohousing communities during the Covid-19 global pandemic. (Session 1)
This presentation shares results of questions from the Cohousing Research Network’s recent community survey that focus on social and spatial strategies of cohousing communities to safeguard the health, safety and social cohesion of cohousing communities during the Covid-19 global pandemic. Early in the pandemic, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other forms of group living experienced very high rates of Covid infection and deaths. How did cohousing communities fare during this time?
Cohousing communities are a form of intentional community wherein residents maintain their own individual household while sharing many elements of their lives with shared amenities and common spaces such as gardens, walkways, tools, and spaces in the common or community house that typically includes a large, commercial-style kitchen and dining room for the preparation of shared meals, recreational spaces and other facilities. These shared amenities, resources and activities, coupled with a consensus-based decision-making processes are key to cohousing and tend to reflect and reinforce shared values and social cohesion within the community. This presentation examines the impacts of Covid-19 on cohousing communities and reports the social and spatial strategies that were adopted by cohousing communities to protect the health and safety of their community members, while still maintaining the sociability, community, sharing and other activities that cohousing communities are known for.
LaDona Knigge, PhD
LaDona is a professor and department chair in Geography & Planning at California State University, Chico. She has been at Chico State since 2006. She was an IGERT research fellow in GIScience and has her PhD from University at Buffalo (2006). Her bachelor’s degrees in Geography & Sociology are from University of Wyoming (1999). Her PhD research was on community gardens in Buffalo, NY and her research continues to be interested in community cohesion and community building with interests in farmers markets and local food networks, sustainable transportation and cohousing and other forms of intentional housing. She began working with the CRN following the devastating Camp Fire (2018) that destroyed over 14,000 housing units in Butte County, California.
The Cohousing Research Network (CRN), the research arm of the Cohousing Association of the U.S. (Coho/US), aims to be a global resource center for cohousing research. Founded in 2011 at the National Cohousing Conference in Washington, D.C., CRN was created through collaboration among researchers from around the world, united by the belief that cohousing research should be as collaborative as cohousing itself.
CRN is currently in conversation with the newly formed Research Institute for Community-led Housing (RICLH) to expand the scope of research. For more information, visit our website: [https://www.cohousingresearchnetwork.org](https://www.cohousingresearchnetwork.org).
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