Page 4 - C.A.L.L. #27 - Summer 2006

Growing Old Together, in The four couples, two widows and two who are now living
solo live in eight individual town houses, grouped around
an inner courtyard. Still under construction is the "com-
New Kind of Commune mon house" with a living room and a large kitchen and

dining room for communal dinners; upstairs is a studio
New York Times by Patricia Leigh Brown apartment they will rent at below market value to a

February 27, 2006 skilled nurse who will provide additional care. It is their
own self-styled, potluck utopia.

DAVIS, Calif., - They are unlikely revolu- There are about a dozen co-operative housing develop-
tionaries. Bearing walkers and canes, a ments for the elderly in development, from Santa Fe,
N.M., to St. Petersburg, Fla., a fledgling movement to
veritable Merck Manual of ailments communally address "the challenge of aging non-institu-
among them, the 12 old friends - average tionally," said Charles Durett, an architect in Nevada City,
Calif., who imported the concept he named co-housing -
age 80 - looked as though they should
people buying homes in a community they plan and run
have been sitting together - from Denmark in the late 1960's.
down to a game of
In Abingdon, Va., residents are beginning to move into
Scrabble, not pio-
ElderSpirit, a development founded by a 76-year-old for-
neering a new mer nun, Dene Peterson. The community of 37, 10 years in

kind of commune. the making, includes a "spirit house" for ecumenical
prayer and meditation.

Opting for old age on
"I just thought there had to be a better way for older
their own terms, they
people to live," said Ms. Peterson, who formed a non-
were starting a new
profit development corporation with three other former
chapter in their lives as
Glenmary sisters, a Catholic order, and knit together a
residents of Glacier Cir-
Some of the residents of the variety of private and governmental funds (16 of the 29
cle, the country's first
Glacier Circle complex gath- units are subsidized affordable housing).
self-planned housing
ered last week for a meeting
development for the eld-
at the home of Dorie Datel. erly - a community they Six more ElderSpirit
Clockwise from left, Lois had conceived and de- communities, in St. Pe-
tersburg, Fla., Wichita,
Grau, Mary Ellen and Ray signed themselves, right
Kan., and elsewhere, are
Coppock, Ms. Datel (ob- down to its purple gut- in planning stages, with
ters.
scured), and Stan and Peggy some financing from the
Northup-Dawson. Chicago-based Retire-
Over the past five years,
the residents of Glacier Circle have found and bought ment Research Founda-
land together, hired an architect together, ironed out tion.
insurance together, lobbied for a zoning change together

and existentially probed togetherness together.
Glacier Circle and Elder-
"Here you get to pick your family instead of being born Spirit are self-developed Stan and Peggy Northup-Daw-
into it," said Peggy Northup-Dawson, 79, a retired family cohousing communities. son in the courtyard of Gla-
therapist and mother of six who is legally blind. "We rec- The Elder Cohousing cier Circle, communal housing
in Davis, Calif., that they
ognized that when you're physically closer to each other, Network, founded four developed with 10 friends.
you pay more attention, look in on each other. The idea years ago, offers for-
was to share care." profit how-to workshops. General information is
available through a national non-profit,
www.cohousing.org.

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