Alternative housing growing in appeal

The real estate market in the Washington region is a superstore, a virtual Home Depot of housing. Real estate agents serve as the cheery floor attendants who direct buyers to the appropriate aisle or to subtly steer them toward their cultivated inventory of condominiums, town houses and single-family homes.

Of course, there are those customers who just wander around the store unassisted and perplexed — but undaunted. They know what they came for, but, in meandering, might welcome options they happen to find.

One interesting housing option in the region is co-housing, a broad category that often seems to be confused with apartment-style cooperatives or to conjure images of communal living somewhat short of 1967’s Summer of Love.

Co-housing’s advocates want to set the record straight.

“This is not a commune, and there is nothing radical about it,” says Kevin Oliveau, founder of Catoctin Creek Village, a 164-acre co-housing development outside the Loudoun County community of Lovettsville, across the Potomac River from Point of Rocks, Md., and MARC commuter train service.

Mr. Oliveau says co-housing is more of a “tweaking of the subdivision concept to re-create a small-town feel.”

The Co-housing Association of the United States (www.cohousing.org) defines co-housing as an alternative to “the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no-one knows their neighbors.” The communities are managed by their residents, designed to foster community living and feature individual dwellings “but also extensive common facilities,” the organization says.

Co-housing started in Denmark in the 1960s and first appeared in the United States in the 1980s, and the Co-Housing Association reports that there are some 100 co-housing communities in North America.

The organization offers state-by-state links to co-housing community Web sites.

There are several co-housing communities in the region.

Catoctin Creek Village, for example, includes 18 homesites. Ten sites are currently available, most ranging from 0.31 acres to slightly more than an acre. There is one 10-acre lot.

Mr. Oliveau says the structure of the community is that of a self-governed homeowners’ association with common ownership of some 115 acres of woods and meadows, a mile of Catoctin Creek frontage, a small lake, a large “bank” barn, and a restored 200-year-old farmhouse that serves as common house for community activities and meetings.

Home and lot costs range from the high $500,000s to $1,500,000. The community features custom-built homes by Proximity LLC.

Not all co-housing offerings are rural, but one shared characteristic of co-housing communities in the area is community or “common” houses.

For example, Eastern Village (www.easternvillage.org) is a 56-unit co-housing community in a renovated 1950s-era office building near the downtown Silver Spring arts-and-entertainment district. The community’s Web site says it offers “a large community dining hall for shared meals, community living room, kids playroom, game room, yoga room, library, workshop, hot tub, green roof and much more.”

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