Alternative housing growing in appeal

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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.