In Bothell, Songaia’s intentional co-housing is like a commune that actually works
Jun 20, 2016, 5:46 PM | Updated: Jun 21, 2016, 6:43 am
A view of the garden and a few houses at Songaia in Bothell.
Remember the black and white days of America, when kids played outside homes with picket fences until street lights came on, and people visited with their neighbors or stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar?
That sort of safe, wholesome, connected community is what a handful of folks had in mind when they created Bothell’s Songaia Cohousing Community in 1990.
Just minutes from I-405 down a long driveway from the main road, is a sort of utopia — where about 40 people share 15 acres of land, meals, and their lives. It’s not a commune because each person or family owns their own home on the property. It’s a co-housing community.
“It’s a really unusual program,” resident Christopher Wade, a professor at UW Bothell, says. “There are very few communities out there who can do what we’re doing. We’ve actually been seen as a national model for doing this. I mean, not to brag or anything!”
On the property is a common house, where people can hold meetings, hang out, throw parties, and cook communal meals.
“We have dinners Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” Wade explains. “We take turns cooking. So I cook once every three weeks and the rest of the three weeks I just have food to eat. As a single person, that’s actually really fantastic for me. In addition to those four meals, plus a brunch on Saturday, we also have cereals and other things for breakfast and there’s often leftovers from lunch. It costs about $120 [per person] per month. It’s an incredibly affordable way to eat because we do bulk purchases, we have shoppers who actually do comparison shopping.”
In the summer months, half the food they eat comes from a permaculture garden.
“We have a forest, we have a meadow, we have a large organic garden, we have a common house, a big barn, we have goats and bees and various other creatures around,” Wade said.
Residents of Songaia don’t pool their money, but they do pay into a condo association fund. That money keeps everything running and pays for the shared items, such as tools and toys in the kids room and kitchen appliances.
“Within our community we have electricians, we have architects, we have nurses, we have master gardeners, we have professors, auto mechanics,” Wade said. “We have just a huge range of different skills. What that means is that I as an individual, when I’m in my house and I can’t figure out how to do something, I can just go ask somebody.”
“We do most of our own maintenance here instead of relying on other people to do it,” he said. “That way we keep our costs down a lot. It’s also just really nice to be taking care of your own property.”
Besides the efficiency and affordability of sharing resources with many people, the founders created the community to create emotional closeness.
“I have lived here my whole life,” 18-year-old Amelia Barr says. “My parents were founding members of Songaia.”
Barr, who just graduated high school and plans to form her own co-housing community after college, says the kids she grew up with at Songaia are like her siblings and she was pretty much co-parented by all of the adults living there.
“I’ve always really enjoyed living here especially because there’s so much opportunity for learning,” Barr said. “I grew up working in the woodshop and having all these people near me who have a variety of skills. So I now have a very wide skill set. I can work in the garden, I can work in the shop, I am genuinely an effective communicator, I’m intellectual, I enjoy art. We have a ceramics studio, too, on the property.”
The property is designed with kids’ safety in mind. All of the homes, the common house, and the garden were purposely placed in the center, so kids can roam free and never have to cross a road. The cars are parked around the perimeter.
“It also means that you’re walking through the community and you see other people instead of jumping in your car and going off to work and never seeing anyone else in your neighborhood,” Wade said.
Sangaia has very little turnover. Despite the fact that all residents must agree on big decisions, there are rarely conflicts. People truly like living there. It’s a highly organized, purposeful way of living, unlike the stereotypes of chaotic communes from the 1970s.
“People say it’s like family and then I think, you know, for some people that’s not helpful because their family wasn’t all that connected,” 78-year-old co-founder Nancy Lanphear says. “But it certainly is more than neighbors. Not all co-housing is like this and people recognize this about us. We are bonded in a way that is special.”
Sangaia is looking to expand, so if you’re interested in living there, get in touch.
