Word: one
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sound like one of those hippie communes that disappeared along with bellbottoms and VW Bugs? It is. Like so many icons of the '60s, they're back now and being marketed successfully to the mainstream. A few still feature free love and organic farming, but what's more common is a form of collective housing built by and for property-owning, car-driving, middle-class former suburbanites...
...Marie has visited enough retirement homes to know that she never wants to live in one. "They're boring," she says. "Everyone is the same age practically. And even the elevators move slowly." But she also doesn't want to live alone, doesn't have family in her area and doesn't want a roommate. That seemed to leave the retired librarian with no options--until she heard about a new community being built near her in Sacramento...
...lived in a commune back in western Massachusetts in the 1970s," says Susan Scott, 52, one of the community's founders. "I thought it was a great way to raise children." But in the 1980s, Scott, like so many other flower children, took a right-hand turn. She became a lawyer for the state of California, got married, bought a house, had a child, got divorced...
Five years later, they got their dream, the 25-unit Southside Park Cohousing. Front porches on the neo-Victorians look out on the surrounding community. Inside, kitchen windows and plate-glass back doors face one another over the common green space, as if two dozen families had one huge backyard. In the central building, residents share a dining room, playroom, mailboxes, laundry room, TV, exercise equipment and a lounge with a fireplace. They take turns cooking the three common meals served each week. Afterward, they relish the opportunity to share cars, swap furniture and get together without planning...
Children like the arrangement because they can roam freely from one friend's house to another. Parents appreciate having lots of help keeping watch, and singles enjoy the companionship. "My kids were grown up and gone," says Susan Barnhill, 57, a Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman, as she rolls her wheelchair in the front-door of a flat especially adapted to her needs. "Here, there are instant friends...