@reef-inclusion, this morning I had a short meeting with one of the founders of Cohousing Eikenberg. Cohousing Eikenberg is a cohousing with 18 units, of which 4 are reserved for inclusion.
Here are some notes:
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Ownership: Some inclusive units are owned by Wooncoop, one other by a private investor. The latter is just a well-meaning guy who wanted to provide a place to live for somebody he cares for. All this went without any problem.
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Carrying capacity is a thing. All in all everything works fine in their cohousing, in term of integration and everything. But we should take into account that people who live in the inclusive unit may be less able to “carry” our project, and so we should make sure our group counts enough people who can do that.
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Cohousing Eikenberg worked together with an undergraduate school (HoWest), who helped them to study the problem and the possible solutions. One outcome that he recommended was to make “Happiness Plans”, which are individualised lists of things that the inclusive inhabitants need (care, hobbies, support, …). Once this is done it’s equally important to follow up on these plans. Example: if the plan says the person needs help in the household it’s probably not a good idea to wait it out and see whether they can handle it themselves.
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Subsidies are also a thing. The fact that they had an inclusion project got them an overall VAT rate of 6%, even if the majority of their buildings are newly built.
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Overall conclusion: it can be done and it seems highly rewarding for everbody who is involved, but it is recommended to think everything through, because it’s not self-evident.
