HOME FOR SALE and other news

AUGUST 2018
#25

The First Senior Co-Housing Community in Port Townsend, WA

"You're not just buying a house; you're joining a community."

When talking with other 55+ people about living in co-housing, the response one hears is often, “Oh, I’m not ready for that yet.” This infers that senior co-housing is a replacement for a care home of some type.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
We who live in Quimper Village are engaged, interested and participating in a large variety of activities: biking, building, singing, reading, hiking, boating, creating, living!
Why wait to join a vibrant and welcoming community?
Packing and moving is never easy and becomes even harder as we age. The time is NOW to consider making new friends, enjoying new activities, learning new skills and enjoying an atmosphere of support and camaraderie. Why wait?

Dates for the sessions are Saturday August 11 at 1 p.m. and
Tuesday August 14 at 4:00 p.m.

If once a neighbor
always a neighbor you are
where ever you go

Find friendships; share life’s dramas, hurts, tears and joys; think before you complain even when you are upset; share corn on the cob in season; help nurture a garden; borrow or lend an egg; share coffee or tea; bring soup when it’s needed most; gift unscented Kleenex for a sensitive nose; invite people to a celebration for the silliest of reasons; laugh often; listen with your heart and speak little when it’s time; hold a hand in need; watch for times when someone might need a hug; go walking together; suggest lunch out; say ‘hello how are you today’ even when someone might be irritating; help pull a heavy load; see if people might want you to share - or ask them to share skills and talents; ask for and accept help when you need it…It’s all part of being a neighbor. Once you are a neighbor; you are always a neighbor; no matter how far you move from that spot in time. -- PamC

Frequently asked questions about Quimper Village:

Q. Are you affiliated with any political, religious, economic, or philosophical group or ideology?
A. No. We are simply a group of regular local citizens, 55 and over, who want to live in a neighborhood in which the residents know each other. The only organization we’re associated with is the Co-housing Association of the United States. While one member of the household must be at least 55 years old, QV does not does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, age, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status. We welcome, encourage and enjoy diversity.
Q. What if I don’t feel like socializing all the time?
A. Very few of us feel like socializing all of the time. In co-housing, there is no expectation to be social at any particular time. Co-housing offers the choice of enjoying the privacy of your own home (and in common areas that are not currently being used by others), or enjoying whatever happens to be going on in the neighborhood. How much you socialize is up to you. Many co-housers in other places create their own signs or symbols to let their neighbors know if they would prefer not to talk at the moment. Of course, those of us who choose to live here do so because in general, we enjoy getting to know one another. Co-housing is actually very popular with introverts, because there’s no “work” required to socialize; it’s “built-in.”
Q. If I buy a home and decide to sell later, how would this work?
A. Legally, we are a condominium association. So you would sell your home just like you would sell any other condo, except that Quimper Village members would go over our policies and practices with a buyer concerning how we operate as a co-housing group. As the owner, you would decide on price, etc.
Q. What if I don’t like all my neighbors?
A. Well, don’t be surprised — would you expect to like every single person in a group of 28 households? There will naturally be some people with whom you get along better than others. But when that person who slightly annoys you picks you up at the airport or helps you haul your groceries to the house, he or she might suddenly not seem so bad. You may even grow to like people whom you had earlier judged poorly. Some say that co-housing is the biggest personal growth experience you’ll ever have.
Q. How would 28 households make decisions?
A. Most co-housing decisions are delegated to smaller teams, who create proposals that the large group either approves or sends back for modification. From animal policy to landscaping choices, consent is the most common decision-making method. Consent decision-making requires that all voices are heard, which often results in more information being considered. This often prevents the poor decisions for which conventional Homeowner Association Boards are notorious. It also creates more buy-in to the final decision. A consent decision is one that everyone can live with — it often includes modifications made by those who did not agree with the original proposal. These collaborative solutions can have an elegance and creativity that is only possible through collective wisdom.
Q. What will the Home Owner Association (HOA) dues to be, and what will they include?
A. HOA dues include water and sewer; exterior lighting; Common House and common area (e.g., workshop, building exterior) utilities, maintenance, and common area insurance; recycling and garbage removal; and reserves for potential future repairs. Currently they are in the $350 - $450 range per household per month. The amount partly depends on how much maintenance we want to do ourselves, versus hiring others to do so.

Summer (and cool grandkids) activities:
Malia and Claire show off their bookmarks (top),
Inge, Malia, Irene, Bill, Claire and Nancy enjoy each other's company while pressing flowers for bookmarks (center); lip-synching with Kayla, Hula with Malia.

INGE-LISE’S BED

In Greek myth, Procrustes’ bed was a set length and he trimmed or stretched his guests to fit. Inge-Lise had her bed trimmed to fit her. Her Danish Modern California King ran 10’4” wide with its teak (per Inge), maple (per Ivar), laminate (per Mack) headboard and floating night tables and was also six inches longer than a standard king; fine for her and Paul when they lived in a 2000 sq. ft. house but too big for a QV bedroom. She loved that bed and was not willing to give it up. Her son, Peter, counseled her to sell it, believing it was a most sought-after model and would bring in $3,000 or more.
“No.”
With her husband gone to assisted living, she felt the bed could be trimmed to fit QV and her. She approached Ivar, the head Woodchuck. Could he cut the bed into a single sized bed and still maintain the features of its beautiful headboard? Ivar went to her Kala Point home and took a look.
“Hmm.”
He took pictures of the bed. Then Inge’s son dissembled it and stored it in Inge’s QV garage.
Ivar showed the photos to Mack. “Wadda ya think?” Mack scratched his head and said, “Let’s think about it.”
The dissembled bed spent several months in Inge’s garage. Then Ivar (below) approached Mack again. “Wadda ya think?”
Mack scratched his h

ead and said “Let’s put it back together and study it.”
A heavy load to the workshop and a heavy job of reassembling the bed. Then they looked at it from the front, then from the left side, then from the right. They looked at it from the back and then from an aerial view.
“Hmm.”
“Well?”
Together, they decided to make a twin out of the California King.
“I guess it turned out to be a headache for them,” Inge said.
The two Woodchucks pondered how to reduce the headboard from 10’4” to 7’4”, saving the floating night tables at each end and a nice vertical design in the center. They also would reduce the width and length of the bedframe.
They cut one and a half feet from each end of the headboard and reattached the floating night tables. “We couldn’t use the table saw because the headboard was too wide,” said Ivar, “so we used hand held skill saws. One blade wasn’t cutting well so Mack bought a new blade. Even so, our cuts weren’t as straight as we wanted, so when we assembled our creation, we had to use a little filler in some gaps. Finally, the boards received three coats of ProFin to cover up scratches.” They reduced the bedframe to fit a 39” wide mattress and joined it to the headboard.
“Mack and I worked well together,” Ivar asserted. “He handled most of the power tools and I measured and figured out how to put things together.”
Mack said, “Ivar and I didn’t always agree...but we’re good at discussing and compromising. The result was better than either alone would have come up with.” He added, “I did enjoy it and am more or less proud of the end result.”
Inge said she was ecstatic with the result. “It achieved everything I wanted.”
Teamwork. Neighborliness. Problem-solving. Creativity. Co-housing. --JimD

QV HISTORY - CHAPTER FIVE

I’m not building a custom house. I’m building a custom community.
—Pam D, QV Member

The Great Securities Enterprise — or how we discovered we were boldly going where no cohousing had gone before!!!
We who would be Quimper Villagers thought it was all about building affordable houses for seniors to live in a pleasant, supportive community, right?

To save money we would try to build it ourselves, with no intention of trying to make a profit. We’d use a little non-profit company like a church or Creature Scouts to build our houses. Corporations are people these days, so let’s call her “Betsy,” OK Soon she was born: Betsy LLC. Simple, right?

We began telling people about having Betsy build this neat place for seniors to live nice lives without bothering their relatives very much at all. Inquiring minds wanted to know more. Soon we were talking to people all around the West. But one day our lawyer was reviewing some papers for us and began to get Bad Feelings. She told us that perhaps we needed to talk to another kind of lawyer.

So we met the Dark Side. Turns out that the WA Legislature recently had waved its smurf wand and made a few changes in State law, just to make it all better. Among the little “improvements”: how small securities are handled in WA State. Oops!

Now, securities are not like stocks. Back in 2008 or so we learned that banks and brokers do all kinds of tricks with stocks and it’s all good, right? Yeah, well, everybody messes with stocks. But securities are different: you don’t mess with no securities, not nohow! The Keystone Kops police stocks, but Delta Force monitors securities. Delta Force be serious dudes, man, they gots drones, dark dungeons and . . . well, if I told you any more I’d have to turn in my Secret Code Ring and .38 automatic water pistol.

Our securities law specialist, one wise gent, told us that, yes, Betsy probably came under the revised security law. To sell “real estate” you must have actual land/houses, not “promises to build.” He warned us to stop everything and hide in a cave for a few days while he scouted around to see if there was any point in us ever coming out again. Eventually we declared Betsy an orphan and adopted a new “security” kid named Townsend Meadows, which sounds sorta stuffy. But under WA State securities law, we couldn’t tell anybody about Townsend Meadows Cooperative (TMC), a.k.a. Quimper Village unless they were legitimate citizens of the Peoples Republic of WA State. If we did the WA Delta Force would grab us for rendition to a black site in some hell-hole like Sweden and make us eat pickled herring.

Living with that restriction was tough, and inhumane: we had to dismantle our California Refugee Resettlement Program. We put this, or something similar, on everything we sent out (to WA State residents only, of course):

Purchase of a home in Quimper Village is offered and available only to individuals/couples whose principal residence is the State of Washington and who have obtained membership in Townsend Meadows Cooperative by way of its Offering Memorandum.

It’s mostly paperwork. We had to carefully restrict advertising to WA State areas/outlets, and to be sure that everyone we talk to is a WA resident. There was one truly onerous task: writing, maintaining and continually updating the TMC Offering Memorandum. If we changed anything (door knobs? patio size? garage doors?) that might “materially” affect the value of the security (i.e., our future homes), poor Carolyn had to rewrite the OM, and other members of the Finance & Legal Team (and our lawyer) had to review it - eventually, documents, appendices and all, it came to over 120 pages!

But maybe it was indirectly useful as a membership filter. Everyone who wanted to “invest” had to sit and listen while Carolyn or another Finance Team member pretty much read it to him or her, page by page. You could drink coffee or tea during that painful duty, but nothing with a little umbrella in it. It was very informative and all that, but also sort of like Marine boot camp: only the seriously interested survived!

But that’s all legal stuff. Townsend Meadows (security!) built our homes and sold them to us (for cash or bank mortgages). WhenTMC sold the home #28 (six months before construction was completed) and the legal dust settled, TMC ascended into Legal Heaven and Betsy emerged from Security Dungeon, free, free at last! We are now Quimper Village, actual real estate with our own HOA rules, with all 43 Members on the Board of Directors and movie night on Tuesdays. With popcorn.
And, Washington residency is no longer required to purchase a home in QV.

Co-Ho Blues with apologies to Sam Cooke
Sung to the tune of “Saturday Night Blues”

Chorus: Another Saturday Night and ain’t I got no free time,
Thought I’d retire, have a hobby or two
Now how I wish I had no meetings to go to,
I’ve got the Co-Ho Blues.

I joined the village a while ago, hoping to play some bridge
But tonight it’s the movies, then it’s something groovy
That’s why I’m feelin’ unhinged.

Chorus

Friends are goin’ out on the town, invited me along.
An’ the Social justice workgroup, is working up a dance troupe
And fixing all that’s wrong.

Chorus

Yesterday was social team, finance and legal next,
And coordinating team is like a bad dream
That’s why I’m feeling hexed.

Chorus

Poetry and Yoga, then Tai Chi or Mahjong
It sounds so sublime, maybe some other time
Tonight I’m writin’ this song.

Now it's Saturday Night, there’s no time to get old
Tried to retire, have a hobby or two,
Now how I’m so busy, it's makin’ me dizzy
I’ve got the Co-Ho Blues. ---Cindy

Finland’s BLUE WILDERNESS

From Seattle, the plane followed the Arctic Circle heading toward Helsinki, crossing 10 time zones. After landing, my daughter Kim and I traveled north for 300 miles by train, then another 2-3 hours by bus to finally arrive in Kuhmo, the ‘blue wilderness’ of my maternal ancestors. Blue wilderness describes the blue skies, blue lakes and blue-grey mist rising in the forest, totally embracing and quietly peaceful.

Knowing that I am related to many of Finland's oldest families sparked an interest in learning about my great grandmothers -Erikka, Elin, Markett - and their northeast Finland homeland going back to the 1600’s.

We were just in time for the Juhannus (summer solstIce) celebration and feast. But it was the ancient ritual bonfire at the beach (see photo below) that fulfilled my midnight dream of long ago, a collective memory.

Lentua village in Kuhmo is now a forest reserve. We walked through blooming blueberries and cloudberries, and visited a hunting camp with a building to hang an elk, a smoke sauna and a separate steam sauna.

Back on the bus and train, we headed to Tempere for Finnfest USA, another reason for this trip. The university and art museums provided many cultural sights and events. For me, an interesting insight was learning about the maintenance of Finland’s folk life as a strength.

Helsinki was our last stop where we toured the city's sights, then boarded the plane for home.

A joyful summer solstice with the inclusion of ancient rituals near a lake and in the forest, along with happy young people, is a return to our beginnings. --Betty