As a small group, we began considering building a cohousing community approximately 4 years ago. Little did we realize that this was going to be much less a sprint than a marathon.

 

For many of us, our first introduction to cohousing was Windsong, an intentional community that was started in Langley over 20 years ago and continues to be a success today. We hope to create something of the same, with Compass Cohousing.

 

We started with a small group of people. Most of us knew very little about the complexities of cohousing, but we were eager and willing to learn. The last four years have been a tremendous educational experience. Our group grew to about 20 members. We brainstormed many ideas. A wealth of ideas and a tremendous eagerness was never in short supply. The issue was always finding an appropriate piece of land. Most cohousing groups struggle with this. We looked at many pieces of property and communicated our interest to the planning department at the Township of Langley. Unfortunately, the land proved to be unaffordable or incompatible with the Township's planning objectives. The difficulty in finding land meant that some of our members had to make other housing arrangements or became discouraged. Regardless, a core group continued working toward making Compass Cohousing a reality.

 

After numerous frustrations, we decided a better strategy I might be to approach the Township of Langley to determine whether or not they had any property in their inventory that they deemed appropriate for a cohousing development. Fortunately, we got lucky. We believe that this 'luck" was, in part, due to us developing strong relationships with Township councillors. We spent many hours discussing our goals with them and found that our ideas were met with a very favourable reception.