Building work is due to start on a housing project in Sheffield, where around 35 people will live on a shared patch of land.
Members of Five Rivers Cohousing will share a common house, the grounds and even cars on the site in Wisewood on the edge of the Loxley Valley.
But they’ll have also have their own flat for a bit of privacy.
The soon-to-be neighbours plan to cook together a few times a week, and engage in community activities.
Five Rivers member Ben Bowman said the community feel is what drew him to the project, especially after how isolating he found the pandemic.
“Life is really hard in this country right now, and cohousing is about thinking how we can support each other,” he said. It’s about how we can be welcoming and sharing and supportive in hard times.
“I’m really excited about building that community.”
Fellow member Jill Angood explained how the emphasis on sharing resources will help residents.
“We have a climate crisis, and we have a cost of living crisis. Sharing helps both of those things,” she said.
“If we have a laundry, we don’t all need separate washing machines. We can share that equipment, and that would save money.
“There’s definitely an expectation that we will share cars. So that means that people can share the expense of having and insuring one.
“It’s about not buying loads of stuff that duplicates what my neighbours have.”
She said the project was a counterpoint to a “broken housing market where lots of people makes loads of money from housing, and then lots of people can’t get housing.”
“The private rental market is shockingly irregulated,” she said. “There are good landlords, but there are an awful lot of situations where people are insecure.
“So part of what cohousing is about is being good landlords for each other, and for the property we own.
Cohousing projects have been around since the 1960s in Denmark, but are relatively rare in the UK.
Five Rivers will follow in the footsteps of a handful of such initiatives in Sheffield. These include On the Brink Cohousing in Brincliffe and Shirle Hill in Nether Edge.
