SUDBURY – The idea of having a co-housing neighbourhood in Greater Sudbury appears to be picking up steam.

On Sunday members of the Sweetfern Cohousing group held a coffee meeting in hopes of introducing the idea to new stakeholders and potential community members.

The group is just in the beginning stages but in the last few months, coordinator Monqiue Fuchs says they’ve been getting more and more people to come on board.

“They’re improving, we have six committed members who have put in their money so that we can hire a consultant and help us with all the steps that we have to go through and to guide us in a more informed way,” said Fuchs. “I think ideally we’d like to see 25 families or individuals and to begin, to set it off, it would be nice if we could get four more families on board.”

Sweetfern is still in the beginning stages and Fuchs says they’ll likely need to recruit members all along as they look to turn this into a reality. 

“I would guess that we’re looking at two to three years as our target date and if all goes well we’ll have this beautiful community with young people, old people, singles, families and inclusiveness and it’ll be adaptable, it’ll have all the sustainability we need,” she said. “You need to find a cohesive group, you have to look at your mission and your values and see what they are and then you decide what they are as a group and then as more people come in – they need to know those values and mission.”

The consultant group they’ve hired that’s helping to guide them through the process is Cohousing Options Canada.

“Most of us have as much privacy as we want, probably too much but we don’t have enough community. There’s not enough connectivity in our life with the people that we care about, or opportunity to do things within 5-10 minutes of where we live so the idea of cohousing is you bring the best aspects of your life and people together to create not just a great home to live in but a great neighbourhood to be a part of,’ said Executive Director Kristopher Stevens.

Stevens believes the idea of cohousing is feasible in a community like Sudbury because it’s 100 per cent community-led.

His group defines cohousing as a collaboratively organized neighbourhood. Residents have their own private homes and band together to share meals, services and facilities, organize activities and look out for one another.

The idea of something like that was a big appeal for Thomas Kozak and his wife who have two small children at home.

“We both grew up in cities where we have a lot of family and community and we thought that was the best way to give our kids that,” said Kozak who is a member of Sweetfern.

“Initially I come from France, I was an activist so human rights and I have that spirit of solidarity  and in Montreal I spent 14 years in a co-op and when I saw the cohousing in Sudbury I thought it was like a co-op because I’m starting to have health issues and maintaining a house and doing everything is hard so I was thinking  to sell the house and rent in a co-op so we share the costs, share the tasks, so it’s not as heavy as maintaining a house,” said Myriam Bals.

Janet Gasparini is a former city councillor who has been looking to start her own retiree cohousing community.

“I’ve been quite surprised with how popular it’s been and how many people connect with me and ask where it is and I think in terms of building a project that moves towards people who are moving towards retirement and onwards – really it’s going to happen quite quickly in the community,” she said. “The actual building and the structure is not the key ingredient – really germane to the work is the sense of intentional community.”

“The first workshop we did we talked about co-care,” said Gasparini.

Sweetfern plans to continue these meet-ups to draw up interest. They’ll be holding a workshop on January 17 called ‘is cohousing for me?’