Back to the Commune?

If you can ignore the cliched lead, this New York Times article on a possible trend towards cooperative housing for elders is intriguing. It tries to make a specifically Baby Boomer case for it:

With millions of baby boomers moving toward retirement, gerontologists and developers are looking to communal housing for the elderly with growing interest, building on a generation's mythology that already includes communes and college dormitories.

In co-operative housing, said Janice Blanchard, a gerontologist and housing consultant in Denver, "the social consciousness of the 1960's can get re-expressed." Baby boomers, she predicted, "are going to want to recreate the peak experience of their lives. Whether a commune or a college dorm, the common denominator was community."

While that may be superfically true, or true in spirit, it's pushing it a bit, too. Anyone who lived in dormitories or especially in communes knows how hard-won any sort of community could be. However, it is true that having gone through all this once, boomers may be better equipped to make a go of it the second time around. In any case, it seems more appealing that a lot of the alternatives.

There is a sense that those experimenting with it now--not yet Boomers--also know the cost/benefit. The story quotes one:

"We've all lived through the Depression and war and the big stuff, so we know that things don't always stay the same," Ms. Datel said. "All of us are interested in living."

That pretty much says it. The piece ends with this information:

Glacier Circle and ElderSpirit are self-developed cohousing communities. The Elder Cohousing Network, founded four years ago, offers for-profit how-to workshops. General information is available through a national non-profit, http://www.cohousing.org