Cohousing SF:Neighborhood Organizing for Sustainable Living

Join Betsy Morris and Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coaches and EBCOHO organizers, with area community seekers and residents of an East Bay Cohousing neighborhood, to together prepare a community meal/BBQ at Berkeley Cohousing, now celebrating over three decades as a community, with a rare short-term rental available. And get a preview of Saturday's East Bay Cohousing Crawl and Sunday's Cohousing & Beyond Summit in Sacramento.

At an (un)Common Meal, we take over a cohousing Common House kitchen on an "off" night and prepare our own Common Meal together; some members of the community may join us to eat it. The shopping will already be done, but we'll get to cook and clean and learn together, discovering the joys and challenges of feeding a group of diverse humans with unique needs, and cleaning up afterwards.

We charge dinner guests to cover the cost of ingredients, but we are delighted to be able to offer this event FREE to recipients of SNAP/EBT food assistance, since we know this is a challenging time and we want to support you through it -- that's what community is all about.

Schedule for the evening:

5-5:30 PM Cooks arrive and start prepping dinner, under the guidance of a community member (we take care of the meal planning & shopping in advance)

6 PM Cleaners arrive and get to visit a home or two.

6:30 PM Break to eat and share about our community living and searching experience

7:00 PM Cleaners start cleaning, cooks continue discussion
(cleaners can rejoin when they're done)

8-8:30 PM Wrap-up and go home.

Note: Everybody is either a cook or a cleaner. If you arrive too late to cook, you're a cleaner. Don't worry if you haven't cooked for a group before, we'll have plenty of experienced hands on hand, and the right tools in the Common House kitchen to make it fun and easy.

We'll take turns, with one group cooking while another socializes, take time to eat together, and then the cooks get to relax while the cleaners cleans up.

Advance registration required, so we can shop and prepare. We always use local organic ingredients to the extent available, and offer alternatives to accommodate a wide variety of dietary needs.

Led by East Bay Cohousing, the regional umbrella network for cooperative community living. The morning discussion at Berkeley Cohousing includes a preview of the Cohousing and Beyond Summit the next day in Sacramento.

Communities on the crawl include:

• Berkeley Cohousing, which has a rare short-term rental available and a home for sale nextdoor.
• Golden Gate Cohousing (unconfirmed), an all-rental affordable community near Emeryville
• Radish, an innovative coliving/cohousing blend in North Oakland.
• Pleasant Hill Cohousing, doing their last in-person tour of the year
• Kingfisher Cohousing, which has two long-term rentals currently available in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland.
• (unconfirmed) Earth Weave Collective, pioneering legal Tiny Homes on Wheels in a village in West Oakland
• Richmond Tiny House Village, Farm and Community, a nearly-completed neighborhood serving homeless youth.

And we're working on scheduling more, you can pick and choose throughout the day and find your own way by carpool/rideshare, BART, and/or bike.

Note: The listed location is where the event starts, and will only be open 9:30 am til 11:30. Please do not come in except during listed hours. Please RSVP on this page or on the East Bay Cohousing event listing to get sent details on when and where other communities will open their doors.

BYO transportation. At the starting spot, please don't use the parking lot; bicycle parking is available to the right of the Common House and the AC Transit 88 bus stops out front (North Berkeley BART is 5 blocks away).
No pets, service animals, or smoking onsite. Access to the Common House requires climbing three steps (we're working on getting a ramp in soon!

RSVP here to indicate interest, but your spot is not secured until you get a ticket via the Cohousing California website:
https://www.calcoho.org/cohousing_and_beyond

Come get a preview this Thursday at the small-group participatory (un)Common Meal at Berkeley Cohousing, and warm up with the East Bay Cohousing Crawl all-day Saturday, with visits to many area communities at specific times throughout the day.