North Oakland Cohousing

Events

Our Community

We are singles, couples, and child-raising families of different ages and incomes planning to build an urban cohousing community in the East Bay.

We value collaboration, diversity, good communication, and respect: for each other, for the earth, and for all who live on it. Our decisions are made by all, mostly using consensus. We are all equal and we have no hierarchy. We care about environmentally sensitive design emphasizing energy efficiency, sustainable building materials and practices, and living lightly on the earth.

We plan to have a good balance between privacy and community, common meals at least three times a week, and full participation in the work of the community, including decision-making.

Our group is currently looking for a suitable site to build our project.

Members

Jenny Guy has loved the idea of cohousing for a long time, because she wants to walk out her door and bump into people, rather than always having to make plans to get together. (She isn’t the best planner.) She also appreciates that in cohousing she can have a private home, while living in community. Jenny is a retired firefighter and aspiring draftsperson, and has a 23 year old son who lives with her when he’s home from college. She’s an unapologetic TV lover, but likes people more than television.

Tabinda Khan spends time on her homeopathic practice when she's not hanging out with her husband and children. She is pasionate about homeopathy and helping people heal. Of Pakistani descent, she values the ideas of extended family, community living, and cohousing.

Joan Lichterman has dreamt of living cooperatively since she was a young child growing up in and out of her friends’ flats on a block of apartment buildings adjacent to the Chicago River. As a baby-sitter since age 11, she later decided not to start a family of her own—but to have children in her life by being an honorary aunt. Joan lived on a kibbutz for a year between high school and college, and looks forward to living in cohousing. She also looks forward to traveling for long stretches of time after she retires. She works as a writer and editor, and is a long-time social activist.

Jim Lutz has had dreams of living in cohousing for many years, and North Oakland Cohousing will be the manifestation of that dream. He works as a research engineer trying to improve the efficiency of hot water generation and delivery in homes. Jim is the father of two wonderful grown daughters. He currently lives with two cats, two parakeets, one bicycle and no car. Another of his passions is learning to fly. He is easily recognized by his notable beard and is looking forward to serving Sunday brunches for the community.

Don Marti is a free software entrepreneur and journalist, who has written for Linux Weekly News, Linux Journal, and other publications. He co-founded the Linux consulting firm Electric Lichen, which he and business partner Jim Gleason later sold to VA Linux Systems. Don has served as president and vice president of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group and on the program committees for Uselinux, Codecon, and LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, He was a key organizer for Windows Refund Day, Burn All GIFs Day, FreedomHEC, and the movement to free Dmitry Sklyarov. Don is married to Tabinda Khan and has two children, Bilal, 5, and Halima, 1.

Jonnie Pekelny is passionate about community, continuity, friendships, and the creation of inclusive, generous models of intimacy. She is a singer, a writer, a dog lover, and someday hopes to be a sailor. Her vision of communal life has surely been influenced by her childhood in 1970s St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) Russia, with its meandering canals, interconnecting courtyards, clustered park benches, and long-lasting stable social networks Now many of those courtyards are closed off with security gates and the social networks are a bit more mobile, but St. Petersburg still inspires her and informs her aesthetics.

Sherry Sank is a community college teacher in the field of health sciences, and loves the opportunity to combine academics, practical personal learning, and critical thinking into her courses. A lover of redwood trees and the marvels of nature, she is grateful for those fleeting moments of feeling profoundly connected and at peace with the universe. Cohousing creates the community so necessary to thrive in our otherwise fast-paced and out-of-sight/out-of-mind out of touch society. Cohousing is both the rational intention and the fulfilment of Sherry's dream of how to live day to day! Sherry has a daughter she adores and some long-term cherished friends who sustain her in life.