Iowa’s first cohousing neighborhood an ‘antidote to loneliness’

IOWA CITY — Prairie Hill, where residents solve problems by passing a talking stick, many have solar panels and there’s a ukulele club, may sound like something that could happen only in Iowa City.

But Prairie Hill residents — some of whom have moved from other states just to live there — say the cohousing concept found there is gaining popularity as some Americans decide their lives are richer when shared with others.

“Loneliness is an epidemic with older folks,” said Val Bowman, 76, who relocated from California in 2018 with her husband, John, 85. “This is an antidote to loneliness.”

Ten years after the founders bought an 8-acre parcel off Benton Street southwest of downtown Iowa City, Prairie Hill is developing the last of 11 buildings. Four of the five units in it already are sold, with homeowners expected to move in by June.

It’s been a long and sometimes arduous path for Iowa’s first cohousing neighborhood, which soon will have 37 units and more than 50 residents, but founders and homeowners are proud of what they built.

It takes a village

At 4 p.m. on a Tuesday, Mary Beth Versgrove bustles around the Prairie Hill Common House kitchen. The chili is in the slow cooker, but Versgrove and MaryAnn Reynolds still need to make cornbread to complete the meal for Tasty Tuesday.

Residents take turns making meals and residents show up at 6 p.m. to eat.

Del Holland, a 75-year-old retired teacher, arrives a few minutes early and draws himself a pint of dark Scottish-style beer from a keg cooler in the kitchen pantry. He and others in the neighborhood have been experimenting with brewing beer and kombucha.

“I’ve been in meetings and doing stuff all day and now I don’t have to cook,” he said of the meal, which costs $5.

The pantry also holds an appliance library where residents can check out an electric mixer, ice cream maker and fondue pot among dozens of other large appliances.

Francis Gurtz, 77, who moved from Rochester, Minn., after 30 years at IBM and another 30 years as a piano tuner, stops by the Common House to pick up a key to the tool shop, where residents can borrow just about any tool you could want from a hammer to a drill press. Gurtz was looking for a dolly to help another resident move a piece of exercise equipment.

Sitting at a table in the Prairie Hill dining room is Fiona Popplekeehn, 8, using a stylus to draw on her new tablet.

“I heard the old one went through the laundry,” said Holland, a smile on his lips.

Fiona is one of three children, ages six to 10, who live in Prairie Hill with their families. Bowman, who does sales and marketing for the neighborhood, said she expects more young families will move into Prairie Hill as the neighborhood matures and founding homeowners sell their properties.

“I like that I can walk around the neighborhood,” Fiona said. She and sister, Anya, 10, stop by neighbor’s houses to pet cats or just to say hello. The Common House has a kids’ playroom, but Fiona is more interested in the piano and the pool table.

Planning communities

Back in the 1970s, when planned communities were called communes, Craig Mosher helped create a 200-person intentional community in an abandoned candy factory in San Francisco.

Mosher, 79, moved to Iowa, raised a family, directed social service agencies and served as a social work professor at Luther College in Decorah.

“When I retired at Luther in 2016 and heard there was cohousing down here (in Iowa City), I thought ‘aha!’,” Mosher said.

In the early meetings for Prairie Hill, Mosher met Marcia Shaffer, whose husband of 50 years had died and grown sons had moved out, leaving her with too much house. Mosher and Shaffer married in 2017 and now live on the top level of a shared building in Prairie Hill.

Founders remember the struggle to find land and convince lenders the cohousing model could work. In Prairie Hill, members serve as both the developers of the housing and members of the homeowners association.

They almost gave up in 2013 when they couldn’t figure out where to site buildings on the steep hillside plot without snarling traffic on Benton Street. They met at the site and stood in a circle, passing a talking stick. Suddenly, someone had the idea they build the houses on the bottom part of the parcel, allowing cars to enter and exit from Miller Avenue, Versgrove said.

“At the time, it seemed like an undoable task,” she said. “But when it’s done, it’s such a relief.”

When there’s a conflict in Prairie Hill, members sort through it using sociocracy, a governance system focused on allowing everyone to speak, not just those who are loudest or who have the most seniority.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a common value at Prairie Hill. It starts with building the houses into the hillside to take advantage of the windbreak and heat from the earth. Builders add extra insulation and tape the joints up tight to retain heat and cool air.

“You pay a little more up front to buy a superinsulated house, but you pay less money down the road in heating,” Mosher said.

The one remaining unit for sale is an 800-square-foot, three bedroom house that costs $330,000. That includes use of the 8-acre property and Common House. Association dues cover Wi-Fi, garbage and snow removal for 4 inches or more, and a reserve fund for major expenses, Bowman said.

All the Prairie Hill units have ductless heating and cooling units. These heat pumps have head units mounted on interior walls or ceilings with an accompanying unit outside. The outside part extracts heat from the air, even when it’s cold, and pumps the heated air into the house. In the summer, the system works in reverse.

Because the units transfer energy rather than generate heat, they can use up to 60 percent less energy that most home radiators, energystar.gov reported.

The heating and cooling units are electric, as are all other appliances at Prairie Hill.

At 800 square feet, the average Prairie Hill house is half the size of the average single-family home in Iowa. Other units range from a 500-square foot studio to a 1,400-square foot three-bedroom.

Rather than maintaining a big house for the couple of times a year grown children come to visit, Prairie Hill residents can reserve the Common House dining room for a reunion and one or two guest rooms for visitors.

Serving as a model

There are more than 160 cohousing neighborhoods in the United States, according to a 2018 New York Times article. But they aren’t common.

Holland has been contacted by people in Nevada, Ames and Pleasant Hill who want to know more about how Prairie Hill was developed.

“I’m talking with a family interested in doing another one, in northeast Iowa,” Mosher added.

Sometimes young people are the most keen on cohousing, but they can’t afford to buy a new house with all the sustainability features, Mosher said. Prairie Hill has a program to help provide down-payment assistance to some homeowners.

Cohousing neighborhoods in Boulder, Colo., Madison, Wis., and Sebastapol, Calif., seek to maintain some or all of their homes for low- to mid-income residents.

“It can also work for homelessness,” said Marcia Mosher. “People have bedrooms and there’s a common house.”

7 ways Prairie Hill models sustainable practices

• Building houses into a hillside so the earth can block wind and cut heating and cooling costs
• Skipping gas-powered appliances, from ovens to lawn mowers
• Planting buffalo grass lawns, which need less water, fertilizer and mowing than Kentucky bluegrass
• Adding a bioretention basin with plants to absorb nutrients before sending water into the stormwater sewer
• Planting a prairie that provides habitat for animals and flowers and that feeds butterflies and bees
• Installing LED lighting, which uses 75 percent less energy and lasts 25 percent longer
• Using communal guest rooms, children’s play space, gym and laundry that allows houses to be smaller, reducing building expenses and increasing energy efficiency

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com