The Current - Is cohousing the life hack you've been looking for?

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Rachel Collishaw is ready for a big change. She wants to leave her secluded rural home for something called cohousing. In an uncertain world, she and her husband are ready for a bit more connection. They would exchange their peaceful home for a much smaller condo, shared meals, commons spaces. But, right now, it's just a dream. One they aren't sure they can afford. Can Rachel and others like her find a better way of living with cohousing? Or is it a dream that just isn't ready to take root in Ontario?

Okay, I don't know if you've been noticing this or not, but one of the more surprising trends in pop culture right now is betting. Like if you were watching the Golden Gloves, for example, betting company Polymarket, they ran this ticker of popular bets on who would win the award, like it was like right there on the screen. I'm Alameh Abdul Mahmoud, and this week on commotion, I talked to some culture critics about why betting feels like it's everywhere, why everyone wants to take a gamble on who's going to win an Oscar, on who's going to be the most gullible celebrity of the year. You can find and follow commotion on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The loneliness epidemic is well documented. Parental stress was recently declared a health hazard by the American Surgeon General.

There's a lot going on in people's lives. And so now some Canadians are looking to a form of housing for help with issues like that. It's called co-housing. Some people in Ontario are trying to get their own development off the ground. But as Julia Poggle finds out, a project like this, a co-housing project, is anything but a quick fix. Here is Julia's documentary. Where I grew up in Ottawa, like all the houses have front porches, big front porches that you can sit out on. This is Rachel Collesha.

And so in the warmer months, like everybody's just out on the porch or somebody else walking by, you say hi, you've been engaged. That's the kind of vibe I want, even if it's. It's not a front porch per se. It's like the front porch vibe. She's in her log home in the woods about an hour outside of Ottawa, Ontario. She's in her 50s and lives here with her husband Craig and one of their adult daughters. The house she's talking to me from looks cozy, and I can see the fall light streaming in the window behind her.

But she and her husband have been thinking of giving this place up in hopes of finding that front porch kind of vibe she was talking about. They're considering starting a new life. in something called co-housing. They'd exchange this secluded life for a smaller condo, a common house they'd share, and occasional meals with the group,

and a life more connected to their neighbors in the community. I have one of my friends in my book club was pretty appalled that I was interested in doing this. Her parents were pretty deeply hippies growing up. She just thought it was too much and there's a lot of arguments. But A, I'm really like facilitation is...

For Rachel, the positives of this model of living outweigh the concerns. I think there's lots of things that are worrying in the world at the moment. And I think having more community of any kind is good. Maybe just emotional support for the world. But right now, it's just a dream. But I think the question for us, we kind of have to take a look at our... our finances and see whether it's going to be possible for us. So we're not sure yet.

The co-housing group she's considering joining is called Fiddlehead Commons, and a lot still needs to be done to make their community a reality. They still need land to build on and more members to make it affordable. So the question is, should Rachel take the leap? So I think we have to decide by the end of this month. It's going to be tough. She says I can call her back in a week. That's when she and her husband have to start investing money, or drop out of the group.

A seemingly straightforward choice. But as I follow Rachel, the reality of getting a project like this off the ground in Ontario, well, the journey gets bumpy. But let's roll back. What exactly is co-housing? Anyway. I'm Steve Fick, and we're at a tour from a co-housing. in Old Ottawa East in Ottawa.

We're in a big open room at a kitchen table, the common room for Terra Firma, which was founded in 1997. Two townhouses with six apartments, later seven, converted into co-housing. I grew up in a large family myself. I was just used to having lots of people around. I was a volunteer teacher

in a very remote part of Thailand back in the mid-70s, living in a village. And so I had that experience of village life, of that kind of community. In fact, sometimes co-housing is called, you know, bringing the village into the modern city. It all started when Steve and his wife were looking for new living options

for their family in the 90s. It was a little bleak, actually. We lived in a village outside of Ottawa in the older part of the city where, you know, if you hadn't lived there for several generations, you were. and it was just kind of lonely and isolated. There wasn't much connection. It's the same realization that the founder of co-housing,

Jan Goodman Hoyer, had in Denmark in the 60s. Life just didn't seem to fit after he had children. Work and houses were still set up with the expectation that women would be staying in the home to manage food and children. So he built a community of closely connected homes outside of Copenhagen. hopefully a new format for living, for young and old. He called it co-housing. The theory was children would need less supervision,

as there were many eyes watching them, and cars would be left on the outside of the community. Shared meals would afford family's support during the week, and it all attended to that isolation that Steve was talking about. A report from the London School of Economics found that people involved in community-led housing were significantly less likely to feel lonely. Unlike a co-op where you rent or a commune where you share everything,

people own their homes and a portion of the shared living space. It's all set up like a condo development. And you can sell your home when you like. No one's ever left this community, so that's kind of a testament. Steve shows me around. Whatever needs a larger room. The common space in the basement with a dining table and kitchen where the group shares meals once a week.

classes, dance parties. There's a guest room. Our son is coming to visit for Christmas, so he'll be staying here. Laundry, a sauna. Solar hot water system. We have collectors on the roof.

And in the backyard. Oh, wow. Lots of space. Yeah, it's kind of unusual for the city core. When we moved in, this was six little backyards in various states of neglect. And now it's, I mean, it's wintertime, so you can't see, but the gardens are amazing. Large children's play structure, something Steve's grandchildren often take advantage of.

Rakeha, Steve's daughter, move next door and they can access the backyard. And there's a gate over to there. Ah, you can just come right in. Yeah. He tells me his decision for co-housing has been reaffirmed in many ways over the years. We were all friends with a woman at one point who had traveled to India a lot. She wasn't part of TerraFerma, but she was living. nearby, and she developed tuberculosis. And so she had to be isolated for a year, supervised

medication. So the community in various ways set up a place for her to live across the street and furnished it, you know, brought her meals. And I just thought, that's, if that's me, if that happened, I knew that this community would take care of me. And that's, that's huge. It's huge. I ask Steve about managing conflict in such tight quarters. We follow a consensus decision-making process. So that's the disadvantage quotes of that. It can take some time. But the advantage is you don't end up leaving people left off to the side

because they weren't part of the decision. But living this closely isn't always smooth sailing. I spoke with a man who used to live in a co-housing development in eastern BC. in the Kootenies. It was a big development, over 70 people. He painted a beautiful picture of this community nestled in the wilderness with jam spaces, impromptu coffees, but he also tells me stories of deep divides. A massive debate unfolded when some wanted to put an electric fence around the community. And the pandemic was tough. Different ideas on vaccines sparked challenging conversations. And the work of managing their large garden, chicken coop, committee after committee,

to make decisions through their inclusive decision-making process, it was a lot. He and his wife ended up moving to Smithers to be near their grandchildren. But even after all of that, they decided to move into co-housing again. He told me the good just outweighed the challenges. Steve, says TerraFerma, has also had their fair share of conflicts. But I would say over all these years, we've sort of evolved to the point now that we just know each other.

they're so well, the conflicts are, we might just have disagreements, but the actual conflicts seem pretty rare now. There's households that we have their keys, so if we need to borrow something and they're not home, and there's other households that they wouldn't feel comfortable with that, and that's fine, because we've gotten to know each other. A few weeks after we talk, I call Rachel back. Good. I'm at work today, so. To see if she's made her choice. At the office.

I ask, are you? going to join the group officially? We're going to buy in. I really wasn't sure when I talked to you last time. I'm excited. I'm a little bit, you know, trepidacious. It's a pretty big commitment. They need to put in about $500 right now,

a retainer for their co-housing consultant. But it's the eventual massive cost of building a new home and also the emotional commitment to others in the group. They've become tight. You know, we don't have to just suddenly say goodbye to all these people that we've become friends with and that we really enjoy working with. Fiddlehead Commons is hoping to build in the community of Almont, about 45 minutes south of Ottawa. As I pull into town, I get why.

I'm here right before Christmas, and the town is picture-perfect, a winding main street that descends a small hill, all set next to a river surrounded by forest. I'll just say that more than one Hallmark Christmas movie has been shot here. I pull up to Bernie and Anne's home. I'm Bernie Ranky. Members of Fiddlehead, the co-housing group Rachel is joining. Anne is off at choir, so Bernie welcomes me into their home. A little bit of the woods here.

You know, properties maybe 50 feet in or so, and it's a funny... Big windows show the snowy forest around the house. He's set out cookies and coffee. Five people from the group arrive, including one online from BC. As we are older now into our third trimester, I would say, of our lives, you know, the senior years. I know Anne and I have said, wouldn't it be nice to live together in a community where we can look after each other, you know, and take care of each other? Rachel Pipeson. Yeah, I was just thinking about that open house where there was the one woman who came by and she was like, I've got like four or five neighbors.

and we're all just these single ladies living in our own giant houses, and we've got to take care of all this stuff. Even just like, you know, you're going away, like somebody can feed your cat or somebody can, you know, water your plants. Trying to think about, you know, what could the future look like a little bit differently. If people feel supported in their own home and they have more supports than what they would have if they were living on their own, then you're actually causing less burden on the health care system,

on the other social support systems. Because like, you know, maybe I could drive and to an appointment if she had to have a surgery or, you know, maybe, you know, whatever, whatever it is. Like there's more stuff that doesn't involve money changing hands or people accessing government services if we can support each other for longer. I maybe didn't think I might be working on this in retirement.

And yet it's a project that, We have the time. We maybe have more resources. I'm really hopeful that it will take off. We are going to throw our energy into... With the Morale app, you can sharpen your French skills in no time. You'll have a blast learning with content from Radio Canada. It's easy as Arndor Tro.

Learn French. Have fun. Repeat. Download the free Morial app now. It's not all cookies and dreamy thoughts of the future. There's a lot of Zoom meetings. They have different groups they call circles discussing the nuts and bolts of getting this community off the ground, a design circle, a governance circle, and an outreach circle, trying to recruit new members. The tricky part is what we have to tell them is it's really hard to guess what the cost will be until we have something tangible to cost.

It's all something Linda Cruz, a co-housing consultant, has been trying to help them with. So it wasn't until we had a prospective site and a prospective developing partner that we could actually assemble some of those real costs together and get an assessment. Linda's consultancy is called Ottawa co-housing. She and her business partner, Rosalind Hill, who's an architect, co-founded it about four years ago. She loves doing this work, but it's been a challenge to get these communities off the ground. So the Trump factor has created so much uncertainty in the construction industry. We have a new city plan coming through, but there's so much uncertainty about what's coming through and what's going to stay.

That kind of risk is really tentative for a developer. Land costs have gone up a little bit, but more significantly is all the approvals required, number of professionals you need to be involved in a project. So the standards have gone up quite high. She wishes the government of Canada would do more to encourage co-housing, like what's being done in some European countries. According to UK co-housing, a co-housing advocacy group in the United Kingdom, people in many parts of that country,

and in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, can access money set aside for community-led housing. So Denmark, it's proven so successful that... And in Denmark, co-housing is just an easier option to access. It's increasingly popular for developers to choose to build a co-housing community, and people can just buy in. Rather than co-housing groups planning and designing, and managing development themselves.

But co-housing in Ontario and in eastern Canada, we're just not as evolved. So it's just not as well-known. So it's harder to attract people in that manner. There's no guarantee on it. We're sort of starting more from scratch here. According to the Canadian co-housing network, there are 48 co-housing developments in Canada.

24 are finished. The rest are in progress. And the bulk of those complete are in B.C. A representative from the organization says this is because co-housing is more of a known option in BC. They said success helps spread the word. It can take at least a few years to get a project off the ground. One group I spoke with in the Pita Borough area of Ontario has been working at getting their co-housing development for eight years. And other examples I've found suggest there's good reason to be cautious.

Sure. My name is Jai Jua. I work as an instructor and a convener at the Capilano School of Design. I'm speaking to him from his home in Vancouver. You know, really the idea of being alone and the kind of isolation that might come from that, you know, was something that I really wanted to address. And I feel like maybe the ways that we had community in the past through religion, you know, through church or through community groups, has really fractured a lot. He got interested in co-housing in 2022.

You know, research on the internet, I came across East Van co-housing. Then they had already put a deposit down on land and were in the midst of starting to do some design. So we had completed that process and we had come up with a design that we were incredibly excited by. And I think that was sort of the height of our best times of that co-housing development. Because after that point, things started to fall apart. He says when they finally got a contractor to sign on, the price they were quoted was much higher than what the group had originally forecast. Also, interest rates had jumped. Which caused some of our members to be very scared.

We had set a closed date and that closed date was fast approaching. Even though we had tried to secure all of our financing more than six months ahead of time, it became clear that we weren't being able to meet that date. August of 2023, we were not able to secure the financing and the deal collapsed. He lost a lot of money. A little over $100,000. Yeah, that was very considerable. I mean, obviously, you know, nobody can take a hit like that without, you know, feeling it.

My hope was, obviously, for a different outcome. But I wanted to bring something that I saw a vision for into life. I think that taking risks for something that you believe in is important. And it's always something I've done in my life. So I didn't go in. into it blind. It was certainly a painful loss. You know, would I do it all again? I think that it was worth it in a lot of ways. It was certainly a powerful experience. There are many co-housing success stories in BC, too.

Hi, my name is Chris Fukushima. I'm a lawyer in the military. And I'm a I am a big advocate of co-housing, and I want to see it in more places. Chris, his wife, and three kids are renting a big home on a quiet street in Ottawa. But they don't want to stay here forever. They've recently moved from Courtney, B.C., where they were part of a large co-housing community. Before they found it, the family was at a bit of a loss for where to live. We wanted to have more space. We wanted to have more community.

And it was really hard to figure out what spaces there were that made sense. to what we were looking for. After kids, he and his wife were facing some big questions. How do people actually live? Do you really have to schedule your life, like drive around to find your friends and, you know, schedule playdates and work around activities and get these sources of community and these sources of socialization,

especially for people that aren't, like, extremely social by nature? It's very isolating, right? And then they heard about Creekside Commons. So we wandered her out. and it's just like, it finally clicked, right? It's just like, oh, this is what we were looking for. You couldn't put a name to it before? Oh, my God.

What is this place? Yeah. It's nine acres of land. You drive in, there's a 3,000-foot common house, just single-story where there's a giant kitchen. There's a meeting room, there's a kid's room, guest room, laundry room. And then there's kind of a big outdoor space. I asked his daughter Luna, which she's.

like doing there? Sometimes ghost club. Ghost club is where you try and find ghosts. But we haven't found any yet. Ghost club was just one of the few very important kids clubs there. Yeah, we did nature club. Well, first we met up with Ron, nature Ron. That was a cool thing.

We had 75 people living there, thereabouts, and Ron was just one of the ones who did. have kids in his life, but was an educator. He was a nature educator. Yeah, it was great having, you know, 65 aunts and uncles and grandparents around. It changed everything, really, just about how it feels as a parent to be, like, to just know that that's, that's the default standard that, you know, the kids are welcome everywhere. Like, it's not for everybody. Certainly, there's, there's parts of it that, you know, some people would shy away. away from, but it shouldn't be so far a field that nobody knows it exists as an option.

But Chris was posted to Ottawa. They couldn't find any co-housing available, so we joined a group called Great Rivers, trying to get one built. Like, why couldn't we create something else here? And it turns out there's a lot of reasons because building things is really hard. I don't know. A stark reality, that both the Great Rivers group, that Chris is part of, and the Fiddlehead group. find themselves in. It's quite new, and I'm still a little bit in shock. Craig, Rachel's husband, fills me in.

Be honest, even though we haven't been with the group that long. Since we first talked, Rachel and Craig got a new cost estimation for their future home. And now they realize they can't afford it. Rachel says the costs of their small condo went from around 525,000 to over 600,000. So they've had to drop out. It's devastating. Like, I'm stunned. We do want to add housing to the market rather than taking up some other space.

And it's honestly, a lot of times it feels like we're beating our heads against a brick wall. And like, it's a really worthwhile project. If we have to beat our heads against a brick wall to do it, I think that's great. But it doesn't seem like the possibility is there. So it just makes me say, where is the actual support for housing initiatives? Because I'm not seeing it anywhere. The government of Canada has announced federal subsidies for new affordable homes through a new program called Build Canada Homes. In an email from a representative from housing infrastructure and communities Canada, they told me the program will offer,

quote, flexible financial options, including loans and contributions to support projects that deliver long-term, affordable, sustainability, and community benefit. It continued independent groups can submit proposals, including for co-housing, if they can prove the scale, financing, and long-term affordability. My hope is that maybe some affordable housing initiative can be paired with this project in order to make it affordable for some people, including us. Craig and Rachel can't help but keep up hope that support might arrive, and they won't have to leave the group.

But the affordable housing initiatives seem to be murky, unclear, hard to access. So I don't know how that will happen. The Great Rivers Group, with Chris and his daughter Luna, has also reached a bit of a stalemate. The costs are too high for some members of the group. But Chris and his family aren't giving up. The dream of co-housing is just too sweet to them. It just makes everything better. And I just wish that let's make this not extraordinary.

Let's make this a thing that people can choose. As we talk about how this project might not come to fruition, someone knocks at the door. More often. Oh my gosh. Speak of the devil. It's a few members from their co-housing group, just dropping by for dinner.

Luna runs to give one of them a hug. It's clear housing development or not. This community isn't going anywhere. The same appears to be true for the fiddlehead group, sitting around the living room of Bernie's house. People are slow to leave. I had some trepidation coming in because I didn't know what this group was going to be like and stuff,

and it was really refreshing to meet so many people who are like my group. Yeah, it was really nice. It's about not just this little community that we want to build, but I think Bernie was trying to get out of it earlier, too. It's about improving society as a whole. because once you have a small group of people who can, you know, feel rooted together and feel like they have enough capacity to do something, you can do something and you can affect change in a bigger way. The documentary was produced by the CBC Audio Documentary Units, Julia Poggle, and edited by Liz Hofe. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

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