Greek Village Cohousing
Is Our Cohousing Community Right for You?
Find out by taking this questionnaire!
If you can answer "yes" to 8 or more of these questions, you will likely enjoy planning and living in our Greek Village cohousing community.
1. Do You Like the Idea of Sharing Your Time With Your Neighbors?
Do you like the idea of friendly, supportive neighbors, as well as being a supportive neighbor to others? We are an "intentional community," and this means we have deliberately chosen to share time together, collaborate to manage our community together, cook and eat together, and share life's celebrations together.
In order to do all of this, you will need to be present. Alongside your neighbors, you will contribute a few hours each week to designing and developing our community. After move in, you will contribute a few hours a week to community activities like cooking and cleaning up after meals, to managing our community together, and to sharing celebrations and spontaeous fun. This is not something you can do for your community easily if you consider us your second home or your vacation home. We are not a vacation or second home commmunity.
Permanent residence in Greece, or Greek citizenship, is a prerequisite for living in our village. Europeans will make the transition to living full time in Greece fairly easily. NonEuropeans will be able to apply for and receive all the benefits of becoming a Greek permanent resident. They will use the Golden Visa or other permanent residency program (see our "Greek Visas" page).
We value our private lives and plan for robust lives outside our community and in our private homes, but we value being there for one another as well. Being part of our community contribution program means we all have a role and feel a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves.
Do you have experience working in a community setting or belonging to an intentional community? Please let us know by answering the questions HERE.
2. Are You Comfortable Paying Your Share of a Generous Common House in Addition to Your Home?
In addition to the price of our own fully appointed private homes, you will be paying for your percentage of our land as well as your percentage of generous and shared Common House. The Common House is the nicest building in the community, and it also allows us to live more sustainably by sharing resources. It is not a "clubhouse" but an extension of our own homes. This Common House will include a kitchen & dining "Great Room," library, lounge with fireplace, gym workout room, aerobic yoga room, Coworking space, meeting room, game room, art space, small Zoom studio and music practice room, workshop maker space, and guest rooms.
We also plan for a soccer field, basketball court, pool, extensive shared common house gardens and small individual gardens, and pickball court.
Thus, the prices of our homes run from €200k- €450k, but this price also includes your percentage of the generous Common House - an extension of your home. This price also includes your percentage of our commonly owned land beneath our village. People who choose cohousing want private homes but value living a smaller footprint and sharing resources in our Common House. For instance, we will have many guest rooms in our Common House, so you will not need to pay for empty rooms for guests in your own home. We will also have a workshop, so you will not need to store tools in your home.
3. Do you like the idea of cooking delicious Mediterranean food together and eating meals with your neighbors several times a week?
One of the key characteristics of cohousing is shared cooking and meals several times a week. We plan to do this around 4 times a week. Would you be willing to be on a cook team several times a month to help cook or clean up from a community meal? Would you enjoy shopping for a community meal with a neighbor at a local farm or fish market? If you are not into assisting with gardening, shopping, cooking, or cleaning for shared meals, are you willing to put about 8 hours each month into management tasks to help manage our community collaboratively?
4. Do you like the idea of living with people of all different ages?
Our mission is simple- "To create a multigenerational cohousing community in Greece." This mission means that we must be willing to financial prioritize multigenerational needs.
Spending for multigenerational needs means prioritizing our village development spending for these features before eco features: "equity by design" features (mobility accessible and aging in place design features such as elevators, walk in showers, lower counters, etc ), strong internet for remote workers, and beautiful safe spaces for children and teens. We strongly value living sustainably, and we will try to design and develop with all solar and other eco features, but we are fist and foremost designing for multigenerational needs and social needs. In cohousing, we believe if it does not work socially, then no one will enjoy living a low-impact life and they will leave, so we first spend to ensure our multigenerational and social needs are met.
Are you willing to prioritize your investment monies for our multigenerational community thrives even if the feature does not benefit you personally?
5. Do you enjoy living with diverse, talented, interesting people?
Cohousing is different from many intentional communities in that it is not grounded in shared ideology other than a commitment to a mutually supportive and caring community that shares resources in our common house in order to live more sustainably.
Our members have different religions, political opinions, ideologies and priorities. This diversity enriches our community, and it means that people stay longer in cohousing communities because the community can accommodate their changing priorities and values over their lifetime- as long as we are all committed to caring about one another and working things out when there are challenges. We are about the people and their relationships, not a homogenous political or religious ideology that you might change in time and then leave behind.
Can you collaborate with neighbors that may have different views or priorities than you do? We have meat lovers and vegans, atheists and devout, vaccers and anti-vaccers, people who value compost toilets and people who want luxury traditional toilets, people who prioritize gardening and people who prioritize giving to the local community. These different priorities and passions makes for a lively and richly diverse experience that you can grow and change with. However, regardless of our ideological and priority differences, we have a core shared set of values. We are all equally very committed to our central values of caring about each other and working together and contributing regularly to our community. We all care about living more sustainably by sharing resources in amenities and our Common House. We all value cooking and eating together several times a week.
6. Balance of Privacy and Community:
Do you see yourself as someone who likes privacy but feels the need for easy access to connections, collaboration, and fun? We are the best of both worlds. We create and honor private homes and small backyard spaces, but we focus mostly on specific designs for easy access to neighbors and activities right outside our front door.
7. Design for Children and Connection:
Are you willing to do without a garage attached to your house? Our cars are on the periphery, and we enter our community on pedestrian pathways so that our children can play freely and safely and so that we have moments of simple connection as we go about our day.
8. Outdoor Living:
Would you enjoy common outdoor gardens, outdoor cooking, and outdoor activities? We love to spend a lot of time outdoors. Our land is held in common. We are very committed to water conservation and may include permaculture in our landscape design. We are interested in gardens and a farm to table culture. We plan to spend lots of time outdoors having fun.
9. Community Management, Sociocracy, and willingness to train:
Do you regard yourself as a problem solver and enjoy contributing to group solutions? We manage our community together and have routine meetings on a monthly and even weekly basis to ensure our community is running smoothly. However, you will find in the many books and articles on the topic that meetings are not remotely the same as your past experience, and we have very little to nothing to do with the traditional HOA type organization in the U.S. Are you willing to go through training about our Sociocractic way of managing together? Are you willing to participate in a workshop on nonviolent communication?
10. Continuing eduction and personal growth:
We also engage in routine continuing education on conflict resolution, non violent communication, and other cohousing skills. Do you have an interest in learning about sociocracy or permaculture? We seek people who understand cohousing and self management is also a personal growth experience that most find so valuable that there are waitlists to get into many cohousing communities around the world.
11. Desire to live more sustainably:
Do you value conserving energy and being more energy self sufficient? Do you feel you have the resources to pay for the extra costs that green materials, solar panels, geothermal heating, or grey water systems, water harvesting, permaculture, and other things that will enable us to live more sustainably? While we all value these things, in order to live this value we have to have the resources to pay to integrate them into our village design.
Do you want to consume less “stuff” and reduce waste through sharing and cooperation in daily life? We are part of the sharing economy for sustainable living, and we invest our money and time in order to realize these goals.