Author Archives: CoHoWM

Another mostly quiet month, with a little action towards the end of the month. Towards the end of the month we met up with Black Country Cohousing (BCCH), to share thoughts. Visions are similar, in that we both want to create inclusive groups. BCCH is particularly keen to cater to disabled people and folks inContinue reading “April 2023”

Fairly quiet month. We re-established contact with Black Country Cohousing, who are interested in learning from our experience. I’m looking forward to a face-to-face meeting after the Easter Hols. We took our proposed banner out to Handsworth High Street, outside the library, to get some feedback on its artistic merits, intelligibility and appeal. Some greatContinue reading “March 2023”

Well, a very belated Happy New Year to everyone! Fairly quiet start to the year. Chats with a couple of people who are interested in what we’re doing. One a Nigerian student who is very interested in the Mutual Home Ownership Society (MHOS) model pioneered by Lilac in Leeds. We were able to help himContinue reading “Jan, Feb 2023”

A quiet month in the lead up to holiday festivities. We attended a forum held by the Confederation of Co-operative Housing (CCH) about new Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) that the Governmental body, the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) will be bringing in in April 2023. Large providers of social housing (> 1000 homes) need toContinue reading “December 2022”

One of us went up to Sheffield (by train) to attend a set of presentations made by architectural students of Sheffield University. The program is run by Sam Brown, who was our advisor on behalf of West Midlands Urban Community Homes (wMUCH). It was a surprisingly entertaining day. The students are divided into 18 groupsContinue reading “November 2022”

We attended the Midlands Sustainability Conference in Birmingham, to see if we thought it would be good for CoHoWM to have a stall there next year. A good conference, and many folks we chatted with through the day were intrigued by the idea of cohousing. In the end, we concluded that it would be betterContinue reading “October 2022”

Hi folks, An interesting month. Tangentially, one of us attended a workshop on using Open Data for Green purposes. Fun. We also attended a briefing on the implications of GDPR (privacy law) for housing associations. Had another chat with someone interested in cohousing – and coincidentally bumped into a few former members at the sameContinue reading “September 2022”

August was a quite month. We had a chat with someone who was interested in the idea of cohousing, had a couple of business meetings, and did a little work on updating our prospectus!

June We attended a seminar put on by the Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust (HACT), about an upgrade to a tool that allows HAs to calculate the social value their organisation brings to the table. This is useful when applying for grants. We attended a BuildIt expo down in Bicester, where we talked with Barbara JonesContinue reading “June and July 2022”

Hi folks, On Thursday, 7 July, we’re holding an event to explain about cohousing in general, and Cohousing West Midlands in particular. Event is by Zoom, from 7:30 – 9:00 pm, and tickets are available from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cohousing-west-midlands-tickets-373523748587. We look forward to seeing you and hearing from you.