ChaCo Cohousing Update

You may be wondering what happened next with ChaCo, following the upbeat ending (July 2022) of the BBC documentary. Well…the keys to the first four of our 29 homes were eventually handed over on 14 October and they’ve been trickling in ever since.

As of January, we now have 26 homes released from the contractor. A lot of them need flooring sorted by the residents before they’re ready to move in, although some of us are happy roughing it on dusty concrete floors with makeshift cardboard carpets.

So far, about a third of the homes are occupied, and despite an ever-growing list of defects (we discover them quicker than they can fix them), it’s fantastic living here at last. There’s enough of us around to make it feel community, and we all muck in with shifting literal tonnes of laminate and bamboo flooring with the aid of Dolly the Trolley.

We recently had our first face-to-face on-site meeting of the Construction Task Group and it felt so good sitting in the Plot 25 kitchen and looking out over the place that we’d spent so long dreaming about.  Hence the happy faces!

Eventually you’ll be able to come and check out whether we live up to expectations, but until we’re all living here and we have a functioning common house (maybe February – who knows?) we’ll be holding back on the Grand Opening Celebrations, so maybe in the summer?

So far, it feels well worth the 12 year wait.