Knowing Your Neighbour Part of Cohousing Culture

At Prairie Sky Cohousing Co-operative in Calgary, residents know their neighbours and benefit from each other’s skills such as one woman who doesn’t like housework so exchanges her love of cooking with someone who cleans her home.

This is one example resident Joanie McMahon points to when thinking of the variety of talent among the approximately 50 Prairie Sky residents.

“Everybody here has expertise in some area,” she says. “People are offering you their skills just because we live here and we want to help each other.”

As a psychologist, Joanie says if she sees someone having a difficult time she offers to help. Other residents know how to fix plumbing and will come right away when called.

The closeness and proximity to one another makes things easier, says Joanie.

“I raised my kids in a co-operative and I never worried about them, ever. They always had kids to play with, they were always safe, we had a huge space for them to be in, there’s things about it that you just get that here,” she says.

Prairie Sky has 18 units of townhouses and apartments located on three-quarters of an acre of inner city land.

Each unit is self-contained, and a common house provides space and amenities for community gatherings.

There are two types of housing co-operatives in Alberta: continuing housing co-operatives where members do not own and pay a monthly fee (like rent) to cover mortgage and operating costs, and ownership co-operatives where members own their unit with a strata title (similar to condominium ownership). Members own shares and collectively control common areas and facilities in both co-op types.

Prairie Sky is an ownership co-operative, and currently the only operating cohousing community in Alberta.

Resident Allan Merovitz travels a lot and has lived at Prairie Sky on and off since 2004. Currently renting space with a couple at Prairie Sky, he says he knew many of the people living there before it was built and as a musician has performed in the community and watched the children grow up. 

He says the breadth of knowledge that exists amongst the residents is “fantastic.”

“It’s a huge pool of wisdom and knowledge and information,” he says, noting there are people with high levels of academic experience.

“I grew up in a big extended family so this is what it feels like to me, it feels like returning to some kind of sense where there are people with many different opinions, many different ages, and you connect where you connect.

“It takes a community I think for people to find stimulation on many levels, and contentment also,” he says.

—  More Prairie Sky Stories to Come

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