Rendering by Rooted NW architects Caddis Collaborative |
CoHousing Solutions has been working with Rooted Northwest since they got their land under contract in 2019. Not just a cohousing neighborhood, Rooted NW’s founding households set out to use clustered homes to save farmland and open space in the quickly growing Seattle region. In 2020, Rooted’s founders purchased a 240-acre family dairy farm just outside of Arlington, WA.
“At its heart, Rooted Northwest is a project seeking to preserve agricultural land,” says Dave Boehnlein, permaculturist and one of the community’s founders. “Can we build a cohousing neighborhood where people who support local agriculture come together with farmers to create a resilient and caring community life?”
The future residents and current farmers of Rooted NW share a meal in their temporary common house on the land. |
Existing zoning would have allowed 70 homes on five to ten acre lots, and even with the County’s Rural Cluster Subdivision Ordinance that would have used up most of the farmland. While the County loved the idea they proposed of clustering those 70 homes in two cohousing villages, leaving more than 85% of the land for farming, open space, and forest, they did not have a way to process such a proposal. With the pandemic slowing everything down, it took several years for the County to develop a new Rural Village Housing Demonstration Program Ordinance to give them a way to process the Rooted application. And then another year-and-a-half to actually process the application. But finally, in December 2024, Rooted NW has an approved Preliminary Platt for two clustered cohousing communities saving over 200 acres of farmland and open space. The community is thrilled and moving forward to grow their buyers group, find a development partner, and get under construction.  This is such an important model. It doesn’t have to be housing versus farms if we are just willing to cluster our housing more closely, we can actually use housing to save farm land. “Rooted Northwest addresses so many of our current societal issues: saving farmland, helping new farmers get started, and creating housing that is both more socially and environmentally resilient. This model is the way people lived for centuries before our car-oriented development models took over,” says project cohousing consultant Katie McCamant, president of CoHousing Solutions. “Each of us can make a difference in how we want to see our world evolve in the choices we make for ourselves, whether that is the food we buy or the housing we purchase.” In the meantime, there are already 14 small regenerative farming enterprises working on the land featuring fresh veggies, flowers, medicinal herbs, pigs, chickens, and more. Three of the farm ventures are joining forces with a collaborative CSA. Find out more on their website, and email Katie at kmccamant@cohousing-solutions.com to learn about investment opportunities. |
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