What Is Durham Coho?
What is Durham Coho?
Durham Coho is a community of individuals and families contributing to each other’s lives. We share community meals once a week, enjoy Happy Hour gatherings most nights, and join together to work and play in many ways. Members help each other as they can with, say, airport rides or cooked meals during illness, while respecting individual privacy, and recognizing that we all have lives outside the community. We each contribute as our talents and energy allow to maintain our common space and support our community activities. We take pride in our shared governance model.
What's it like to live in Durham Coho?
Living in Durham Coho offers a feeling of security, a culture of caring and sharing, and an environment of playfulness and synergy. We can walk out of our condos into wide, spacious hallways and talk to friends. Neighbors gather on our top floor terrace or front porch for evening conversations, and we enjoy pop-up dinners, backyard grilling, and shared meals each Sunday.
Beyond our daily encounters, we enjoy movie nights in our media room, community work days, holiday parties, game nights, house concerts, spontaneous gatherings, book talks, and more. We also engage in stimulating meetings to enrich our community life.
Living in the vibrant urban environment of downtown Durham, we can walk to films, plays, exercise clubs and restaurants. Many of us enjoy strolling one block to the Durham Farmers Market, imbibing local beers at a nearby brewery, or listening to jazz or modern folk music in a neighborhood venue.
We care for and provide mutual support for each other, while valuing individual privacy.
Who are we?
Our lively and creative group includes medical, legal and financial professionals, scientists, teachers, academics, social workers, musicians, published authors, craftsmen and artists. We are 37 strong ranging in age from 32 to 85, with 3 children. Many of us are employed while retirees are involved in varied non-profit organizations. All of us are civically engaged with many of us serving as community activists. Most of us have worked and lived abroad and are avid travelers. We are diverse and welcoming.
Award-winning building and gardens
While each of our homes in our 24-unit building is outfitted with kitchens and dining areas, we also share common spaces – a café, a large dining area with well-equipped kitchen, and a magnificent outdoor garden. A workshop and a craft room allow the pursuit of hobbies. Our two guest rooms for family and friends are well used. We can park one car per condo in our underground garage and store our bikes there, too. (Watch our Virtual Tour.)
Just as we care for each other, we care for our facilities. We have access to community resources for advising on maintenance of our condos, and coordinating maintenance and repairs for common building systems.
The many avid gardeners among us have created a spectacular array of flowering plants and trees on our grounds. We also enjoy robust vegetable gardens.
Sustainability features include
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Solar panels and solar hot water heater
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Shared laundry facilities
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Shared guest room facilities
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Highly efficient heating and air conditioning system
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Composting of our vegetable waste
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Sustainable building materials and sun deflecting features
We're involved in Durham
We enjoy participating in the rich life Durham offers, and in giving back to the community through our volunteer work and activism. All of us are civically engaged, and we support local organizations by hosting events, volunteering, and serving as board members. Here's a sampling:
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Durham Central Park
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Black Lives Matter
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Friends of the Durham Library
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Triangle Friends of Farmworkers
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Trees Durham
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Center for Senior Life
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Habitat for Humanity
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Don't Waste Durham
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Durham Public Schools Foundation
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People's Alliance
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You Can Vote
Individual Worth
We respect the talents, labor, commitment, ideas, experiences & needs of each individual.
Community Spirit
We nurture our spirit of community with cooperative, consensus based decisions; mutually sustaining work; life affirming activities; camaraderie; & engagement with the surrounding community.
Vibrancy
We encourage development & expression of passion, playfulness, appreciation, awe, synergy and affection.
Quality Space
We attend to the quality of our physical space, assuring that it is inviting, aesthetically pleasing, physically safe, fiscally sound and green.
Longevity
We consider long term implications of our actions on our health and well-being as individuals, our relationships with one another, our building, and the social and natural environments in which we live.