1. You find existing and forming cohousing communities in every state, see the directory on this site:http://www.cohousing.org/directory.

2. To find forming community groups, cohousing units for sale or rent, or cohousers seeking housemates in existing communities, see “Marketplace,” the classified ads in this website

3. For dates and itineraries of bus tours of existing cohousing communities in a given region, see the Tours section of this site:http://www.cohousing.org/events

4. To see visiting from the community’s rather than the visitor’s perspective, and to get a sense of what it’s like to take a cohousing bus tour, see “A Tour is Worth A Thousand (or More) Words,” by Joani Blank, in the October, 2004 issue of Cohousing magazine

5. You can learn much by talking with members of cohousing communities by attending regional or national cohousing conferences. The national conference is sponsored by Coho/US.

6. For a good article about how one woman found and joined her cohousing community (moving to another state to do so), read “Take a Deep Breath . . . and Plunge,” by Marty Hiller, in the Spring, 2004 issue of Communities magazine. Available as a back issue from Communities magazine: http://communities.ic.org/back_issues/

7. For information on visiting a cohousing community, please see my article, “How to Get the Most of Your Community Visits,” in the October, 2007 issue of Cohousing magazine

8. For a book specifically on the process of joining a community, see my book, Finding Community (New Society Publishers, 2007). It covers how to research a community ahead of time, plan visits and get the most out of your community visits, evaluate what you’ve seen, choose your community, and join your community gracefully. http://www.dianaleafechristian.org/finding_community.html

Available from your local independent bookstore, the Community Bookshelf mail-order service of the Fellowship for Intentional Community (http://store.ic.org/catalog/index.php?cPath=34), and Amazon.com.

9. If you will be joining a forming cohousing group, here are two books (besides McCamant and Durrett’s Cohousing) that can help you assess the progress of a forming cohousing group:

• EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering Sustainable Community, by Liz Walker (New Society Publishers, 2005), describes how people built their two cohousing neighborhoods, FROG and SONG, at EcoVillage at Ithaca. What worked, what was challenging.http://www.ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us/evi-book.html

• Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, by Diana Leafe Christian, New Society Publishers, 2003. This gives an overview, drawn from the experiences of founders of successful communities and those that failed, on what works, what doesn’t work, and how not to reinvent the wheel. http://www.dianaleafechristian.org/creating.html

Both books are available from your local independent bookstore, the Community Bookshelf mail-order service of the Fellowship for Intentional Community (http://store.ic.org/catalog/index.php?cPath=34), and Amazon.com.

        I hope you enjoy these resources!

Diana Leafe Christian