Purely out of procrastination I was perusing the OED and typed in "cohousing." Much to my surprise I found a detailed entry. Like being in the Library of Congress catalog, that means cohousing has arrived. They need a more explicit quote, however. These imply that cohousing is rather like single room occupancy.
co-housing, n.
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈkəʊhaʊzɪŋ/ , U.S. /ˈkoʊˌhaʊzɪŋ/
Etymology: < co- prefix + housing n.1: see quot. 1988.
A residential development in which individual households share some common facilities or amenities, and residents are communally responsible for managing the community.
1988 K. McCamant & C. Durrett Cohousing i. i. 10/2 In Denmark‥these communities are called bofœllesskaber in Danish (directly translated as ‘living communities’), for which we have coined the English term ‘cohousing’. First built in the early 1970s, cohousing developments have quadrupled in number in the last five years.
1992 Amicus Jrnl. Summer 31/1 Young couples are getting together with small groups of contemporaries to plan and build co-housing projects, in which more than one family can share housing or garden amenities.
1998 Earth Matters (Friends of the Earth) Winter 34/4 We visit co-housing communities; a permaculture village‥; Local Exchange Trading Schemes‥and a host of other projects.
2000 M. A. Burayidi Urban Planning in Multicultural Soc. iii. 48 Female single parents may benefit more from the Swedish model of cohousing.‥ Residents in cohousing have separate bedrooms but share common kitchen and dining facilities.
