Innovative Affordable Workforce Housing for the City of Sedona

Hello neighbors. I am Allan Affeldt, owner of La Posada Hotel, long-time Sedona resident, and long-time advocate for social justice and good government. The following analysis of our workforce housing crisis in City of Sedona has been shared with our City Council. Council referred the matter to City Manager Spickard for follow-up. I then met with the City Manager, who informed me that the City was doing enough for workforce housing, and in any case nothing was going to be considered at the Dells, for several years at least. In my opinion this is an entirely inadequate response. Workers in Sedona have nowhere to live – including City staff. We can and must do better. Please contact your Council and encourage them to consider this thoughtful and innovative solution – you can reach all of them online at City website. You can also  contact me at allan.affeldt@gmail.com. I would be glad to present the project ideas to any interested community or business groups. Many thanks for your consideration and support!

Innovative Affordable Workforce Housing for the City of Sedona – January 2025

We propose to design, finance, build and operate a national model of affordable, beautiful, sustainable, community-oriented, workforce housing, for and with the City of Sedona.  

The Sedona City Council, rightly recognizing the lack of safe, clean, affordable housing within the City, approved the creation of a temporary residential car park at the Sedona Amphitheater site. The proposal became extremely controversial, was widely derided in the national and local press, and was subject to a voter initiative to overturn the Council vote. In November 2024, in spite of a significant investment of time and effort by City staff and council, the residents of City of Sedona soundly defeated the proposed ‘Safe Place to Park’. 

Sedona Dells Park concept nov2024

The primary objection to the proposal was that apparently anyone could take advantage of it. People sympathetic to the plight of employers and workers who cannot find affordable housing in Sedona did not think the proposal addressed that problem. Residents of the City pay mightily for the right to live here, and were opposed to what they saw as the increased liability and injustice of allowing anyone to live in Sedona, indefinitely, for free or at public expense. There were other reasonable objections, such as the undignified quality of life resulting from people living in cars, and the location of the proposed car park. The end result is that our lack of affordable housing remains, especially for our workers who so badly need it, with no evident solution in sight.

Background and need

Sedona has a serious lack of affordable workforce housing. The area need is estimated (2020) at 1400 units. Few apartments or monthly rental houses are available in Sedona at any cost. The biggest employee sector in Sedona is hospitality – a generally low wage workforce. The next biggest employee sector in Sedona is public services – schools and city workers. Virtually none of our hospitality workforce can find or afford housing in Sedona. Few of our public services employees can find or afford housing in Sedona. The result of this is that most people who work in Sedona cannot live in Sedona, or must spend most of their money on housing. 

The median Sedona income in 2020 was around $60,000. Federal housing standards define people who have to pay more than 30% of their income on housing as ‘distressed’. On this basis, a Sedona resident should not pay more than $18,000 per year for housing. This equates to a $1,500 maximum monthly housing cost (mortgage or rent + utilities). But the average and scarce rental apartment in Sedona is already $1,800 per month, and climbing. To afford an $1,800 monthly apartment, a Sedona resident would need to earn $72,000 per year – 20% more than Sedona’s median income – to put aside 30% = $21,600 = $1,800 per month for rent – plus utilities. 

But Sedona’s median income is skewed high because there are so many wealthy residents.       How much do people who work in Sedona actually earn? 

A hospitality job typically pays $15 to $20/hour – x 2000 hours = $30,000 to $40,000 per year. Many of these jobs are seasonal or less than full time. A Sedona school teacher makes on average $52,000 year – $20,000 less than they need to set aside 30% of their income for average rent. Starting teacher wages are much lower, around $34,000 year – less than half of what they need for rent at 30% of income. Police officer salaries start around $44,000. Most full-time workers in the City of Sedona, including many city employees, do not earn enough to live in Sedona without spending far more than 30% of their income on housing. 

How much would housing have to cost in Sedona to be affordable for our actual workforce wages? The minimum wage in Arizona is around $15/hour. At that wage – which is common for entry level jobs – a full time worker earns around $30,000 per year. This typical worker, if they are employed full time and year-round, would have $30,000 x 30% =  $9,000 available for housing. That sets an upper end budget of around $750/month to avoid housing distress. There are ZERO apartments for rent in Sedona at that amount. 

City of Sedona estimates the new 30 unit project on Shelby Drive, with massive subsidies, will have starting rents of around $1,000/month – if it can get built. A metric commonly used to qualify for affordable housing developer subsidies is that some percentage of the units must be affordable for residents earning 60% of area median income. That sets a rent maximum for affordable units in Sedona at $60,000 x 60% = $36,000 annual income x 30% = 10,800 annual rent / 12 = $900/month. In other words, even the massively subsidized 30 unit Shelby Villas project may not meet the rent affordability requirements, which puts their subsidies at risk, or will require them to rent at a level that will not pay debt service and operating costs. 

There are significant personal and social consequences of housing cost distress, including a poor quality of life with little or no discretionary income. To live in Sedona, many workers must spend most or nearly all of their income on housing, which leaves them little or nothing for eating out, medical care, entertainment, travel, clothes, hobbies etc. Workers forced to live outside of Sedona by the lack of housing and high housing costs must commute significant distances. This adds to their cost and time burden, and increases strain on Sedona roads and parking. The results of inadequate local housing are not always obvious. The city is currently spending more than $20 million to build a parking garage in uptown, because there isn’t enough parking for commuting employees and visitors. The lack of affordable housing options places great strain on employers too – including the City and Sedona schools, which simply cannot find local residents able to work for the modest wages created by hospitality and public-sector jobs. The lack of affordable housing for our low and modest-income workers leads to poor quality of life, despair, pressure to leave, high turnover, and increased costs for workers and employers alike.           

So why isn’t affordable housing being built in Sedona?

Creating affordable housing is simply too hard, too slow, too regulated and too risky – builders have far easier and more profitable options. This is not only a problem in Sedona, it is true everywhere. Housing development costs include labor, land, materials, entitlements, time, overhead, architecture, engineering, infrastructure and cost of funds. There is upward cost pressure on every one of these elements. Regulations and requirements for affordable housing entitlements are significant, so the cost of developing affordable housing typically exceeds market housing on a square foot basis. As a result, developers will not build affordable housing without significant and scarce subsidies – which they have to find and compete for. Even with subsidies, few developers are interested in affordable housing because the development cycle is much longer than market rate, and the risk is much greater. Assembling subsidies and entitlements takes a great deal of time and expertise, which is a significant added cost and risk.

It is very very hard to put together and finance affordable housing projects. Most affordable housing in this country therefore requires specialized developers, who must acquire combined subsidies from City, State, and Federal governments, along with various tax credits. The most common subsidy is LIHTC low-income housing tax credits. These credits are highly competitive, and take a lot of time, effort and money to secure. There is no guarantee a developer who spends enormous amounts of time and money on pre-development will ever assemble enough financing to break even, or will get the land or entitlements needed for a viable project. Even if a project can be successfully completed, affordable housing tenants have little time or money to care for their units. Ongoing compliance burdens for owners and operators are considerable, with little or no ability to raise rents. There is simply insufficient incentive for a normally motivated developer to devote their time, talent and resources to building affordable housing – the risks are too great, and the rewards are too small, so everyone suffers the consequences.

Meanwhile, the State of Arizona has prohibited Sedona from regulating or restricting the conversion of apartments and homes to short-term rentals like AirB&B or VRBO. Because Sedona has such high demand by visitors who will pay significant sums for overnight rentals, hundreds of homes and apartments have been taken out of Sedona’s monthly rental and SFR single family residence markets. These homes and apartments are now investments for people who mostly do not live in or work in Sedona, and are rented to visitors who rarely if ever work in or live in Sedona. The affordable and rental housing problems in Sedona are getting worse, not better.       

How has all this played out? Sedona has had only ONE affordable housing project approved in the last ten years. This project, if completed, will create only a few units of ‘affordable’ housing, which is not workforce restricted, at a development cost of nearly $500,000 per unit. Twenty six of those thirty apartments are one-bedroom. The rents will be around $1,000/month. The developer is from Ohio. The city provided the land at essentially zero cost. The project received significant state funding, and LIHTC, and still needed a loan of more than $2MM ($67,000/unit) from the City when other conventional finance could not be secured. And the apartments are not permanently rent-restricted – most affordable housing projects convert to market-rate when restrictions expire in 30 years, some after only after 15 years.

A production rate in Sedona of 30 affordable housing units every ten years = 3 units per year. At this rate, it will take 467 years for Sedona to address its affordable housing gap of 1400 units – even if there is no growth in Sedona, and even if all units remain affordable forever, which they won’t. What Sedona has been doing is not a solution. The crisis is growing. It will not be solved by traditional approaches or by traditional developers.

OUR SOLUTION: SEDONA DELLS PARK, A MODEL WORKFORCE COMMUNITY

We – Sedona Dells LLC – propose to design, finance, develop and manage a master planned community for about 100 acres of the Sedona Dells property. The community will consist primarily of about 500 permanently affordable homes for the City of Sedona, specifically to meet Sedona workforce housing needs. The basis of the community will be an innovative, landscape-driven RV park: six neighborhoods of about 80 units each, organized into two villages of 250 sites each, with extensive community facilities. The balance of the Sedona Dells property (the half visible from Hwy 89a) will be set aside for additional City and County purposes, public recreation, open space, and complimentary future development.

The first Sedona Dells village of 250 spaces, with roads and project infrastructure, can be built within three years of permit by City of Sedona. This project will meet a significant percentage of the need for affordable workforce housing in the City of Sedona, in a relatively brief development period, and will create a national example of how to create housing and community for workers in high-cost environments. 

The Wastewater Treatment Plant property (Focus Area 13 on the City land use plan) consists of 400 acres, roughly 200 acres on each side of Highway 89, five miles south of City Hall. The parcel west of Highway 89 is the Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Sedona wetlands. The parcel east of Highway 89 is used for wastewater dispersal. The eastern half of the east parcel is the proposed development site, hidden from the highway by a rise in topography. This property is fenced by City of Sedona to prevent access, because processed wastewater is sprayed over the land for aquifer recharge. The City has determined that direct discharge wells will be more efficient and safer, so the Dells is no longer needed for aerial dispersal. There is an access road and highway exit at the south end, leading to a forest service road, trailhead and campsite. Although now a wastewater contaminated zone, our project will repurpose the site as a beautiful community, with access to Oak Creek via the historic Lime Kiln Trail, access to the Sedona Wetlands via an underpass at Hwy 89, and access to Sedona via the Verde Valley transit system.

A major impediment to affordable housing is neighbor objections. Every reasonable citizen knows that we need affordable housing, especially for workforce, but the well-known result of NIMBYism is that most people want such housing anywhere but in their neighborhood. The subject property has no immediate neighbors to reasonably object, but is still close enough to the City for convenient transit. The site is already under City control. And, crucially, this site is large enough that a thoughtful and carefully-dense but site-sensitive masterplan will make a life-changing improvement in the City’s affordable housing crisis. That makes this an ideal site for our proposed development. At build-out, our project will eliminate more than 1/3 of Sedona’s affordable housing shortage. Equally important, our thoughtful design will integrate with the natural site, with minimal impact on the highway 89 viewshed, and will provide gracious common facilities for community interaction and a fine quality of life.

What will this project look like?

Please refer to Sedona Dells Park draft site plan, showing typical neighborhoods and circulation.   

Sedona Dells LLC proposes to design and build six neighborhoods of around 80 spaces, each with  common facilities. Sedona Dells management will fill each neighborhood with qualified residents as the next neighborhood is under development, until all neighborhoods are filled. Each neighborhood will be open to and restricted to any person employed within the City of Sedona. CC&Rs defining resident qualification will be developed in cooperation with City of Sedona. Once an applicant has been qualified and verified by Sedona Dells management, they will be able to move any self-contained (must have basic kitchen and bathroom) mobile residence onto their space, which they can continue to occupy as long as they meet the CC&Rs and pay rent. Residences will be inspected by Sedona Dells management prior to move-in to confirm that they meet code and minimum Sedona Dells standards: sink, toilet, food prep, storage and sleeping. 

A common complaint about contemporary housing is that there is no provision for community. Most of us do not know our neighbors. Housing in America is primarily designed for single nuclear families, but this is not what working American families look like today. A majority of children now live in single-parent households, mostly single mothers. Childcare is expensive or non-existent. Nearly half of young people have no plans to get married, and no plans to have children. For housing to be sustainable economically and emotionally, it must be designed for the way people want to live now: secure, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, with on-site child care, and common facilities for a sense of community. 

The many advantages of co-housing are well understood: smaller homes, with more community facilities and neighborhood interaction, and people prioritized over cars. The challenges of co-housing are also understood – long development times, significant investment of intention and capital, and transient working populations. Sedona Dells will be an affordable alternative to traditional housing and co-housing models. There will be a Village Center in each village to provide mail, laundry and showers. In addition, there will be a Sedona Dells Community Center, in the center of the project. This will include meeting and recreation space, community kitchen and dining space, childcare and safe play space, maintenance shop, administrative office, etc.

Our projected density is around six sites per acre. This is half the allowable density and about half the industry average for RV parks. The reason for this site plan is that Sedona Dells will not be designed to maximize profit, but rather to be light on the land, while maximizing sustainability and community. A typical RV project is developed by scraping the site, grading and leveling, putting in as many sites as allowed, covering the site with gravel, and then (sometimes) planting a few trees so it doesn’t look like a wasteland. A typical RV park is not concerned with creating long-term housing or quality of life for its residents; rather, the typical objective is maximizing ROI return on investment for the owners. Such parks are all over the country. There are several large parks of 400+ RV sites in Arizona. There is nothing wrong with such RV parks, developed as short-term parking lots – but our project is driven by different motives. We want to show that it is possible to provide quality low-cost long-term housing in a way that is beautiful, sustainable, and respectful of the residents and the site. 

Our rent target per space is $600/month, including trash, water & sewer, and common facilities. Electric will be metered to each resident. This is about half of the affordable housing rent target for Sedona. It is also significantly less than the cost of monthly space rental for other RV parks in the region – if you can find a monthly space available – and will include significantly more common facilities. Our intention is to provide as many utilities as possible on-site as a demonstration of sustainability. Community sewer will be directly connected to the waste treatment plant across the highway. Non-potable water for gardens (and potable water if possible) will come directly from the water treatment facility across the highway. We propose to develop an integrated community solar project, with solar parking canopies to provide as much on-site power as possible.     

The project will be privately owned and financed by Sedona Dells LLC for efficiency of development and operation (and because considerable investment and debt will be required),    but conceived on a not-for-profit basis as a labor of love and as a demonstration of how to create beautiful, sustainable, affordable workforce housing.  

The Sedona Dells development will be led by Allan Affeldt. Allan is a well-known philanthropist and developer (La Posada Hotel and many other projects). Allan has had a house in Sedona for twenty years, and has served on many non-profit boards and government committees. As a young man, Allan helped create, lived in, and managed an innovative RV park at U.C. Irvine – designed as a demonstration of affordable housing for university students. The design for Sedona Dells is led by well-known Sedona architect and environmentalist Max Licher. Max has been designing beautiful buildings in Sedona for decades, including the Sedona library, and has a deep knowledge of the land and community. Our motivation is to do something significant and impactful for Sedona, by applying our deep expertise in finance, design, policy and process, to create a visionary solution to a national problem.

How do we proceed? 

A project such as we are proposing can only come to fruition with the dedicated vision and mutual efforts of a three-part team: developer, designer and city. Together we can make this happen in and for Sedona. In broad outline, we propose a typical development schedule: conceptual design and feasibility (12 months), design development (12 months), permit and construction (36 months), move-in/lease-up (12 months). The schedule will be adjusted for mitigation efforts. 

• We are asking the City for a one year conceptual design and feasibility agreement with Sedona Dells LLC. Within this period, we will create a conceptual masterplan of the site, including a feasibility study and preliminary design of an affordable housing project on the land. Sedona Dells LLC will complete design of the project entirely at Sedona Dells LLC expense. City of Sedona will work with Sedona Dells LLC on design details and objectives: how many units, affordability targets, infrastructure sizing etc. Nothing has happened on this site in twenty years, and nothing will happen on the site in the next twelve months, so the City has nothing to lose by this agreement, and potentially a great deal to gain. 
• During conceptual design, Sedona Dells LLC will develop a preliminary financial analysis, including sources and uses, with a potential capital stack including debt coverage and project leverage. Sedona Dells LLC will also hold preliminary discussion with various potential sources during conceptual design. City of Sedona will work with Sedona Dells LLC to help secure local, state and federal support. As an LLC, the project will be open to and encouraging of local investment – while noting that the primary objective is housing, not profit.
• Sedona Dells LLC will, within the conceptual design year, present a development proposal to City of Sedona, or will terminate its option. If Sedona Dells LLC determines that the project is viable, and if the development proposal meets City objectives as defined in the option, the City will either: 

a. approve and fast-track the project to proceed with design development; or 

b. hold a (non-binding) referendum to verify citizen support for the project. 

• If and when City approves the project to proceed with design development, Sedona Dells LLC will have twelve months to request entitlements and construction permits.
• Upon approval to proceed with design development, City will create a Community Housing Land Trust to support long-term affordable housing for City of Sedona, and will place the land specified in the development proposal in the Community Housing Land Trust. The City will at all times own the land, so the project will be permanently affordable. The land will then be leased by the Trust to Sedona Dells LLC for $1/year, both during the development phase, and thereafter for as long as Sedona Dells LLC continues to provide defined affordable housing to qualified employees or qualified residents of City of Sedona. 
• As with a typical affordable housing project, we assume that permits, entitlements, utility extensions, and primary road will be contributed by the City and timely constructed.  
• Sedona Dells will be restricted to Workforce Housing: 100% of Sedona Dells residents must be currently employed, at least 50% FTE, working within City of Sedona, by a Sedona employer. Employment will be confirmed directly with the employer by Sedona Dells administration every six months. Self-employed residents such as professional artists and creatives are allowed if they can prove they are working at least 50% FTE in Sedona, have lived in Sedona for at least one year, and have an annual income at least 50% FTE minimum wage, earned and paid within City of Sedona.
• We anticipate that restrictions will not need to be waived at any time and that there will be a waiting list of qualified applicants. 
• No subleases or transient rentals will be allowed.  
• Upon permit for construction, Sedona Dells LLC will proceed with the first 80-space village and City will proceed with roadway and infrastructure work. Our target is for this first village to be available for residents within twelve months of construction permit.
• Sedona Dells LLC will work with City of Sedona, city schools, local employers, chamber of commerce and other interested parties to secure qualified reservations for spaces within Sedona Dells. We will assess reservation demand during conceptual design, and begin taking Sedona Dells reservations as soon as design development is underway.

To summarize: Sedona does not need more studies and inaction and requests for proposals and years of delays and cancelled un-financeable projects. Our workforce housing crisis in Sedona is real and growing. HUD estimates that in 2024 alone homelessness in America increased by 18%. The number of employed people who cannot afford to live where they work is growing rapidly. We already know that there is not enough state, federal and local subsidy to build hundreds of typical ‘affordable housing’ units here. We already know that typical developers will not build affordable housing in Sedona, and certainly not on a scale commensurate with the crisis – the allowable rents will not justify the development risk and expense, and there simply isn’t enough subsidy available from any source for hundreds of units of new construction. Not at the Culture Park. Not anywhere. Without a new approach such as we are suggesting, our crisis will not be solved.

Sedona therefore needs an innovative solution – a solution that can be built to scale, and quickly. The objective of Sedona Dells LLC is not to have a study to see if somebody can maybe create more workforce housing someday somehow. There is no shortage of studies and talk. Instead, we want to work with the City now, with wide citizen and council support, to design, build and operate a beautiful, sustainable workforce housing community, as quickly as possible. 

We are prepared to proceed immediately, and we look forward to working with you to make this visionary project a reality for the community we love.

Allan Affeldt 

allan.affeldt@gmail.com 928-587-3268

Additional Notes

The only current ‘affordable housing’ project underway in City of Sedona – Villas on Shelby – has a development budget of nearly $500,000+ per unit. This is for 1-bedroom apartments, on City contributed land, with an additional City loan, with significant LIHTC and State subsidy. Rents are projected to average around $1,000/month. This is roughly twice the proposed Sedona Dells cost of housing, and there are only thirty units at Villas on Shelby, with no common or community facilities and no residential land per unit for gardens, pets etc. The cost to develop 500 1-bedroom apartments at the same unit budget as Villas on Shelby would be nearly $250,000,000. There simply is no way to generate sufficient subsidies and tax credits to create that much affordable housing for City of Sedona – except as we propose. 

Affordable housing challenges and costs are not unique to Sedona. City of Los Angeles just built a 278 unit supportive housing apartment tower, at a cost of $165 million, or nearly $600,000 per unit. Nearly all the units are studios (one room), and this is for a very tiny percentage of the need in Los Angeles. We are proposing to provide nearly twice as much workforce housing for City of Sedona, at a fraction of the cost, in a fraction of the time. 

Most apartments have various restrictions on residents and therefore their quality of life: no pets, no visitors etc. Our objective is to create a low-cost, high-quality neighborhood, so – unlike typical transient RV parks – Sedona Dells will be pet friendly and with various common-use facilities. 

We will also work with City of Sedona on additional needs and uses within the Dells masterplan, including perhaps City infrastructure facilities and other alternative housing demonstrations. 

The cost of housing is consistently among the top three concerns for most Americans. More and more young people must live with parents because there is no affordable alternative. The cost of housing is increasingly a concern for retired people as well. Nearly 40% of seniors are likely to run out of money for retirement, with cost of housing and medical care being the major drivers of senior insecurity. 

A qualifying RV can be purchased for as little as $5,000 or as much as the resident desires to spend. But unlike with an apartment, the time and money invested by residents in their housing is an asset to the resident, which can be taken with them or sold when they choose to leave the Dells or are no longer qualified to live there. Equally important, the money saved by residents can be spent on quality of life (food, clothing, entertainment, education, health care, travel etc), or can be invested. 

Many studies suggest that consistent investment is the surest way to build wealth, even better than investing in buying a fixed house – but saving is impossible for most people unless they can find low-cost housing. Sedona Dells will provide a compelling and affordable alternative housing option for people who want to work and live in Sedona. Sedona Dells will greatly improve the quality of life and opportunities for wealth building and security for its residents – the many fine people who contribute so much to our community but cannot otherwise afford to live here.  

Background for Dells property  

The land was acquired by the City in trade to U.S. Forest Service, so the cost basis in the land is $0. We believe the best ownership structure – for affordable housing in general and for this project in particular – is that the property be owned in perpetuity by the City, title held in an Affordable Housing Land Bank, leased at a nominal rate to a developer, for a defined benefit project. In this case the defined benefit will be 500 RV spaces, restricted to meet a particular community need: affordable workforce housing. 

Cities should never be in the business of developing or managing housing – they lack the capacity and expertise, and are too constrained in action and finance. Sedona Dells is designed as a private + public project: financed, developed, owned and operated by a private developer, but designed to meet a specified long-term community need, in the most cost- and time-efficient manner. 

There would likely be opposition to such a large affordable housing project anywhere within contiguous city limits, regardless of merit. That is why we propose to develop the east side of the ridge, of the eastern wastewater parcel, out of highway viewshed. The Sedona Community Land Plan refers to this as ‘Focus Area 13’ and states as community expectations that the property should ‘consider only future uses that are environmentally sensitive’. 

The Community Land Plan also states  that development of the site should ‘contribute to Sedona’s environmental and economic sustainability’. The lack of workforce housing is surely among the greatest threats to Sedona’s economic sustainability. Our proposed development will be very light on and respectful of the land. 

This is in stark contrast to a traditional housing development, or affordable housing project, or a typical RV park – all of which require most or all of a site to be scrapped, leveled, graded and denuded of vegetation. Sedona Dells will show that there is a better way to develop affordable workforce housing. 

The City of Sedona empaneled a Dells Land Use Advisory Group in 2014, including a local architect, city manager, ex-mayor etc. None of the Advisory Group recommendations have been implemented. No development has occurred on the Dells site since construction of the wastewater plant in 1989. The only activity on this site is ongoing wastewater discharge and aquifer recharge through overhead irrigation. Studies suggest that overhead irrigation has created an artificial ecosystem on the site and may cause other environmental risks. It has been recommended that wastewater be directly injected into the aquifer instead, which will free some or all of the site for other use or development. 

Master Plan Precedents

National Park cabins. National Park accommodations were historically designed with a central lodge and clustered cabins. Mary Colter’s site plan for Bright Angel Lodge at Grand Canyon (1934) is a typically thoughtful example: 90 units, a dense collection of various cabins and multi-unit buildings, in a minimally disturbed site, loop vehicle circulation, grouped parking, with a common building for dining & gathering. 

Co-Housing. Throughout the world there are intentional communities. The co-housing movement focuses on creating community through neighborhood design: typically dense, clustered individual homes and apartments, perimeter parking, interior pedestrian circulation and gardens, with a common house for shared facilities such as community kitchen, dining, workshop etc.      The best book is:

Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (1994)

by Kathryn M. McCamant and Charles Durrett