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Mary Huang is 54 years old, unmarried with no children and a career that has taken her all over the globe.

When she returned to Ottawa to help care for her aging parents, she started to think about what she wanted for herself as she grew older. Ever the researcher, Huang, who builds complex planning and forecasting systems for large companies, set out to discover a way to “build my own village” and soon found one — a cohousing community.

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“I lived in New York for six months. I definitely saw where people didn’t know their neighbours and it’s pretty sad,” said Huang, one of about a dozen people who form the nucleus of Concorde, an intentional community in the planning stages.

Concorde’s members are seeking not just to share a roof over their heads, but also whatever they choose to share of their lives. You hear the world “potluck” often in the cohousing world.

Cohousing is considered to be a model of living that can help avert loneliness and social isolation as more Canadians face aging without a partner or children, or with families that live far away. According to Statistics Canada, the number of people living alone has more than doubled between 1981 and 2016, from 1.7 million to four million.