RE: Cohousing, Communes, Community--Not for Profit! Please
From: Jean Pfleiderer (pfleiderer_jWIZARD.COLORADO.EDU)
Date: Tue, 24 May 94 16:11 CDT
Rob,


>Why does it matter if it is for profit or not if the end result is 
>resident designed, and maintained communities, built by, for and of the 
>people who live there?

Exactly my point. I didn't see anything in the Shasta ad that even remotely 
suggested people working together to design, maintain or build anything. I 
am not putting down all developers, nor am I saying they shouldn't make a 
profit.  Wonderland developers here in Colorado did the development and 
building for us at Nyland (AFTER we formed a cohousing group, found land, 
and largely figured out who we were and what we wanted).  I think they did a 
pretty good job for us.  But we sought them, not the other way round. 

>Personally I'm all in favor of being co-opted by mainstream business, 
>it will spread the movement farther and faster and the more people who 
>start living in a sane way the better our society will become.

No, it will spread a pale imitation of "the movement", employing lots of 
buzzwords like "common house" in place of the traditional condominium "club 
house", etc. But a club house by any other name is still a place where you 
hold big parties once a year, not a place to dine with your neighbors and 
interact with people.  Changing from our American individualism to a more 
cooperative way of being is (1) painful and (2) what it's all about.  Since 
it is not commercially viable to market things people find painful, "what 
it's all about" will have to go. That's business.

>  It is 
>the cohousing movements job to make the definition clear of what 
>cohousing is and is not and then spread that word so that "fake" 
>cohousing, e.g. a typical condo labeled cohousing,  doesn't happen.

Yes.  And that's what we're doing when we react negatively to things like 
that Shasta ad.

By the way, you didn't answer my question.  Which was, what did you find out 
about the Shasta group?  Are they building a community?  Or are they selling 
off parcels of land for vacation condos?

Okay, I know I've belabored this far too long already.  I'm done.

Jean







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