Community feeling in subsequent generations | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Geri Weitzman (pyro![]() |
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Date: Thu, 26 May 94 12:56 CDT |
Hi there! I just signed on to Cohousing-L and I thought I'd add my 2 cents to the question of community-sense in latter generations... I'm about to graduate from Brown and so am leaving the student-run and in-part student-owned co-ops that have been home to me for three years. The average length of stay at our 3 houses (soon to be 4!) is 2 years, and the members are between 19 and 30 years of age usually. Our co-ops were founded by students in the early 70's who have long since moved on... we have gone through many succeeding generations. In my 3 years of co-oping here I have seen groups of people that melded well together, being pretty much a family, and also groups that did not click at all. Similarly there have been groups who put in a lot of work, and groups which let things slide to a dangerous level of disorganization. Continuity is one of our big priorities, and sometimes challenges. I don't think that the experience of being a founding member is vital to the closeness that the members have with one another. It is certainly an ideal of mine that my housemates are my family, but realistically I consider a co-op a good place if people are friendly and work well together and are good at resolving conflicts. Often the entry process to the co-op involves accepting someone who is a virtual stranger... you can ask as many screening questions as you like, but ultimately you have to simply see how it goes; it is unrealistic to expect that people will become lovey-dovey simply because they share a philosophy on housing and live and work together. Basically, I think this is simply a function of the individuals who are there at any time. One of the wonderful experiences at the co-op we had was a reunion of folks from as far back as the beginning to the present. It was awesome to meet the people who put this all in motion, and it was great for them to see that what they started was still going strong :) Cheers, Pyrophage pyro [at] panix.com
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