Re: If it religion it ain't cohousing
From: Catherine Kehl (tyliku.washington.edu)
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:08:47 -0500

On Wed, 11 Oct 1995, Kevin Wolf wrote:

> We have also talked about whether co-housing communities 
> should descriminate in who lives there based on their beliefs and 
> principles.  If two applicants for a house in our community were equal 
> and one was a prostelytizing fan of Rush Limbo and the other was a  local 
> environmental activist, should we draw straws to see who lives with us?  
> No.  We want to live with people who share similar believes and values 
> on  important issues.  If the Menonites want to have everyone in their 
> co-housing community share the same  religious beliefs and values, that's 
> fine by me and I don't begrudge them calling their living situation 
> co-housing. 

I think one way at looking at this would be a more organic development of 
the character of a particular group vs. a more prescriptive approach.  

All co-housing groups develope character, yes?  (Like communities, like 
almost anything.)  A bunch of people get together, some stay, some go, 
on the whole the ones who stay like eachother and probably have a lot in 
common.  Goodness knows, building a co-housing group is pretty stressful, 
so the relationships inside the group have to be able to take.  (I'm not 
saying that the people involved have to be the same.  On the other hand, 
some people can't deal with living with people outside of of some range 
of religion, culture, what have you.  And frankly, I probably couldn't 
deal with living with them.  I doubt we could set up a claim as 
co-housing only for the multi-culturally tolerant.)

For some people, it might make the process easier to prescribe certain 
things in members -- "the founders of this group are entirely sure that 
they wouldn't be able to deal with living with someone who isn't a 
Mennonite".  (Personally I'd see this as a rather embarassing admission 
of a character flaw).  I wouldn't want to live there, but they could 
concievably build a community that works starting from those principles.  
I can even think of their behavior as bigoted and not be able to respect 
them for it without saying that somehow they can't have co-housing.

(I can also see religiously homogeneous groups evolving via the organic 
method, for that matter.)

                                Catherine

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