Oh God, here goes Rob about ideology again
From: Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (RobsanExchange.MICROSOFT.com)
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 11:22:55 -0600
In my humble opinion, one very large MYTH, about cohousing is that is
has no ideology.  You can maintain that myth by defining ideology in a
very narrow way, for example, cohousing imposes no political or religous
doctrines on its members as a requirement of membership.  However useful
that is as a definition, it ignores the notion that working
cooperatively, which is absolutely a key requirement of cohousing, is in
itself an ideology.  I have a pretty good collection of cohousing
mission statements (the cohousing web site is a good place to find some
of these by the way) and everyone of them that I have seen makes at
least one, if not several ideological statements. 

So to call Cohousing a "non-ideological form of community" is in my
opinion nonsense.  The purpose of such statements is soley to appease
the banks, planning depts., and potential residents  that our proposed
housing developments are mainstream enough to be considered as a viable
option. I personally see this as very reasonable.  You tell the banks,
the planners, etc. that cohousing is a form of resident-developed
housing and sell that story to them.  However , you need to be careful
in what you tell potential future residents.  In my experience, if half
the people join your project because they want a deep committment to
community, and the other half join because they want a more practical
living experience, you will find several places where those two very
different views will collide. Frame your goals and ideologies clearly at
the begining and pre-filter folks who want the same thing will save you
lots of frustration later. Of course you can have as much diversity as
you want, but in my observations from around the communities movement,
you want solidarity in regards to the community mission statement, not
diversity.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
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