Re: Membership selection
From: Ann Barbarow (abarbarowheel.dcn.davis.ca.us)
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:26:08 -0600
It seems strange to me that so many communities report this problem. At Muir
Commons, in Davis, California, we have had had many families with small
children invloved from the start. Perhaps we were helped by the fact that no
one had to come up with large amounts of money until we took out our
individual loans to buy our homes. Also, as we have all noticed in reference
to the "diversity" discussions, communities tend to attract people and
families who look like them. Many of our members heard about us at their
children's soccer games, childcare situations, schools, etc. We have always
had roughly 50% of our homes occupied by families with children. At times I,
as a member of a household without children, was afraid that we would reach
some critical mass of children and would have trouble attracting people
without small children.

I suggest putting fliers up at places where parents and children congregate
- large childcare facilities, your local co-op, library, the PTA bulletins, etc.

As far as trying to exclude people without children, that's a hard one. For
one thing, you never know who will move in from your current membership. For
another thing, you can have a perfectly viable community without having a
lot of children. One thing I have learned from living here is that things
will not be exactly as I expected, and once I get used to that reality, it
is usually just fine how it ends up. You may not have as many children as
you envisioned at move-in and in 5 years you may be saying "how can we make
our community look attractive to people without children?"

All I can say is - if you build it, they will come. As much as we may hate
the thought, homes will sell and chances are, the attraction of your
community to families with small children will be obvious enough that you
will be able to change your demographics.


At 12:18 AM 11/16/96 -0600, MartyR707 [at] aol.com wrote:
>I am curious if any of the built communities out there ever experienced a
>situation something like this before you were built:
>
>*You have only a few units not spoken for
>*You feel there are not enough children or young families in the community
>*You have people interested in joining the community  or being associate
>members or on a waiting list that do not fit this profile.
>
>How were such people handled?  Or any ideas on how you might handle such a
>situation?
>
>Marty Roberts
>Jewell Hill, Sebastopol, CA
>
>

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