Hard Decisions | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: pattymara (pattymarajuno.com) | |
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 18:44:01 -0600 (MDT) |
After reading Sharon's account of their toughest decision (group member with alleged sexual crime), ours pales in comparison. I've surveyed our group, Tierra Nueva Cohousing, after trying to come up with some of my own examples. Both of my memories of difficult decisions revolved around individuals who wanted more than the group could offer and in the process of finding that out, all of us experienced deep processing. My husband Bruce remembers a more group-oriented tough decision so I will describe that one. Background information: Tierra Nueva Cohousing is sited on 5 acres of land which was donated by an elderly woman whose dream was to house low income seniors. For the first half dozen years of our history we worked diligently to fulfill her dream. We worked for 3 years with the local housing authority, investing in lawyers' fees (Kaching! for her lawyer, Kaching! for our lawyer)and uncountable hours of meeting time, only to find out that it was a "no go" because of several factors, including the owner's desire to retain design overview and resale limits. It took us over three years to receive the final "sucker punch" from the housing authority dropping the project. We turned to a private group that develops low cost housing in the county and after 3 months were told the same thing. Then we hired a senior housing consultant (Kaching! $10,000) to essentially tell us that building senior housing would be fraught with complications, most of which I cannot remember now, but many were site specific (proximity to services, bus lines etc) which is important when depending on Community Block Development funding. We cast about for other solutions to fulfilling Gudrun's dream of low-cost senior housing, and came up with zip. The years were piling up, member households were coming and going. We were stalled. Here comes the tough decision: we began to look at the possibility that we could not build her dream, as she envisioned it: a separate cluster of houses, with low costs and high security. We began to entertain the notion that we could pitch a merging of her dream with our own intergenerational dream of community, with seniors integrated into the life flow, not stuck over in a corner of the development. We knew we could not fulfill the low cost feature she was holding on to, but figured it was worth a try to ask for what we felt we could create, and trust that she would be willing to be flexible. The discussions that led to our final decision to approach her with our new vision was beset with lots of fears about what her reaction would be, how we would be viewed by her and of course, the big one, "what if" she says adios and we are out in the cold with no prospect of finding land in the increasingly precious California real estate market. When we finally reached agreement to go forward with our new idea of merging the dreams, we formed a committee who worked on a letter. Back and forth from committee to group, with several iterations. The tensions were running high....most of us stressed to the limit with the rigors of trying to communicate with and fulfill another's dream as well as building communication skills within our own group, and the several county agencies and attorneys that we interacted with. We realized that this action could make or break our dream. Our final proposal to Gudrun described our vision of an intergenerational community, with a commitment to market to seniors so that 25% of the group's households would be over 55 years old. More back and forths with lawyers to create yet another addendum to the Gift Agreement....and at long last Gudrun said yes. We threw a huge party, of course, and just last week I found the champagne corks that we had marked and saved to remember the occasion. Our marketing to seniors was so successful that we ended up with about 40% of our membership being over 55, and still a healthy contingency of youngsters (over 25 kids at move-in). We found that the seniors out there were the ones with the money...we later created silent second mortgages to help two families with kids to more easily afford buying their homes. Patty Mara Gourley Tierra Nueva Cohousing, central CA coast ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
-
Hard Decisions Sharon Villines, July 13 2002
- Hard Decisions pattymara, July 15 2002
- Re: Hard Decisions Sharon Villines, July 15 2002
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.