Re: membership process questions esp. re: renters
From: Tree Bressen (treeic.org)
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 00:24:06 -0700 (MST)
Dear Deb,

As a part of this review process, we are asking for
information and experiences from other cohousing
groups. Is anyone using a process that is different
than self-selection for membership, and if so, could
you share your process/agreement with us, and let us
know how it is working for you? If you have a
self-selection policy, has your community had any
experiences where the wisdom of self-selection was
brought into question, and how did you resolve this?

I recently facilitated for a cohousing community working on exactly this issue. As others who wrote referred to, what is legal and appropriate may vary depending on what stage of development you are in. However, for the particular group i was working with (which is not yet built), the process they agreed on was that if any existing member is concerned about a prospective applicant, the member is encouraged to bring up their concerns to the applicant directly or to the membership committee in order to clear the air. If the concerns are still unresolved after that discussion(s), the member or the committee can request mediation with the applicant. If the concerns are still unresolved, then the member can attempt to invoke an exclusion clause which allows the group to refuse an applicant but only if the whole group comes to consensus on it.

Of course, many applicants would withdraw rather than attempt to jump over all of those hurdles, which helps balance the fact that it would probably be hard to get all of any cohousing group to agree to exclude anyone.

The desire of this cohousing group was to maintain a strong bias toward self-selection, while still creating routes for people to take if they are holding strong concerns. They value their diversity and it was clear that personality differences were insufficient grounds to try to keep anyone out. However, having these procedures in place allows for the group to protect itself in the rare cases that might be needed.

FYI, this case was in relation to potential owners, rather than renters.

Good luck,

--Tree

P.S. It was fun seeing Liz S. in person at Southside Park, and we had a lively discussion about Coho-L dynamics. I appreciate having had the opportunity to meet many of the regular posters to this list over the years. Besides being great folks, i think it helps me keep things in perspective when heated discussions arise. :-)


-----------------------------------------------

Tree Bressen
1680 Walnut St.
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 484-1156
tree [at] ic.org
http://www.treegroup.info

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.