Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Majority Rule

[Jim Snyder-Grant (jimsg]

Our condo docs (and our old development docs) have a fallback to voting 
if the group agrees that consensus has not worked yet & there is time 
pressure. We've used voting a couple of times: on one key development 
decision that had the group tied up, and on deciding our road name (we 
agreed ahead of time to use a voting process for that one).

We were in development for 5 years or so, and have been living here for 
8 or 9 years. We haven't used the voting fallback since we moved in - no 
time-pressured decisions - on tricky decisions without a clear group 
agreement, we often end up agreeing on 'trying out' a specific course of 
action for a specified period of time. And we've also pushed a lot of 
our decisions to committees.

-Jim, from New View cohousing, Acton MA.

mikearnott [at] juno.com wrote:

> Do any cohousing communities use "majority rule" for at least some
> decision making?  I am particularly interested in the experience of such
> cohousing communities that have been up and running for at least a year
> or two.
>
> Michael Arnott
> Cornerstone Cohousing
> Cambridge, MA
>  
--

Jim Snyder-Grant
18 Half Moon Hill
Acton MA 01720
978 266-9409
http://www.snyder-grant.org/jim/who