Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How Diverse is Co-Housing, Really?

[John Ladwig (jladwig]

BARANSKI [at] VEAMF1.NL.NUWC.NAVY.MIL <BARANSKI [at] VEAMF1.NL.NUWC.NAVY.MIL> 
writes on 3 May 93 at 14:11 CDT

 > My impression of cohousing was not that you can select who will be
 > allowed in, but more like you can state what values/* you are want
 > in your community, and it was up to the individual applicants to
 > decide whther this was something that they were interested in or
 > not.  So maybe I was a bit more worried that about new people
 > coming in and changing everything around then you are.

I certainly do not wish to hide *anything* about the members of our
community from prospective members.  TRG has an open information policy for
prospective members, including archives our (now inactive) APA
(amateur press association - kinda like a bbs for paper).  This helps
to inform others, and builds the self-selection process you speak of. 

However, we do not have an open-door policy on membership.  Anyone is
welcome to express interest, but due to the nature of our
consensus-based decision making process, we have to reach a group
decision on individual applicants, after a formal, mentored,
prospective membership process.  We haven't had to vote anyone down,
but we have decided as a group to not recruit certain individuals,
based on the reservations of other members.

 > Explictly selecting selecting who to include and who to exclude
 > strikes me as being prone to favoritism, and selfselecting against
 > diversity.

Not necessarily; would my wife and I be showing "favoritism" or
slecting against diversity by not wishing to include a person who
previously sexually abused her into our community?  There is no legal
decision on that episode, but would we have to make *any* person a
part of our community?

Or, to use a less emotionally weighted example, should a cohousing
community essentially be forced to accept a person who has proven to
be a pedantic, rule-obsessed parliamentarian who regularly carries a
copy of Robert's Rules of Order, who tends to use it to cause the most
obstruction possible in public meetings?  

Granted, I think we'd drive such a person crazy during the
"prospective member" phase, and hopefully the community and the
prospective member would decide mutually that this wasn't going to
work out.  However, I see no reason why an existing community (which
we are, just unbuilt) should have to accept someone who would disrupt
the functioning or goals of that community.

-- 
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          jladwig [at] torpedo.forestry.umn.edu