Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Personal Crusade - "units"

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Tom writes:
>  We have had some
>difficulty reselling homes to prospective members; partly the economy, partly
>because we are a work in progress, partly because people (both in and outside
> cohousing) still think in terms of comparing square footage to square
>footage and miss promoting the larger social context and benefits...

There is an interesting set of questions about how peoples values 
influence their purchase and commitments.  Do the people who are buying 
fininished homes in cohousing communities have a different set of 
values than those who worked so hard to create it? Are they as commited 
as members?  Or are they looking more at how living in the community  
benefits them without considering what they can offer the community?

We (Sharingwood) had a home come up for sale.  There was a flurry of 
responses, and frankly many of us were concerned that the people who 
responded were less than committed to the community. Fortunately, the 
sellers recognized this also  and were concerned enough about it to 
make a special deal to a family which was interested in being part of a 
community rather than buying a house in a "nice neighborhood with a 
high resale value."

This raises some issues about who controls membership, and the impacts 
of not having the right of first refusal or some sort of membership 
control.  Most banks demand no restrictions on who can buy a home.

It also raises some questions about the sustainability of a community 
which doesn't have control of who can be a member.  In our area there 
was once a cooperative housing neighborhood called the May Valley Coop. 
Over time, people who had very different values than those of the 
founders bought houses in the coop and eventually, through a legal vote 
which was allowed in the bylaws, changed the nature of the coop by 
voting in the right to sell at profit.  They also split up and sold off 
some of the cooperatively owned land.  This of course left the founders 
bitter and pretty much destroyed much of what the coop was founded for.

Much of what gets a community started, and what sustains it through all 
the trials and bumps of creation, is the values and vision of the 
community.  As cohousing "matures", sustaining the oringinal values and 
vision over generations of owners will be an issue that will be of 
interest to many of us.