Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities
From: Bob Morrison (morrisontook.enet.dec.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 95 19:18 CST
  Jim Snyder-Grant's recent posting on publicity brought to mind a possible
problem from getting too much publicity, which is the amount of time and
energy people would have to spend fielding inquiries from the press. This is
something I hadn't thought of before, but I now realize this could chew up
huge amounts of time and time is a major issue in cohousing, especially during
the design and move-in phases.
  Rob Sandelin's posting raised another issue, which is that the more well-
known a coho community is to the public, the more problem there is with
gawkers. (I think this is a good word to describe these people.)
  I would like to raise two arguments from the gawkers' side:

1. When visiting a cohousing community, it is hard to tell how far you can
go in looking around before being considered an intruder. Does Sharingwood
have signs at the entrance saying "No trespassing" or the like? If not, how
are visitors supposed to know that they must be invited before they can
walk around? 

2. It's often hard to know who to contact in advance when visiting a coho
community, because of their informal organizational structure. If I were
planning to visit a coho community, I would go to the trouble of finding
out who to contact, and make a serious effort to contact that person(s) in
advance and get invited to visit, or at least get clearance to walk the
grounds on my own if I could not arrange a formal visit at a time that was 
doable for me. But what if I were sent, on a week's notice, on a business
trip to a distant city and wanted to visit a coho community while there? If 
I could not find and contact the right people in time, I would be tempted to
walk the grounds uninvited.

  Are you (Rob) saying that any visitor who is not known to most of the 
residents of a cohousing community should be escorted by a resident(s) at all
times when visiting the site? If so, this raises another issue, which is that 
escorting guests could use up a lot of people's time.

>In the handout materials for the Puget Sound Cohousing Network I list 
>etiquette for visiting.  Maybe this should be spread wider via the 
>journal.

  Were these rules of etiquette published in the Fall 1994 Cohousing journal?
I'm just now getting around to reading it. (I usually read it much more
promptly than this.) Yes, I do think these rules should be spread wider, in-
cluding this "list".

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