Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Nonresident members and waiting list

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

I would really reccomend you find a way to incorporate these folks into your 
scene. People will be concerned about overpopulating your facilities but this 
is not a big issue in reality because your regular members will not 
participate 100 percent so it will even out.

The advantage comes two to three years after you move in. What happens is that 
some of your current residents will reduce their participation quite a bit and 
having extra energies from "friends of cohousing" will be wonderful. Also, you 
WILL have units to resell, and it is absolutely to your advantage to have a 
wonderful group of interested cohousing want-a-bes waiting in the wings to 
sell to.

So I advise to create a "friends of cohousing" list, invite these people to 
parties, encourage them to be part of dinner (work and cook too, not just 
eating if they want), let them come to your decision meetngs and in general, 
get to know them and put energy into them, and encourage them to put energy 
into the community. It is unlikely to amount to more than 6-10 people at any 
given time being actively participatory.

Keep track of ALL these kind of folks, even after they stop coming around, 
because they are the ones that are going to buy your resells in the future, 
and you want them to. You don't want to have to advertise your resells in the 
cohousing journal, you want to have a nice fat list of people you can sell to.

At Sharingwood we just sold a house about a week ago and the news of the house 
for sale never got past our borders, till now. Same thing with rentals here. 
Make a list of friends, encourage them with invitations to participate, make 
room at the table for them. Almost all of them will show up for awhile then 
kind of drift off. Keep their name and address handy and when you want to 
raise that barn, paint the commonhouse, or dance the night away, invite these 
folks and give them the opportunity to return your hospitality. Most will.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
Cedar Village Permaculture Retreat Center (forming)