Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: concerns about cohousing

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

A change in the amount of your personal privacy will happen if you move in to 
Cohousing. People will know about you, ask you personal questions sometimes, 
and perhaps express curiosity about what it is you are up to.  You will not be 
able to be a stranger or anonymous like on regular housing developments.  You 
can close your door and not attend every function and that is your choice. You 
can choose which functions, to attend. But you are joining a social group of 
people and so there will be social contacts frequently. That is why people 
create cohousing in the first place.

I would note that if your partner is a very social person and you are not, 
this is common and the less social person typically does not suffer from 
living in cohousing. It can actually free you because the social half will 
find their social contact in the community and you will be freed from 
providing all of that contact. My partner is a major gardener, and I am not 
much. She finds others to hang out with and talk plantage and I am free to 
hang out and play guitar,write, or go on my nature walks. I don't have to get 
drug around to nurseries anymore and be the supporting but bored husband 
because other neighbors do that and free me. Conversely, my wife doesn't have 
to be my group process sounding board anymore, there are others that fill that 
role. I think we are way more successful as partners now with the extended 
connections of community around us.

Meetings are a way of life in all cooperative communities. If your meetings 
are long and tedious and difficult I would suggest your group get some 
training. Excellent meetings are possible, meetings that are fun, energizing, 
and events that are looked forward to. But to acheive that you need excellent 
and dedicated facilitation. If you want to miss all the development meetings, 
don't buy in until the development is done. However, your buyin costs may be 
higher, and you may not have the same group skill levels that the others have, 
which will place you at a distinct disadvantage in meetings and maybe make you 
a liability to the group for awhile until your skills come up to par. Meetings 
go on for the life of the community and so they will always be a part of life 
in cohousing. However, community meetings should be lots of fun and 
interesting. It is not uncommon in most cohousing groups that one partner 
tends to represent the household at community meetings.

Lack of space  may or may not be a problem depending obviously on a number of 
different factors relating to unit design. However, your need for kid space 
will decrease  and you will be astonished to discover that your kids will 
abandon you for the "scene". Assuming your proposed cohousing group has a 
normal range of kids, the kids will find each other and hang out together, in 
fact they will take over the entire project, leaving you, the adult, 
wondering....Hey, didn't I have kids????? This is both a welcome relief and 
also a trial. Sometimes I have to actually tell my kids....No you are going to 
spend some family time together. And then of course  my empty house sometimes 
becomes very full when the kid scene comes over to my house. But its a trade 
off and my house is empty some of the time as well.  The 
commonhouse/playground/outside will be where the kids will want to be because 
that's where their friends are.

This is something you can have no comphrension about until you actually live 
in community and then, after a while you will take for granted that your three 
year old is off somewhere out of site, playing, and you have no idea where, 
but you are not the slightest bit worried about it. This ALWAYS is disbeleived 
by parents about community when I tell them this becuase it runs so absolutely 
counter to your current experience. Most people are exhausted trying to keep 
tabs on their kids all the time to keep them safe, and spend hours amusing 
their kids, taking them places, etc. And yet in every cohousing community I go 
to, even ones very urban, its the same kid and parent scene. The parents I 
meet say, oh yeah, I have 3 kids....They are around here somewhere or other.

This in itself, will buy you huge amounts of free, private time. Maybe more 
than you want.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood on a Sunday morning, and my kids are out there...Somewhere or othe
r.