Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Selection process

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

When you are not dealing with actual titled property you are as free as you
want to create conditions and membership criteria. Once you have titled
property the game changes, and federal and state laws apply. Depending upon
your legal ownership structure you can still maintain some control. If you
go condo, probably the best you can get is right of first refusal, which is
usually meaningless because the organization does not have the capital to
purchase a unit anyway. Coops in most states can choose their members,
that's one reason coops exist.

As far as picking people goes, this requires some thought. Every group has
its own criteria for what kind of people they want and the easiest way to do
this is via a board or other subgroup which creates the criteria and applies
it. Trying to do this as a large group consensus process is a difficult
challenge. I have helped a couple groups do this, and it was a demanding and
emotional process. Also you need to make a waiting list process. What you
will probably discover is that once people move in, there is a bit of
turnover as folks find out living together in cohousing is not what they
expected. So even if you select person A, be sure to make a waiting list
place for person B and tell them to be patient. If they want to live here,
the opportunity will present itself.

One criteria that many groups use is time of service. You need to be an
active part of the group for a specific length of time. This usually weeds
out people that have less commitment.

Rob Sandelin
Northwest Intentional Communties Association
Building a better society, one neighborhood at a time