Re: New member, questions
From: Kay Argyle (argylemines.utah.edu)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 12:08:40 -0700 (MST)
> what kind of questions are important to ask the
> community before making a final decision. Also, what have you found to be
> the most challenging aspects of cohousing?
> ... 
> Jennifer

Based on the experience of our community, if the community you are moving
into is not 100% finished, a very important question to ask is the amount
of sweat equity that will be involved for landscaping, the common house,
etc.  The members who joined us right before move-in weren't at all
prepared for this.

A related question is community work requirements.  For instance, is
cooking required?  What are the arrangements for maintenance of community
property, such as common house cleaning?

The challenging aspects for me have been (these are interrelated),

(a) The work load (our landscaping is 100% sweat equity).

(b) The difficulty in maintaining an existence apart from cohousing.
Cohousing has this tendency to suck up your time with community meetings,
common meals, committee meetings, work parties, clearing meetings,
potlucks, dances, birthday parties, crafts night, game night ....  I never
went anywhere except to work or the grocery store, I quit visiting my
parents and siblings or going to the library or movies or skiing or biking.
 I never talked about or thought about or did anything but cohousing.  I
felt like I had a second job where I lived on the premises.  I went to work
in the morning and I came home in the evening and worked, and I went to
work and I came home and went to a meeting ... and after a while I was
wondering why I was reluctant to come home.  I'm doing better emotionally
since I gave myself permission to be "irresponsible" about community work
(if nobody will do it if I don't ... that's okay), and started making a
deliberate effort to spend time on things that have nothing to do with
cohousing, to spend time alone, to disappear on weekends if I want to.

(c) The lack of privacy.  For instance, since we are not permitted (in our
community) to put up fences and the kids have been used to playing anywhere
and everywhere while the property was unlandscaped, they cut through my
flowerbeds and across my patio during their games.  It seems petty to
object to this, but it upsets me.  I've seen comments about a need for
privacy being something to be "overcome" and "outgrown" as you live in
cohousing, as though it were a pathology.  Absolutely not.  (I was pleased
to find that Christopher Alexander talks about people's need for privacy
and gradations of intimacy, and the implications for architecture in A
Pattern Language.)

Kay Argyle
Wasatch Commons
Salt Lake City

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