Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: [C-L]_Consensus in cohousing

[Kevin Wolf (kjwolf]

At 07:38 AM 8/7/2003 -0700, Becky Schaller wrote:

>I wrote this message on Monday and today is Wednesday and I haven't heard
>anyone give a direct answer to my question.   So I'm interpreting that to
>mean that no one who is a  member of an older community  (people living in
>the community for five or more years) still use consensus for major
>decisions.  snip


Becky
At N Street Cohousing we have been working by consensus since we first became a 
cohousing community in 1989.  We have had over 100 people live here and have 
made every decision by consensus.  (We average 40 adults.)  Right now we are 
reaching consensus on a massive redesign of our common house. We expect 
consensus to be achieved on each decision involved in the effort. 

We do have a core group of members who are very experienced at consensus 
process and who help newcomers (which we have around 5 per year) get up to 
speed on what consensus means and how it works.  Maybe your larger group (36 
houses) makes it more difficult.  I am amused at the number of cohousing 
communities I talk with or help train in facilitation which don't yet have 
written procedures for how they reach consensus.  It would be in this document 
that you would clarify when the group would vote, who would vote, what 
percentage is need to pass a proposal, what notification is needed that a vote 
will occur etc.  How you all make decisions with out agreed upon guidelines and 
procedures is amazing.

My advice is to do the work involved with agreeing on how you will make 
decisions and it will become a lot easier to reach consensus.

Kevin 


****************
Kevin Wolf
N Street Cohousing Community member
http://members.dcn.org/nstreet
724 N St, Davis, CA  95616
530-758-4211
kevin [at] wolfandassociates.com

To download my facilitation manual or other free material on 
consensus decision making, visit 
http://www.wolfandassociates.com/facilitation/index.htm


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