Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of community property?

[Joe Nolan (jnolan]

Elizabeth Stevenson wrote:

> But a cohousing community, by definition, is based on consensus. Every
> member has a responsibility to do their share of the work, and gets a share
> of the benefits in return. When you decide, on your own, that you really
> want a swimming pool in the common area, and you pay for it, you are
> circumventing the process by which all decisions are supposedly made. Those
> without the money to make that kind of donation are therefore removed from
> the decision-making process, by default.
In our system, there IS a consensus that all of the approved small 
projects are desireable. We just have a different prioritization process.

I sense a gulf here between theory and practice. The swimming pool 
example would be too expensive to qualify for our small projects system, 
and it would be controversial (i.e. rejected). A real-life example would 
be the used electric tractor we purchased a few years back. The 
enthusiasm of a few electric-vehicle geeks allowed the community to get 
the tractor a lot sooner; It's likely we would never have purchased it 
with a more purely egalitarian system.





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