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

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

I have been living here for TEN YEARS. While it doesn't make me the oracle
of knowledge, I do have a perspective that is being ignored because I'm
perceived as being overly emotional about this, in spite of evidence to the
contrary. In that time, several different households have been the "poorest
family" in our community. I can tell you that it's *NEVER* the poorest
family that blocks consensus on spending money.

This is not about the poorest family, it's about fairness. You might just as
easily say this is about the family with the most disposable income. If you
structure your HOA dues so that everyone can reasonably pay them, (again,
we've done this for 10 years) there's absolutely no reason why any
particular family would block consensus on the basis of their inability to
pay. And since it seems to bear repeating, I'm not talking about items that
cost 100 bucks, either. We've paid for many such things without consensus.

What price is too high to pay for equality? Shall we just throw out the idea
of consensus entirely because you think it might be inconvenient?

-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California
tamgoddess [at] comcast.net

> From: Howard Landman <howard [at] polyamory.org>
> Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 05:46:29 -0700 (PDT)
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of community
> 
> 
>> I still don't see how allowing people to contribute what they
>> want to specific projects is fair. Those with more money have more say.
>> Period. Doesn't this bother anyone else?
>> 
>> Why is this necessary? If your process is working, the community should be
>> getting things paid for that need paying for, and anything that is not a
>> priority for the whole community shouldn't be paid for.
> 
> Yes, Liz, but on the other hand, is it fair for the single poorest family
> in the community to block progress on major projects that they feel they
> can't afford?  And that most other families want?  If you require that
> everything be funded perfectly fairly, this is what will happen much of
> the time.  Are you willing to accept that as the price of equality?
> 
> Howard A. Landman
> River Rock Commons
> Fort Collins, Colorado

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