Cohousing-L Mailing List: The politics of cohousing

[C2pattee (C2pattee]

I think, Matt, that you have summarized those crunch issues which, if not 
addressed and solved early on in a practical way, will doom a cohousing group.  
I 
had a similar experience with Greater Hartford (CT) Cohousing which spent 
three years of serious processing and over $10,000 trying to
1.         Buy land in the most expensive area of greater Hartford - west of 
the Connecticut River, 
2.         Build homes affordable everyone in the group, the majority of who 
were single individuals without assets and medium to low incomes,
3.         Stay close to the city of Hartford and still be in a good school 
district so we could attract families with children
 
They didn't succeed, though a hard core few were still trying a year after I 
left.  Ironically, I found this out the way I found the group originally, 
through a story in the Hartford Courant with a front page color picture.  The 
group had the best free publicity you could want, and they still couldn’t make 
a 
go of it.
 
No amount of ‘consensing’ will change economic reality, and it’s extremely 
difficult to be the person in the group who always points that out.  You have 
my sympathy, and I hope you find a group that's already got these baseline 
issues figured out.  I didn’t, but I stay on this list because I can’t quite 
let 
the dream go.
 
Christine Pattee, late of Greater Hartford Cohousing 

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:00:37 -0600 (CST)
From: Matt Lawrence <matt [at] technoronin.com>
Subject: [C-L]_ The politics of cohousing
To: Developing cohousing - collaborative housing communities
    <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0412041445570.29053 [at] oberon.technoronin.com>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

These are some thoughts and observations on my experiences trying to get 
involved with cohousing.

I've been interested in architecture for a large part of my life, 
particulary the interelationship of people with spaces.  Being a lifelong 
SF fan as well, I ran into the concept of arcologies and the work of Paolo 
Soleri early on.  I also grew up during the 60s & 70s where "communes" 
were a big thing.  Since then, I've heard and read about a number of 
intentional communities, which are a cool idea, but not really how I want 
to live my life.  About ten years ago, I ran into the idea of cohousing 
and realized that it was probably the correct blend of community and 
privacy for me.

Since then, I've attended some classes given by Chuck Durrett and I've 
visited several existing and forming communities.  The one that had 
probably the most impact on me was the meeting I attended in Aukland 
(thanks, Julia).  I also met Joani Blank and she is definitely on my top 
ten list of all time cool people.

So where am I going with this?  Well, I've come to the realization that I 
already know a lot more of the questions and some of the answers that 
apply to me personally.  This has been a big disadvantage when dealing 
with newly forming groups, it takes time for people to realize many of the 
issues and to formulate their own answers.  Being a rotten politician, 
more than once I have offended a group by saying "well, according to the 
experts..."  I know that the experts (Chuck Durrett, Rob Sandelin, etc.) 
are not _always_ right, but in the absence of a very convincing coumter 
argument, that's who I'm going to follow.

Four years ago, I became involved with a group.  It was a learning 
experience, and not a particularly positive one.  I was definitely an 
outsider.

I got off to a bad start when I objected to their desire to do 
_everything_ via concensus.  While they do have some very valid points, 
the experts strongly recommend a backup mechanism for when concensus can't 
be reached.  Probably the strongest point for having a backup mechanism is 
the unfortunate necessity that most groups will have for dealing with 
financial institutions.  This really offended a number of folks.

The there was the family that insisted that they had to have their unit 
for $80K.  Well, I worked the numbers forward to get the total project 
cost, then worked them backwards to get the estimated land cost an then 
pointed out that they probably had unreasonable expectations.  This caused 
me to be labelled as "too negative".  A couple of years later I noticed 
that they finally figured out what construction costs were liable to be 
and that they really couldn't get what they were asking for at the price 
they wanted.

I made the mistake of mentioning that I found the small children present 
to be a bit disruptive over the course of a long meeting and that perhaps 
some thought should be given to some sort of childcare.  I made a point to 
explain that I wasn't trying to exclude the children from the meeting, I 
just wanted to give them something more interesting to do when they got 
bored of the meetings.  There are lots of examples in the list archives. 
My attitude really upset a number of folks.  Oddly enough, a couple of 
years later they started providing childcare.

When I joined, the stated goal was to build in one particular part of 
town.  When that fell through, they started looking for land that was much 
further south than I found acceptable.  When I pointer this out, the 
answer was "everybody else likes the idea".  When I tried to suggest other 
pieces of land that I found much more acceptable, I was very rudely beat 
down by a couple of members.  I think they are still looking.

I just recently noticed that they have now realized that there may be an 
issue with differing income levels and the common facilites or amenities 
that could be available.  I pointed out this issue four years ago, but, as 
always, I was wrong.

I grew up in a subculture that is often in conflict with mainstream 
American society.  I am much more interested in having the right answer at 
the end of a discussion or meeting than I am with having it at the 
beginning.  If I'm wrong about something, which isn't that unusual, I want 
to know what and why.  This can be a major problem when applied to people 
or groups that don't think that way, a challenge to an idea is percieved 
as being a challenge to the person expressing it.  When a number of people 
are engaged in some sort of "groupthink", this can be taken as an attempt 
to tear down or destroy the group.  Not my intention, but as I said 
before, I'm a terrible politician.  Being right is often the worst thing 
to do in many organizations.

So, what do y'all think?

-- Matt
It's not what I know that counts, it's what I can remember in time to use.