Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: welcoming new members

[Odysseus Levy (odysseus]

Jackson Place cohousing in Seattle got a very nice newspaper article 
written about it while they were still under development, and they got 
an enormous number of people that wanted to join.
They got so many people that they decided to freeze new admissions for a 
while. But many of those people over time decided to drop out, so much 
so that it became a struggle to sell the remaining units, and even after 
move in they had one unsold unit that the community had to carry for 
many months.

I think you are better off opening up the group early on -- not everyone 
is going to be able to go through the whole long journey with you.

Benefits:

- Start getting used to the dynamics of having so many people -- after 
all this is what you are going to be moving into.
- More people to get things done
- More money

The biggest challenge is to learn how to make consensus work. I think 
most groups underestimate how much work this requires. Where in our 
normal lives have we ever learned effective consensus? Most have never 
learned this in our families, schools, or work places. And yet so many 
cohousing groups seem to just take for granted that it will all just 
work. I would recommend that your group make it a specific, actionable 
goal to get trained in consensus and non violent conversation and that 
any new member should be expected to go through the training as well. 
That alone should weed out a fair number of people. And then have the 
group go through lots of continous training. One of the reasons why 
consensus moves so slow for new groups is that they are always 
struggling with so many trust issues. You might be talking about one 
thing, but at its root people are not sure they trust you and therefore 
want to move very slowly. But it does get better, be sure to visit to a 
well established cohousing groups meetings to see how things go much 
smoother after people have been practicing it for years.

At a cohousing dinner one night we were talking about who is a good fit 
for cohousing. One of my neighbors said that the main factor is if the 
person is willing to learn. I agree with her. There is a surprisingly 
large amount of personal growth and learning that cohousing demands from 
us, especially new cohousing. If you find people that are able and 
willing to do that personal growth work I suspect that you will be happy 
to have them as neighbors.

Lynette Bassman wrote:

> Hi.
>
>
>
> I am a founding member of the Fresno (California) Cohousing group (soon
> to be an official LLC).  We have thirteen families, we are under
> contract to purchase a parcel of land, and we have begun the design
> process with The Cohousing Company.  Our final design workshop is in
> early June.  We plan to submit our documents to the planning department
> by their August 30th deadline.
>
>
>
> I would like to get some information about how groups at our stage of
> development go about taking in new members.  We have decided not to open
> the group until the design process is complete, but we are getting calls
> already from people who are interested.  Here are the questions we have:
>
>
>
> 1. At what point do you invite new members into the group (i.e.;  before
> or after planning approvals?)
>
> 2. What materials do you provide to represent what the group is all
> about? 
>
> 3. How do you make sure that people are aligned with the group's values?
>
>
> 4. How do you handle people who are problematic (i.e., uncooperative,
> "crazy", substance abusers...) 
>
> 5. How do you handle process issues when the original group has done a
> lot of work on process, so that the new members will feel fully
> integrated and welcome?
>
> 6. How do you handle waiting lists?  (We think that there is pretty
> lively interest in our community, and we only have another 14 units to
> sell, so we need to figure out how to properly document seniority (or
> some other prioritizing process) in case there are more interested
> families than there are available units.)  
>
> 7. Anything else you think we should know that I didn't ask about.
>
>
>
> Thanks so much.
>
>
>
> Lynette Bassman, Ph.D.
>
> Associate Professor
>
> California School of Professional Psychology at
>
> Alliant International University
>
> phone: (559) 253-2240
>
> fax:  (559) 253-2267
>
> lbassman [at] alliant.edu
>
>
>
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