Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: consequences in community

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Nov 30, 2005, at 10:07 AM, ilyse simon wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm researching consequences in various cohos. What happens in your 
> community when a member doesn't do her work requirement, or breaks a 
> community rule, or repeatedly doesn't pick up dog poop, or fails to 
> pay an assessment. I'm on a committee writing Rules & Regs for Ulster 
> county Coho and we need some ideas. After conflict resolution is 
> ignored or fails, what to you do then?

Expectations work better than "rules" which people feel very 
uncomfortable about. And you need to write far fewer of these down than 
you would expect. I would suggest sitting down with your group and 
doing rounds on specific areas of concern to see if there is a wide 
range of expectations in your group. Those will be the only areas you 
need to discuss and clarify. If everyone agrees that it is reasonable, 
for example, that if you destroy a neighbor's tree, you are responsible 
for apologizing and offering to replace it, there is no reason to write 
a rule. The rule mentality will pretty much drive you nuts.

That said, I believe the same expectations that are applied to money 
should also applied to labor. Needless to say they are not. While 
everyone understands that financial obligations are givens and should 
be shared proportionately somehow labor is viewed as something one only 
does if they feel like it.

I suggest this comes from generations of believing that women will pick 
up the slack. Women have traditionally been responsible for any work in 
the home. Both husbands and children, sons and daughters, expect her to 
do the work. This has created a mind set that someone else will do it. 
The fact that women are now doing "men's work" as well as "women's 
work" and that there is no invisible gnome to pick up the slack has not 
yet sunk in.

The rule mentality doesn't work with labor any better than with 
behavior -- the details will drive you batty -- but there as to be some 
equivalent measure to that of money when it comes to giving 
proportionately to community life.

Why is time/labor support considered more optional and voluntary than 
financial support?

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Building Community: A Newsletter on Coops, Condos, Cohousing, and Other 
New Neighborhoods
http://www.buildingcommunitynews.org