Re: Conflicting Values? | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Rob Sandelin (floriferousmsn.com) | |
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 13:32:09 -0700 (PDT) |
Prior to acquiring land, loans, construction schedules, etc these kinds of discussions can fill up your time and emotional space. Sometimes they simply are nothing other than discussions since you will not be able to control diversity, it might become very hard to have much control over affordability and how much accessibility you build in over whatever is required will of course impact affordability. Look around at your group at the next meeting and then imagine half of them gone by the time construction is finished. It might not be that drastic a turn over, but there have been forming groups where the percentage was even higher. Once you acquire control of a site, and start learning the costs of contruction, some of which is controlled by bank finananceers, you will have people drop out. It is not uncommon for early forming groups to have wildly unrealistic ideas of what a unit is going to cost, and when reality hits, those that can't afford it are either looking for subsidizing type programs, or they are out. Sometimes the very people with the strongest opinions about certain things like affordibility are the first to fall out of the final mix. If you are going to do some kind of affordability option then you need to understand that the start up time for many programs can take as long as a year to get approval, and sometimes longer. So you need to plan ahead for affordibility money. Who will you partner with? What are their funding source deadlines? How does that fit your project schedule? The bank will generally not support building some small percentage of units with less expensive options than the whole project, you will need to find supporting money instead. But even then, sometimes people mislead themselves about what they can do and it?s a painful awakening for them when the real numbers require downpayments and monthly mortgages that are beyond their abiities. Diversity is not something you can control either, you can't reserve units legally for people of a certain race. You can choose where and how you market, but who shows up is who shows up. If your target is left-handed anacarist lesbians but the only people who show up with the jobs and money are right handed hetero males, you pretty much will fill your units with that population. And remember, this whole notion of market rate cooperative living is enormously high risk and experiemental, and this alone will make it hard to find people will commit their resources to it. Rob Sandelin Naturalist, Writer The Environmental Science School http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm ><((((º>`·..·`·..·`·...><((((º>...·`·..·`·...><((((º>.·`·..·`·...><((((º>.·` ·..·`·...><((((º>·.. ><((((º> ·`·..·`·...·..·`><((((º>.·`·..·`·...><((((º>.·`·..·`·...><((((º>..·`·..·`·.. .><((((º>·.. ·`·..·`·....·`·..·`·...><((((º> -----Original Message----- From: Regan Conley [mailto:reganconley [at] earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 6:53 AM To: Cohousing-L Subject: [C-L]_ Conflicting Values? Our little forming group (Urban D.C. Cohousing) is embroiled in a process conflict about values. But it's led me to wonder if we have an underlying difference and whether we might be better served as two groups. As neutrally as possible: Our group all agrees that values A (accessibility), B (affordability) and C (diversity) are all important. As part of our process conflict, it's come to our attention that we have different priorities for these values. Some believe that A and B are really fundamental and it's pointless for people to continue working hard on this project without an assurance that it's somewhere they will be able to live. Others believe with absolute moral certitude that C must be most important to us and that we must be prepared to sacrifice other things (including A and B) in order to achieve C. [I must note that the diversity we are primarily, though not exclusively, talking about is racial. I just don't want people pointing out the obvious -- that we probably can't have C without A and B -- when in fact we could have lots of racial diversity without those two things. Or we could have lots of A and B, but hypothetically all white.] Can this group live happily ever after? How? In principle it seems that we certainly can, if we get past the process problems. But in reality, everyone that lives in built co- housing is well aware that they sacrificed something important along the way to get there. The group was really committed to their values, but had to give something up in order to get nearly everything else. How did your group deal with this "what's most important?" problem? Does it make sense to deal with it sooner (as a hypothetical conflict when we might really get all three of those things) or later (when people will have put in time and emotion and then leave the group)? Regan Conley Urban D.C. Cohousing _________________________________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at: http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/ -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/343 - Release Date: 5/18/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/343 - Release Date: 5/18/2006
- Re: Conflicting Values?, (continued)
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Re: Conflicting Values? Eileen McCourt, May 19 2006
- Re: Conflicting Values? Regan Conley, May 19 2006
- Re: Conflicting Values? Anne Jackson, May 22 2006
- Re: Conflicting Values? Ann Zabaldo, May 22 2006
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Re: Conflicting Values? Eileen McCourt, May 19 2006
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