Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community size

[Moz (list]

Sharon Villines said:
> Without the do-it-yourselfers to do the work, we can't afford to
> live in the communities we have built. And the larger they get the
> more work they require because they have larger, more complex
> systems.

And it's worth noting that this happens even with community size of
one household. As people age in place their ability to do simple stuff
like climb up on the roof and clean the gutters diminishes, until
eventually walking down the path and emptying the mailbox is a major
challenge. Ideally, anyway :)

Even with just a couple of people in one house, it helps if you have
clear records and more than one person who can do any given task, just
to save whoever has to step in from having to begin at the beginning.

My partner is currently helping the housing co-op she used to live in
come to terms with the gap between their desire to start a second
co-op and their limited ability to raise funds. Mostly by pointing
them at other co-ops in the area who have different strategies on
related issues. The lack of institutional knowledge is really hurting
them, they're having long meetings to discuss things they simply
cannot (legally) do because no-one in the meetings is aware that those
discussions have been had before. The minutes are "available" as a
collection of mostly Word files scattered around a hard disk in the
administration computer.

Do try to avoid that problem.

Moz