Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How large a core group needed for site design?

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

>From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
>
>> On Jun 15, 2015, at 12:45 PM, John Sechrest <sechrest [at] gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Every decision you make has consequences.
>> The more you decide, the more you solidify, the more you define the next
>> set of people that joins you on the journey.
>
>And unless you get started, you canʼt self-correct. You  can only wonder.
>Making it physical means you can test and correct.

And it probably goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, the early
decisions made by less than the whole community will influence who
decides to join and who decides against joining.  The small group
should try to anticipate what policies will attract people.  Some
decisions might make it difficult to recruit people.

At the NC Conference Kevin Wolf in the session on Retrofit Cohousing
(which evolves over time as existing houses turn over and new people
acquire them to join the community) emphasized the need to have rules,
policy , vision in place so that the group would have shared
expectations. N Street, the premier Retrofit community started with a
coop in one house that had rules that N Street inherited. He was asked
what if the community was started by one household, and he said, as I
recall, that they should set up some thing they thought would appeal to
people.  (Kevin, if I did not get this right, please comment.)

Essentially there is a spectrum of ways a community can arrive
at shared agreements - vision, mission, policy rules, community design.
They can create those agreements as a whole group or people can join a
community whose agreements they agree with or something in between
with one of those things in between being modified agreements.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
     Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org         My org:
Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads