Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Enforcement of co-housing rules/policies within your community

[Christine Johnson (christine-johnson]

I so appreciate the points made so far about the difficulties that we face in 
getting folks to comply with agreements.   Outside of contracting for 
professional management, putting in place consequences that do not involve 
individuals who live in the community taking a role appears to me, to be 
impossible.   I am quite happy and privileged to live where I live, enjoy and 
care for the people I live with, and it’s just not worth the bad feelings to do 
more than simply state how it is when the topic comes around.   If there was a 
collective effort here to march into the difficult conversations that it would 
involve, I’d be a part of that, as would others, I’m sure.  But others who too, 
are troubled by our failure to effect compliance with our agreements are 
probably like me -   we choose to tolerate, ignore or give in to folks who do 
not comply.

On the positive side, we have two successful practices that work for us:
1)  When there have been individuals who are either not complying with an 
agreement and another objects or two people/households are in conflict with 
each other, formal mediation has been used.  Accepting a request, if asked, 
that one participate in a mediation, is one of our agreements.  Over 11 years, 
the issues that have gone to mediation were the few that reached a point of 
being intolerable to at least one person. It has to date, just been 
individuals, not the community, who have requested and used mediation.  I’ve 
been told that it has not always brought folks to  totally happy ending but I 
think it’s fair to say that mediation helped to prevent those relationships 
from deteriorating into being totally antagonistic.
2)  We have a listserv moderator who has the power to effect consequences if 
individuals ignore our guidelines for listserv postings.   Through his 
consistent reminders to everyone and, on occasion, disallowing an individual’s 
access for a short period, we enjoy a pretty civil and friendly listserv.

On the negative side, we have over 11 years tolerated, ignored or resigned 
ourselves to:  
numerous unapproved ‘improvements’ to property and landscape plantings (in 
large part because of our failure to put in place detailed guidelines, a 
written design review approval process); 
individuals using common spaces for private storage and in one instance, 
continuous personal use;
the presence of feral cats that a resident feeds, with the cats killing birds 
and spraying and pooping on outdoor furnishings

I would really appreciate hearing any input on how your community works through 
these sorts of difficulties (given the 1st one obviously includes having in 
place detailed design guidelines with a written review process).

I worked as a community association manager for a number of years and was the 
‘enforcer’ of the rules, regulations and design guidelines, acting on the 
authority of the Boards of Directors.   Enforcement was the most unpleasant 
part of my day to day work.   I made very good money as the hired ‘cop’.   You 
couldn’t pay me enough though, to do this job in my own community.  

Christine Johnson
Stone Curves Cohousing
Tucson, AZ 


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Carl Manz & Christine Johnson
4145 N. Stone Ave., #102
Tucson, AZ 85705-8807
carl-manz [at] cox.net  
christine-johnson [at] cox.net
520-207-8718
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