Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The popularization of the term Co-housing

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

I don’t want to be the Captain of the Vocabulary Police, but I tend to use the 
terms differently.  Condominium associations and home owner associations are 
each legal entities (corporations, if you like) that own and manage common 
property.  Condos associations tend to own a lot in common (with private 
ownership limited to what’s within the drywall boundaries of the unit), and 
home owner associations tend to own much less.  But all such corporations have 
an elected Board of Directors; in MA, it’s called Managing Board, and in other 
States, something else.  Cohousing communities are ever wary of hierarchical 
structures controlled by elites, so they often invent work-arounds that 
transfer duty and power from the legally-required Board to other groups.  But 
in the eyes of the State that charters them, cohousing communities are still 
corporations, and the buck stops at the Board.

Thanks,
Philip Dowds
Cornerstone Village Cohousing
Cambridge, MA

> On Oct 24, 2016, at 4:21 PM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> This conversation is quite confusing!!!
> 
> I think an HOA is the board for a condo. Certainly my cohousing community, 
> organized as a condo, has an HOA.
> However a group of people is legally organized, I think it still can be 
> cohousing.