Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Themed, affinity, or specialty cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 1:50 PM, David Heimann <heimann [at] theworld.com> wrote:

> Roger gave details about how a specialty theme works, specially a Jewish one. 
>  Also Sharon Villines emphasized the necessity of having a solid theme for 
> the specialty to coalesce around -- e.g., Jewish cohousing has Judaism, with 
> all its tradition and body of knowledge (and an active organization of Jewish 
> intentional communities, see Robert Tabak's October 31, 2016, post to this 
> list), whereas an artist cohousing does not and hence makes it more difficult 
> to organize.

The other post that was interesting this morning was the Born Farm plan to join 
a CSA and an artists group. The bond here becomes the income generation. The 
CSA sounds well along—their aim is more clearly defined and the tasks to 
achieve it are clear. They also hundreds of years of agricultural wisdom and 
contemporary examples/mentors. The arts group, as David noted, has a less well 
defined aim and is having more difficulty moving forward clearly. They have 
motivation and devotion but an aim is tangible. 

Tangible aims for “artist” focused businesses are often giving classes and 
renting space to artists. That’s one aim if the site has space for another 
building. Another is production. One thing I learned from ceramic artists is 
that the most sustainable practice is a balance between production items and 
one of a kind items. One model is to do production all morning and one of a 
kind art pieces the rest of the day—or the reverse. If you hire assistants for 
production, when production happens is influenced by their availability.

Another model is to build a specialized art production facility — ceramics, 
printmaking, papermaking, digital printing, 3-D printing, etc. Things that 
require large, specialized equipment. Artists come from afar to use the 
facilities a few times a year. A quilting artist rents time at a facility with 
large quilting machines and tables for pinning the layers of quilts together.

Putting business together with collaborative housing means two collaborative 
projects at the same time. Two collaborative businesses with collaborative 
housing is three collaborative projects at one time.

The other governance issue, aside from the complexities of having three 
focuses, is that you have a theocratic governance. A governance based on an 
outside reference. Are the needs of collaborative living primary or secondary? 
This democratic governance in which all the participants can participate 
equally and the measures of success are internal. 

Because cohousing is primarily built around ownership, collaborative is 
beholden to the external standards of real estate markets. But I don’t think 
the aim of any cohousing community has ever been to maximize home prices. But 
maintaining market values is one sustainable leg of the community.

Building a collaborative community is still the primary aim. The only time it 
becomes an external aim is when a community looks to some group or person like 
CohoUS or a utopian writer as a measure of success. That becomes autocratic as 
well. External standards are adopted as aims.

Against which values are decisions judged?

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Sociocracy: A Deeper Democracy
http://www.sociocracy.info