Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Unseen Bullying Epidemic in Senior Communities - with hot link

[Dick Margulis (dick]

On 5/16/2018 3:33 PM, Nancy Baughman Csuti wrote:
> I was under the impression that anyone who wanted to move into a for-sale
> cohousing unit could otherwise it violates fair housing laws. Do people
> actually have to agree to the principles and spirit of cohousing to buy a
> unit?

It would depend on whether the community was organized as a condominium 
or a co-op. Co-op boards indeed have the ability to vet buyers, although 
they are required to comply with fair housing laws just like everyone 
else. That is, you can't discriminate based on membership in a protected 
class, but you can discriminate on some other basis.

In our case, we're a condo association, so we have no say in who decides 
to buy. However, we do impose a set of requirements on homeowners, one 
of which is a requirement that they agree to our stated values and 
another of which is a requirement that they agree to abide by our rules.

Someone can lie, of course, and claim to agree with something they do 
not agree with. That's a risk we take, because we realize that there's 
not much we can do to prevent lying. That said, we rely on the fact that 
living out in the middle of nowhere in a neighborhood of expensive, 
small, closely spaced homes with most amenities in a building teeming 
with neighbors is a concept that doesn't appeal to everyone. So why 
would someone deliberately lie to be able to live there?