Cohousing-L Mailing List: condos communities vs. co-housing communities

[Diana Porter (porterd1334]

> On Nov 28, 2020, at 6:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:
> 
> Regular HOAs elect a board of directors that acts unilaterally. A ?no pets? 
> policy means ?no pets.?

Alan’s statement that condo communities act unilaterally is probably often very 
true. However, I live in a 180 unit high-rise condo community that is bucking 
that trend.   Our pet policy probably changes  every 5 years as pet owners 
change, and I see that as a good thing, that we are responsive to the owners.

I thought I would share my experience being a part of a five-year process to 
create space within a condo community for owners to work together and to be 
responsive to owners.  We are very fortunate that we have a number of common 
spaces in our building and we own an 18-acre woods on our property which I 
think creates much more interactions between residents and more reasons for 
people to work together.  One of our first struggles was over how the community 
could be used.

The original governing documents gave owners responsibility to get and stay 
involved.(I think the original owners were a high percentage of lawyers, 
doctors and financiers)  We have a 51% quorum for owner meetings and the 
ability as owners to do business at meetings such as change rules can be done 
if 51% of at least the quorum wants to pass resolutions or make rules.  We have 
good attendance at meetings partly so that a minority of the community or the 
Board can’t make rules for the rest of us that disregard the will of the 
majority.  It took several contentious elections to hold the board responsible 
for reading and following the governing documents, but we now have some years 
of peace.

I am the chair of a committee which is majority owners who are currently 
proposing revisions to our governing documents that will hopefully bring even 
more opportunities for owners to be a part of creating and maintaining a great 
place to live.The suggestions from the condo lawyer that we drop have a quorum 
was opposed by the whole committee.

We had greater than 75% participation in our election last year.  Our board 
meetings are on Zoom each month and we have quarterly owners meetings where 
owners can ask questions and talk to each other.  We also have monthly zoom 
“coffees or wine" with our manager (from a large condo management company that 
has a one-year contract that must be renewed each year) to ask questions and 
raise concerns.

We have committees with non-board-member owners in the majority.  They report 
to the owners at Board meetings, quarterly meetings and at the Annual meeting.  

We are now a smoke-free building after a year-long discussion process.  We are 
working on creating EV charging stations and have a weekly at your door compost 
collection by a young entrepreneur.  It costs $12 a month and many units are 
sharing this 2 or 3 ways since the bins are large and participation is 
voluntary and growing.  We are gay-friendly and had a annual Pride pot-luck 
pre-pandemic.  We had twenty people participate in a weekly Black Lives Matter 
hour-long vigil on the street outside our condo every Sunday since June 14th 
and for the winter they are now one a month.  It is in no way an official condo 
activity, but is announced on our building-wide Facebook group and the whole 
community is now used to the honking for an hour that our signs illicit.

We have one, one-bedroom apartment on all 17 floors with six two-bedroom 
apartments on each floor.  Each floor also has four three- bedroom apartments 
and the top two floors are eight penthouses.  We allow some rentals (that is 
currently being debated whether 5, 10 or 15% is the right mix).  Our diversity 
by race and ethnicity is growing and we have more same-sex couples buying 
units.  Age is less diverse as we currently only 2 young children and a few 
grandchildren in the building and many retired adults. 

I have been reading this list serve for years and it has helped me work towards 
positive solutions to some of our issues. It is not co-housing, but it is a 
great a place to live in community.  We have 20 people in a now zoom bookclub 
now reading Isabel Wilkerson and someone at the last meeting said “I love it 
that I live somewhere that i can be in this bookclub with my neighbors 
discussing race and caste in America!”

Yes, of course there are nay-sayers, but they mostly go their own way, or now 
and then choose to threaten the board that they will bring suit if the board 
does not resolve their issue.   Most, just live their lives privately as a 
continuation of the old culture of this building that was promoted when it 
opened as a “first-class” apartment building in 1964.

Diana