Cohousing-L Mailing List: Problems with Developing a Cohousing Community [was Accessing New York Times article

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Feb 14, 2022, at 10:56 AM, Dick Margulis <dick [at] dmargulis.com> wrote:

> In retrospect, four individuals working for four entities were fired or 
> reassigned because of the way they mishandled our project: we got a new case 
> manager at DOH; the person in charge of our project at the regional water 
> authority who kept shining us on about accommodating our needs when she knew 
> damn well that wasn't going to happen was fired; the bank loan officer who 
> secured our construction loan and then choked us off at a critical juncture 
> is no longer employed by the bank; and the project manager (person) initially 
> assigned to our project by the project management company, who made a number 
> of costly errors early in the construction process is no longer employed by 
> that company.

My first hands on effort at working with a group to develop cohousing was in 
Florida. My first surprise was that developers hire “expediters” who get the 
paperwork through all the hoops you have to jump through. The Expediter 
literally, takes the paper to town hall and stays there watching what happens 
to them. Being visible, chatting with the staff, checking on progress, probably 
buying people cookies and coffee (or more).

Delays to the person behind the desk are meaningless — they get paid no matter 
what and if they finished your work they still have more to do. Public 
employees are normally not well paid or given much respect so their initiative 
is often very low. The only thing worse than having to negotiate a bureaucracy 
is working in one.

This is one of the places where experience really counts — it means you know 
people. What is supposedly written on paper is rarely very helpful when you 
have to cope with a bureaucrat. It’s an art.

(Off topic story: A friend’s partner died and even though she had a power of 
attorney authorizing her to transfer ownership of his car to her, the DMV was 
insisting that she had to have the death certificate as well. She insisted on 
being shown where it said so in writing. They passed her up the line a couple 
of times and no one could find anything but insisted it was true. Finally, she 
said, "Well, I’ll just wait until you find it” and sat down in the manager’s 
office. They dropped the requirement.)

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org