Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Voluntary Community Participation?

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello Ed et al,

	At Jamaica Plain Cohousing we have a work requirement of attending 
General Meetings, serving on at least one committee, and doing four hours of 
community work per month per adult member.  There are four outdoor (ground) 
workdays per year, one indoor (building) workday per year, and one community 
life workday per year.  In addition there are routine and episodic tasks than 
people can sign up to do (such as mowing the lawn or tidying up the living 
room).  As long as all the work gets done we don't keep track of who works how 
many hours -- we tried that our first couple of years, but then came to a 
decision that a light non-bureaucratic touch was better than fairness, and that 
has worked out since.  If some one feels they are putting in more hours than 
others are and don't like the unfairness, they are free to devote fewer hours 
to make it fairer.  If someone does not like results of a given task, they can 
talk with the person who has committed to do it, but if the task still isn't 
done to their satisfaction they can either live with it, take the task over 
from the person doing it (or if the task is not being done at all to take on 
the task themselves), or ask the committee in charge of the task to farm it out 
to an outside firm (and include the resulting costs in their budget).

	Once in a great while (about once or twice in our 17 year history) a 
whole group of people have gotten burned out from doing a group of tasks and 
announces that they are all stepping back.  In those few cases we wind 
up having a full-fledged community discussion on how to restructure the 
work so it will get done (either by reorganizing how the work gets done, 
by farming that group of tasks to an outside management firm, or a 
combination of both of these).  It takes a lot of meeting time to do the 
restructuring and a lot of sharing of intense feelings, but in each case 
we have reached a new work plan that has then worked.

        That's our mileage.  Your mileage may vary (YMMV).

Regards,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing, Jamaica Plain (Boston), MA


> > On Jan 4, 2023, at 6:11 AM, Ed Sutton via Cohousing-L 
> > <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> >
> > ?Eno Commons? founding principles include ?voluntary participation,? i.e. no 
> > one is required to participate in the work of caring for the community, and 
> > there is no penalty for non-participation.
> >
> > Our low HOA dues were established with an assumption of a high level of 
> > resident care work.The small group of neighbors who are struggling to care 
> > for common property are questioning the wisdom of continuing this 
> > arrangement.
> >
> > Are there any other co-housing communities successfully operating after 25 
> > years of laissez-faire resident participation?
> >
> > Ed Sutton
> > Eno Commons
> > _________________________________________________________________
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