Cohousing-L Mailing List: Is cohousing a consumer product?

[Melanie Mindlin (sassetta]

Changing the title since this thread is definitely not about the original post.

Like Philip, I started my cohousing journey, over 20 years ago, thinking that 
cohousing was a kind of product choice that people can make. After building our 
community and living here for the past 15 years, I feel rather differently 
about it. The challenges of holding a community culture are huge. People are 
confused about what they want, what they can get from community, and how their 
wounding shows up in relation to others.

I especially disagree with the statement, “not all established communities do a 
good job of explaining their contract to home-hunting candidates.” This is 
problematic on so many levels.

First of all, a forming community will make agreements with each other codified 
in their policies before having the actual experience of living together. As 
their knowledge grows, some will find these policies (contracts) to be 
impossible to accomplish, inadequate to address the actual situations, or 
otherwise in contradiction to their needs and beliefs. Re-writing policies is 
very difficult, as whatever underlying conflicts are revealing these flaws will 
tend to make it difficult for people to agree on how they should be changed.

While folks may be able to explain the social contract to themselves, their 
explanation will almost certainly not be identical to that of others in their 
community. No matter how brilliantly expressed, everything is open to 
interpretation. And many of the social norms that the initial group develops, 
will not be codified and open to individual interpretation and challenge.

Which brings us to the idea that if home-hunting candidates received a "really 
good explanation," that would make it possible for them to only choose your 
cohousing community if it was exactly what they want. In my experience, 
incoming members never feel that living in community is what they were 
expecting. They all imagine that they were going to get something which the 
community is not able to provide—childcare, financial assistance, an 
environment free of racism and sexism, lots of social interaction, not too many 
demands, peace and quiet, best friends, other people agreeing with them, etc.

When people talk to me now about creating new cohousing communities, I always 
wonder, "do you have enough commitment to this idea to actually work stuff out 
with others?" This kind of living runs counter to most of the expectations that 
people have in our society. I’m talking about individualism, autonomy, the 
ability to choose to be with people that think like you do or agree with you, 
the ability to stop talking (or worse) to your neighbor if they irritate you, 
the freedom to do what you please without negotiating with others except your 
immediate nuclear family, and so on. 

I hear that many cohousing communities have devolved into housing situations 
more like an ordinary neighborhood. After 15 years, I can easily imagine how 
this might happen.  My community got an influx of new members recently with the 
desire to do more things together. However, we also got someone who wasn’t even 
given all the materials until the last minute. Unlike more communal ownership 
models, we really can’t control the on boarding process even though we really 
try hard to do so.

Melanie

> On Mar 10, 2023, at 2:52 PM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:
> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2023 09:45:13 -0500
> From: Philip Dowds <rpdowds [at] comcast.net <mailto:rpdowds [at] 
> comcast.net>>
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org <mailto:cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>, 
> Anne Geraghty <abgwalks [at] gmail.com <mailto:abgwalks [at] gmail.com>>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Home for sale in Swan's Market Cohousing, Oakland
>       CA
> Message-ID: <etPan.640b4288.20ac60e8.7a3 [at] comcast.net 
> <mailto:etPan.640b4288.20ac60e8.7a3 [at] comcast.net>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Very interesting. ?Frankly, I *have* been thinking of cohousing evolving into 
> a consumer product. ?I know many of those affiliated with CohoUS think of 
> cohousing as a growing ?movement?. ?A picture of the future that makes sense 
> to me is that one day, home hunters will be able to select from among a broad 
> and diverse range of successful cohousing communities, just as today they 
> have a wide range of single family homes from which to choose.
> 
> The thing to keep in mind is this: ?Cohousing is not really about 
> architecture (although good design can play an important supporting role). 
> ?Cohousing is about the voluntary social contract. ?Unfortunately, not all 
> established communities do a good job of explaining their contract to 
> home-hunting candidates. ?Or even to themselves.
> 
> ------------------