Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Your Participation Policy

[Bonnie Fergusson (fergyb2]

     Here at Swans Market Cohousing we have been through many bouts of people 
becoming less able to do the amount they used to in the 23 years since move in. 
 People shift their participation to less physically demanding tasks, and/or 
pull in nearby family members to help.  When one resident had a weekend job 
that took her away from the community every weekend (our workdays are always 
scheduled on weekends) she took on a weekly task that had to be done every 
Tuesday morning.  Our participation requirements are 4 workdays (out of the 10 
that are scheduled every year) and active membership in at least 1 committee 
although many of us are on multiple Committees.  We used to require every adult 
cook once every “rotation”. Ie every 5 weeks or so but the pandemic closed down 
our common meal program and it has become more voluntary and less well attended 
since some still have more acute health concerns.  We always do a light lunch 
at each workday and that too is a task that someone signs up for and helps to 
entice folk in.  Sometimes the lunch person just buys pizza if they don’t 
really want to cook.  During the pandemic we emphasized signing up to do a task 
sometime during the week, not necessarily at the same time as the workday.  
Participation varies at different times in people’s lives but this is not 
really seen as a problem since social capital has been built up over time.  I 
don’t remember anyone ever flatly refusing to ever participate.  Such folk 
don’t usually end up in cohousing if you orient your prospective buyers well 
enough.  It all sort of evens out in the end.  It helps that we are a 
multigenerational community and everyone has different skill sets to bring to 
the table.        Bonnie Fergusson      Swans Market Cohousing       Oakland, CA


Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad


On Monday, March 27, 2023, 4:33 AM, susanfries613 [at] gmail.com wrote:

PDX Commons is currently revisiting our Participation Policy for how we get
the work needed to run our community done.  We would appreciate if you
shared your Participation Policy with me directly by email.  

We are specifically interested in:

1.    What you do when someone is longer able to participate in the
physical tasks of maintaining your building and grounds
2.    What you do when someone refuses to take part in getting the
community work done
3.    What are your requirements for participation .  

We are aware of Laird Schaub's upcoming series on Participation and will
take part.  

Thank you.

Susan Fries, PDX Commons, Portland, OR

 

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