Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohesiveness of community after a sale?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jul 23, 2025, at 9:04 AM, R Philip Dowds via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> And that’s pretty close to our emerging one-third persistence rule for 
> 25-year-old cohos.  [snip] However … I am guessing that maybe, of the 
> persistent one-third, about half were actually engaged in much or most of the 
> hard development work of site selection, financing, planning and design — 
> while the other half are late-comers who made their commitment and paid their 
> dues only after construction started.

I think the numbers at Takoma Village are higher than that. We had to be at 70 
or 75% committed with contracts signed before we got a construction loan. As I 
remember there was only oen household that was uninvolved before move in — they 
purchased a unit from people who dropped out and didn’t move in for 3-4 months 
later.

We also had the services of Marketing Energy Bunny Ann Zabaldo to bring people 
in early. She had been marketing cohousing for a number of years and had a 
contact list to start from. I think there were 35 people at the first meeting.

> But once it’s fully sold out and occupied, fully up and running,  … is the 
> community culture still open and welcoming of change and evolution?  Or has 
> it ossified into some sort of putative "stable state" that resists new 
> members and new challenges (like, increasing average age of the membership)?

One difference is that the first group was searching for solutions and trying 
things. Trial and error. Testing assumptions and knowledge from other 
experiences. Some were very rigid about what was their previous experience and 
others very rigid about ideologies. One liberation tenet was that everyone 
should cycle through all jobs so no one develops ownership of any task and 
everyone is encouraged to learn all tasks so they have equal skills and power. 
That was a very hard one to let go. I’m not sure that anyone who has moved in 
in the last 10 years is even aware of that commitment to equality. 

And then the question of ossified or experienced comes in. Is the team that 
insists on retaining the HVAC filtering system ossified or experienced. After 
trying all the options, we finally have one that works. 

A new person once reserved the Common House for Christmas Eve which drove many 
of us nuts. We never scheduled the space then but some relaxed activity like 
stone soup and fireplace watching came together about 4:00 on Christmas Eve for 
anyone who was around. The new person (briefly) argued that cultural traditions 
change and there was no rule against a private party in the CH on Christmas 
Eve. She actually didn’t have a well-planned event organized so it worked out 
fairly easily. 

> And intentional acculturation of novices.

This takes enormous time. It’s hard to be new. And hard to remember what a new 
person may need to know. Everything a community can do to stabilize will be 
less stressful in the long run. But new members can also be a spark of new 
energy.

On the one hand everyone wants their point of view about what cohousing is is 
conveyed but also doesn’t want to be bossy because someone else might not agree 
that that was a tradition. Someone will say that is only "your tradition.”

Phrases I never want to hear again while trying to integrate new members:

1. If it isn’t written down it isn’t true, or didn’t happen, or is not 
relevant. That’s just your version.

2. History is gone. It’s over. There is no history. We are starting from here, 
today, in this room.

3. You are excluding us because we weren’t here then so you can’t talk about 
it. We can’t participate. We don’t know any of those people. (Can you imagine a 
child saying this at an extended family dinner?)

4. Well, you say this and she said that. So I’ll do as I please until the 
community agrees on a policy.

5. All requests for reimbursement have to be in by Dec 31 or there will be no 
reimbursement. Best business practices have to be followed. It doesn’t matter 
what you have done for 15 years this is now.

6. Well if you want me to do that job, I need a job description and training. 
(Would any revolutionary venture succeed if everyone had to be trained in 
advance? And if someone knew what training would be necessary?)

I would say generally that people who moved initially had many revolutionary 
ideas they believed in or wanted to test. I don’t see people moving in with new 
ideas. Their attitude is more likely to be the community exists and we need to 
help make it work better. And ‘better’ is much more likely to be hwo things are 
done in the real world.

Is the Research group doing any kind of research on issues like this?

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD