Cohousing-L Mailing List: effort/commitment

[Judy (BAXTER%EPIVAX]

Nancy brings up an interesting point in her intro when she says
"On a personal note, I have found this process to be both extremely 
rewarding and extremely time-consuming.  During the most hectic times,
some of us are attending 3 evening meetings per week. I didn't quite
realize how much it had taken over my life until I saw a pre-programming
survey on which we were asked the following question, "How many times
per week do you have people over to your house for dinner?". "How many
times per WEEK??!," I shrieked, "you've got to be kidding!".  I had the
question changed to "Before you became involved in cohousing, how many..." . 

For us, it has taken an enormous amount of commitment, trust, and willingness 
to take on financial risk to get where we are, and I am grateful to our
members for hanging in there.  I only hope that this process 
gets easier for future groups.
+++++++++
I could certainly say ditto to all that, for our Monterey group.  I hate to say
it, but the truth is, folks, I think this is a very demanding process we're in. 
We tell ourselves at Monterey that, in some ways, we are doing this the hard
way, (DEVELOPMENT, PLANNING, RECRUITMENT, AND MOVING INTO AN OLD BUILDING AND
REHAB, ALL AT THE SAME TIME) and I think it is true, BUT, even without that,
this model requires a lot from people. We talked to a coop guy from Calif,
David Thompson, I think his name was, who did some work for Muir Commons.  He
said that either they or Winslow, I can't remember which, were finding it more
work than they expected, and it was worth it.
 
I think the plus side of this is the feedback loop - you don't get into
Cohousing, at least at the beginning, without being willing to commit and work
for it, which helps create the group and selects for commitment.  The down side
is that it rules out Coh for many people.  I don't have any good answers - I do
hope we can make it easier, at some point. I must admit, after 3 1/4 years
since we founded the Twin Cities Cohousing network, I'm getting meeting'ed out. 
And I suspect we do tend to reinvent the wheel rather than spend money we don't
have.

Judy

Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, Twin Cities Area, Mpls/St.Paul MN
        (Mococo)                baxter%epivax [at] vx.acs.umn.edu