Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: pet policy (was: Gun policy ...)

[Robert Hartman (hartman]

> From: BARANSKI [at] VEAMF1.NL.NUWC.NAVY.MIL
> 
>   If the no-ban advocate is simply being ideological, I'd advocate outvoting
>   him or educating him sufficiently to bring him around to a consensus.
> 
> This sounds like *you're* the one being 'ideological'...

I suppose so, but not about the guns or pets.  It's the obstinacy in
saying that "I want my guns or I want my pets" without really
considering the impact on community members that bugs me.  We could
probably throw in loud stereos and musical instruments, car repairs,
waterbeds, and all those other potential threats and nuisances, and
my answer would still be the same:

        Rights or no rights, if you just aren't willing to cooperate
        and reach an arrangment that your comrades can live with ...
        you lose.

Personally, I wouldn't want somebody telling me I could _never_ crank
up Yes until the rafters shook, or that I could _never_ have a drum
circle with 30 African drums.  But I don't think I'd ever want to
insist on my "right" to do either of those things at 3am on Tuesday.

There is a point at which obstinacy about one's "rights" begins to
overshadow whatever the other issues might be.  If someone's attitude
is that one should be able to do exactly as one pleases, that person
may not be a good candidate for cohousing.

My view is that obstinacy just doesn't pay where the safety and/or
quiet enjoyment of fellow community members might be jeopardized.


>   Again, a cohousing arrangement requires more of a commitment to compromise
>   than a condo, and many if not most condos have pet restrictions in their
>   restrictive covenants.
> 
> Again, I'd like to think that co-housing can offer a *better* deal then your
> standard condos; you aren't going to be able to do that by copying them...

I agree.  My point is that condos are _less_ of a community, and
provide fewer community benefits than cohousing, and yet they often
have restrictions of this sort.

The value of cohousing is in being in a close and supportive
community.  The price for that is that you have to do a lot more
negotiation and compromise.  You just don't get the former without the
latter.  People sometimes forget that.

> Compromise, sure.  But what you are talking about does not sound like a
> compromise.  I've heard of some condo-associations being goose-stepping like
> this, but it's not my idea of a co-housing "sommunity", that I want to be part
> of...
 
If a group of gun aficionados decides to form a cohousing community,
they can swap gun stories and even install an indoor firing range if
they want.  I'd have nothing to say about that.  However, if someone
later joined that community because the price was right, and then went
on to insist that the range had to be closed because it was too noisy,
and wouldn't settle for any reasonable compromise, in my view the
newcomer would simply be out-of-line.  Someone behaving like that
should simply be overruled until such time she or he shows a
willingness to work things out.

I realize that this is a hard stand.  I recognize that there have been
times when I have been troublesome due to my own obstinacy on certain
points.  But working things out in a group is hard enough when everyone
is willing!  And it's really important to screen for that willingness.

-r