Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Written rules

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

In response to Gareth's long post I wanted to say, firstly, that what I am about
to say is not in any way intended to pass judgement on the specifics of that
situation, about which I obviously don't know enough.  However, our group has
found on a number of occasions that it has been necessary (well, maybe not
absolutely necessary, but felt to be at any rate) for us to make decisions and
go ahead and do things without having the exact arrangements worked out.  We
have had to just trust that the other people in the group are good and 
reasonable people and that it will be ok, even though the legal details are
not ok.

An example is our common house - many people invested money in its conversion
even though its ownership situation has not been properly worked out to this 
day.  I'm not sure we could have done the conversion if we had first had to
sort out how to own it (as evidenced by the fact that we still haven't sorted
out how to own it).  I think that most folks at N Street would agree that being
willing to "trust the process" has been essential to what we've done.  Of course
it may be that we'll get into trouble later for not being more careful.

Caveat: our situation may be different in that less money is involved as we
aren't constructing from scratch.  It was still enough for people to be worried
though.

Stuart.
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Stuart Staniford-Chen
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu
N Street Cohousing, Davis, CA
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