Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Intentional Community in Denver

[Brent Rollings (am770]

Date: Sun, 31 Jul 94 15:04 EST
From: William Johnson <0005638134 [at] mcimail.com>
To: COHOUSING-L <cohousing-l [at] uci.com>
 
 
William I'm sorry that this reply took almost two weeks, but I'm working alot of
Overtime and wanted to give some consideration to your questions.
 
On Sun, 31 Jul 94 William Johnson wrote:
 
>Can you help me visualize Shepherd's Gate?   ... # of floors, unit sizes, etc?
>In what ballpark were the costs?   ... purchase, renovation, costs per family?
 
Shepherd's Gate is a three story brick building. It was origionally built as a
duplexin 1911. When we acquired the building almost four years ago, it had
beensubdivided intoseven units and was being rented as apartments.  Each unit
has a kitchen, bathroom,living, and bedroom space. One unit on the main floor
is our "Community Space" and isused in common by all of us.  Five of the units
are occupied by families and one unitis used for transitional housing or guest
space.  We have a common laundry room in thebasement and storage area. 
 
The purchase price was xxxxx.  There were five families in the original group.
Four ofthose wanted 'ownership' in the house, and one wanted to live in the
community for twoyears and then leave.  The family who did not want own part
of the building came to aconsensus with the other families about what would be
a fair 'rent' for their space. The mortgage was split four ways. Each family had
a different amount to put down, soeach of the four have different monthly
payments based on that. Each family pays amonthly fee ($275) on top of
mortgages that goes into a common fund. House repairs, andother things to be
used in common are purchased out of this fund on a consensus basis.We have
bi-weekly business meetings during which we discuss these types of things.
 
 
>Most importantly, can you elaborate on the "common ideological base" at
>Shepherd's Gate?
 
Well that is a little harder to answer.  We are all "Christians" of one flavor 
or
another.  We are all commited to some type of common life influenced by Christ
and histeaching. That does, however, mean different things to each of us. I can
speak formyself by saying that the life of the Absolute Individual that has been
the ideal in oursociety is not enough.  We all need some type of life greater
than our isolated egoexistance, for me that is Shepherd's Gate.  
 
We do have a list of "Understandings" that we have come to in our discussions
together.One of those is that our priorities should be self, family and 
community
in that order. We each have to be true to ourselves first, but that is only the
beginning. Sadly, manyfamilies in our society aren't working very well now and
almost no one has a sense ofreal community. Many people subsitute a
pseudo-community like work, a sport.  But if welose ourself by putting family
first, or lose our family by putting community (orpseudo-community) first we
have lost everything. I think this was what Jesus was talkingabout when he
said, "What good would it do if a person gained the entire world only tolose
their soul?" (paraphrase)
 
We caught alot of abuse from families and friends because the problem with
David Koreshand the Branch Davidians happened about a year after the
community was formed. I thinkthat this is a classic case of priorities gone
wrong. In their case the community was the Leader and the Leader was the
community: a recipe for disaster.
 
 
 

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 _______________________________________________________________________
| Brent Rollings  -- am770 [at] freenet.hsc.colorado.edu                     |  
   
|  "No heart is pure that is not passionate,                            |
|     and no virtue secure that is not enthusiastic. " Baron D'Holbach  |