Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: House Rules - Examples ? <FWD>

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Some advise on house rules and living together issues in general.  I 
have discovered through my own experience, and also in talking with 
many communities that the two largest areas of conflicts in community 
are pets and kids.

At Sharingwood our first and most difficult house rule was to figure 
out how to deal with pets. Our house rules always start off with what 
our intent is for the rule, then the details. For example our house 
rule about pets:

The intent of the pet policy is to protect wildlife and ensure each 
unit owner the right to enjoy pets without infringing on the rights of others.

1.  Dogs are to be kept on the owners unit and are allowed on the road 
when accompanied by the owner.
2.  Dogs are not allowed on the trails or in the campground.
3.  Cats are to be belled and all new cats ( after Nov. 1991) are to be 
kept indoors at all times.
4.  All cats and dogs are to be spayed /neutered.
5.  All cats and dogs are to be kept indoors after dark.


This particular house rule took us 1 year to develop and taught us a 
great deal about how to deal with major conflicts.  We started off 
squared into two camps, those who wanted no restrictions of any kind on 
their pets, and those who wanted no pets at all allowed.  It was hairy 
and what we learned from that was to move discussion back a notch from 
specifics to general concepts and find agreement in the general 
concepts and then work down to the details.  We're slow, it took us a 
year of being deadlocked to figure this process out, took two weeks to 
get an agreement once we did.

Other Sharingwood house rules briefly:

Tree Policy:  Details process for removal or non-removal of trees on 
building lots
Lot policy: Details process for developing a building lot
Quiet hours: Common sense about partying
Rental policy: Mostly a population control issue.
Guest policy: Keeping a handle on who is a guest and who is a resident.
Dumping and burning policy: More common sense.
And detailed descriptions of our consensus and voting processes.
If people want all the language of these I can send it a page at a time 
via email either privately, or to everyone. Let me know what is most useful

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood