Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Bob Morrison  asked

 >1. When visiting a cohousing community, it is hard to tell how far you can
>go in looking around before being considered an intruder. Does Sharingwood
>have signs at the entrance saying "No trespassing" or the like? If not, how
>are visitors supposed to know that they must be invited before they can
>walk around?

Can people come into your private yard and walk around without any 
invitation?  I know of almost no homes where I can do this, cohousing 
is no different.  Cohousing is NOT public property, it is very much 
private residential communities, no different in this respect than any 
other private neighborhood.  What is different is that my space extends 
 in all directions for about 35 acres.  My space is the community space 
and walking on the commons is like walking in my yard.  Another big 
difference is that I know when a stranger is in my yard because I know 
my neighbors, their adult kids, their parents, brothers and sisters 
etc.  For example,  a couple years ago I invited my brother over to cut 
up some fallen trees for firewood and when he arrived I was at the 
store.  Even though he was actually on my personal unit, six of my 
neighbors came over, introduced themselves and found out who he was and 
what he was up to.

We do have a bulletin board at the entrance to Sharingwood which gives 
a take away brochure and lists phone numbers to call for tours and 
explains about the community and tours.  As a person who has lived in 
cohousing for over 3 years now, I can tell you that nothing is ruder 
than to just walk around peoples home without their permission.

2.  But what if I were sent, on a week's notice, on a business
trip to a distant city and wanted to visit a coho community while there? If
I could not find and contact the right people in time, I would be tempted to
walk the grounds uninvited.

The Cohousing Journal publishes a pretty good listing of most all the 
groups. Sharingwood is listed in all the contact lists I know of, 
including the new FIC directory.  I refer again to my response to #1. A 
stranger really stands out in a  community.


>Are you (Rob) saying that any visitor who is not known to most of the
>residents of a cohousing community should be escorted by a resident(s) at all
>times when visiting the site? If so, this raises another issue, which is that
>escorting guests could use up a lot of people's time.

At Sharingwood, we do not like to have strangers wandering around our 
community and if I, or any other member sees an unescorted stranger 
they will be contacted, and asked what their business is.  Sometimes I 
have been a little rude to people who invade my privacy and ask them to 
leave.  Sometimes I have taken time to give a short tour.  Depends on 
the people, what they are about, and my mood.  We spend hundreds of 
hours each year giving tours, it is a part of living where we do.  Two 
people handle about 80% of the tours and the rest of us pitch in as we 
can and want to.  We try to do an open house each year so we can 
advertise and bunch people up to save time.  We do have a large and 
growing circle of "friends" of the community, people who work with us, 
come to meetings occasionally and such.  They are free to roam around 
as they will, but every once and awhile, I find myself re-introducing 
myself to someone I met three meetings ago.

We are very open with visitors who make the effort to contact us, often 
inviting guests into our homes for tea or lunch. In the last couple of 
months I have had a number of house guests stay for a couple of  days.  
I enjoy talking about and sharing my community with others, but I also 
want the choice of how and when I do this.  There are times when I and 
my family do not want to deal with visitors and I get very abrupt with 
people who assume that they can use my time to meet their needs.

Sometimes we host events, such as church gatherings, encounter groups, 
boy scouts etc. at our campground and those events are well known to 
the community and so the contact gets relaxed.  I suspect when our 
commonhouse is finished we will host even more events and will have to 
figure out a system for dealing with visitors during events.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood