Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Work as basis of community

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Nancy Lyons made some interesting comments about work and community 
connection.  Then she said:

>3/ What if your job doesn't fit with these concepts (like you work
>for the government)?  Quit that job (too many people working for the
>government anyway), analyse your skills, and start a new business
>with people you enjoy and respect and to whom you would loan your
>truck.

My understanding is that a large percentage of small business's fail.  
So if you are single, with no dependents, and have lots of marketable 
skills, this is no big deal, you simply go to work somewhere else.  
However, If you are supporting others, such as kids and a spouse, or a 
parent, or significant other, simply taking on a new endeavor is 
significantly challenging.  And then of course, if your work supports 
your life in community, then quitting work to start a new business 
means potentially leaving community due to financial failure.

In the book, Creating Community Anywhere; Finding Connection In A 
Fragmented World, the authors explore the ideas of the work community.  
Even if you worked for the government, you can still find people with 
whom you can form a community with.  This isn't everybody you work 
with.  The trick is finding those people within the larger context.  
Bulletin boards, company newsletters, other such means can help find 
others who share similar interests.

I also agree heartily with her conclusions which I read to be: 
Cohousing requires too much time and energy for working people to deal 
with.  I believe that eventually the cohousing development model will 
largely be run by development professionals who do all the time 
consuming and technical stuff while the group works on group process 
and design.  If every cohousing development takes 3.5 years to produce, 
and requires 500 hours of individual participation, then I believe 
cohousing has very little future as a large scale mainstream 
alternative housing concept.  I agree that the amount of people that 
will put in those kinds of hours and commitments is very small compared 
to the amount of people who want to live the lifestyle cohousing promotes.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood