Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: COHOUSING-L digest 469

[Joaniblank (Joaniblank]

My computer had a mini-crash at the end of my postingof a few days ago, so I
left loyal readers hanging mid-sentence. I was saying that security (in this
case helping one another feel safe) is a very important aspect of community
for me here at Doyle St. I wouldn't live at Doyle Street in a million years
by myself. And I am not a scaredy cat; it's just that I would feel quite
vulnerable with our huge warehouse windows and exposed parking lot, patio and
common house in plain view of the urban street.

Buzz, you're right. No one talked about site design and community making this
time around. I expect that is because groups who design their own communities
are talking about it all the time, and it feels like a given, while the
activities that take place in the community, the actual living experience,
requires more conscious attention, because it is unpredictable and "softer."
In our case, I think our community relations would have been even
better--they're quite good now--had we been able to have a design with all
units opening on the ground floor (five or our 12 open on the 2nd floor) and
all of them facing the common "house." Because of the limitations of our site
(a mere 1/3 acre with an existing industrial building which was renovated by
the group, we did not have such flexibility of design

Two other things differentiate cohousing from other kinds of shared living
 Unlike many intentional communities, cohousing feels like a lifetime (or in
any event very longterm) commitment, requiring (as it usually does) the
purchase of a house. Secondly, although I realize that some intentional
communities are much larger than the average cohousing community, they
usually have grown gradually and have a slowly evolution of people leaving
and others joining. I believe that, in contrast, most cohousing communities
start more or less all at the same time with 25 or more households. Most
other communities don't start with as much diversity as we have either. 

It would be very unlikely for me to move into an intentional community with a
right-wing Republican (what is the opposite of oxymoron) or someone with
dramatically different religious beliefs and practices from me, or someone
who owned lots of cats,  but I live happily with all of the above in
cohousing. I hope that we don't have any gun-owners here, but we would not be
likely to talk about that. I think that if I brought it up, I might get
trashed for interfering with the privacy of others; maybe I'll try it and
see. Finally, I think a good number of people in this little community would
get really impatient with and probably walk out on any lengthy processing
that had to do with personal relations. It just doesn't seem like that kinda'
place, a quality I sometimes love and sometimes hate. .