Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Building Community

[Bruce Koller (bkoller]

Someone recently quoted our "sacred text" ;^) (Chuck and Katie's 
Cohousing book) on the things all Danish cohousing communities seemed to 
share.  One point made in the book that seems to keep getting overlooked 
in all our discussion of "Republicrat, dog-owning, vegan cohousing" vs. 
"New age, mud-scraping, Spam-eating cohousing" is that only one of the 
communities profiled in the book had an overt, IDEOLOGICAL requirement 
for membership.  Without judging this, the authors pointed out that this 
made recruitment and resale of units more of a challenge for this group.  

When we get into the realm of trying to preselect our neighbors to share 
lots of values, lifestyle choices, and even racial, cultural, or ethnic 
characteristics with us, we are limiting our pool of potential 
neighbors.  I'm having a tough enough time finding "People" to help me 
build and live in cohousing without looking for them to jump through a 
lot of hoops beyond "mutual toleration and respect for each other."

Bruce Koller
Old Oakland Cohousing Group
bkoller [at] dvc.edu