Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cohousing undercover?

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

David Mandel writes:

> I would love to see this result, but is anyone else a little bothered by the
> sense of secrecy, making plans and then springing it on the unsuspecting 
> other> as soon as a majority exists?

> But I'd feel much more comfortable about a conversion process that was much
>more open,
>attempting to win over ALL current residents

I think that's unrealistic/unwise.  Many people won't want to join.  Community
is not for everyone.  And the last thing they need is a situation where
they are trying to make consensus decisions with people who are not at all
bought into the idea but who can block.

If I were trying to do what the Santa Cruz group is doing I would 
        1) Not try to coerce anyone to do anything they didn't want to at
        any time.
        2) Inform other folks in the condo if it happened to come up in
        conversation, or if there seemed a likelihood that they would be
        sympathetic, but avoid bugging people who weren't interested with
        evangelical efforts. 
        3) Not use the existing majority rule based housing association as
        a decision making structure any more than absolutely necessary.

Stuart.



===================================================================
Stuart Staniford-Chen                   | Dept of Computer Science
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu                    |   UC Davis, CA 95616
h:(916) 756-8697; w:(916) 754-8742      |          and
http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/~stanifor/ | N St Cohousing Community
====================================================================