Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Re: self-sufficient community

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

Becoming "self-sufficient" as a community of people can have many meanings.
Does that mean you produce all your own food, water, power? Or just mean
most people work at community based enterprises? 

I would think in order to be a self-sufficent community you would have to be
completely independent from the banking industry.  Obviously then this means
finding a place which is subsidized by someone or another, or joining
someplace which is already paid for.

Becoming "self sufficient" would require a higher level of economic
cooperation than is typical in cohousing.  One of the unspoken but very
obvious conditions of cohousing is economic self sufficientcy, that is, I am
responsible for my own income generation and responsible for only my own
debts and costs.  

Economic cooperation, where community members pool their assets and debts,
is typical of communal communities and is something cohousing in general has
striven to distance itself from, primarily because the target audience for
cohousing has been the middle class, few of whom have much interest of even
giving 5% of their time or income to charity, much less all of it to the
community.

If a self sufficient community is really your goal, I would suggest looking
past cohousing and into other forms of intentional community.  Its not that
cohousing CAN'T be self- suffiecient, its just not the way it has developed.
Of course it depends on your definition of self-suffiecient.

Rob Sandelin 
Sharingwood