Cohousing-L Mailing List: Members following agreements

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

>Marci asked:  If the policy cannot be 
>revisited, the alternative may be that some members ignore it. How do 
>you ensure that everyone buys into it in reality?  What good is a
>legacy decision that is 
>disregarded by some members? What are the consequences, penalties, 
>whatever, when a consensed-upon policy is violated? How do various 
>groups deal with that?
>
I beleive it is the job of EVERY member to point out infractions of
agreements whenever they occur, and if they continue to occur, such
things need to be discussed amoung the whole group.  If  agreements that
were "consensused upon" are clearly ignored or violated, then that is a
good sign you had false consensus to begin with. 

If community members do not honor decisions that they agreed to, you
have a dysfunctional community and using consensus is not a very good
idea.  People do forget and unintentionally may violate an agreement.
However if one or more members delibrately violate agreements - then as
a community, at least in my opinion, you have a real problem that
requires good mediation skills. 

There is a certain group intregity required to make community decisions.
Since the only real authority you have is via lawsuit (Sort of like
nuclear weapons - you can use them as a deterrant, but if you really use
them you totally destroy everything), you really only have the integrety
of the membership holding your decisions together. From what I have
heard from folks in communities, once you lose your group decision
intregity, it takes a major purge to get it back. Like people have to
leave, the group split up, legal action etc.  Drastic stuff. Some
communities have never recovered from this, and eventually dissolve into
non-communities.

A case in point of this is the Maple Valley Coop, which had just such a
purge 15 years ago, and has yet to reconcile. Lawsuits resulting in
people who were once community not speaking to each other for years,
except through lawyers. Like a bad divorce.

My advise if you have members not delibrately not honoring agreements
then get an experienced mediator, hold a meeting and talk about it.  If
you ignore it, it can turn into cancer that can eat your community from
the inside.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
>