Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Rejecting Prospective Member/Neighbors

[Cbwhy (Cbwhy]

Glen Orcutt asks
>>Does any other group have the ability in your bylaws to reject someone?  On
what objective basis can you reject someone?  Could rejecting someone be
construed as discrimination?


At Synergy we don't discourage people even if some of us don't like them. We
feel that no one will like everyone. We do tend to weed people out at the
initial interest phase though. For instance, at this point we are only sure
we'll have houses for sale. If someone could only rent and they don't get
involved and the don't connect with anyone - then we may not do as many
follow up communications.  I admit it isn't necessarily an exact science. 

Once someone wants to join (and we aren't selling houses yet) we believe we
are governed by the Florida Fair Housing Act. Although I don't know the exact
dictates ofthe act I know is someone can afford a mortgage they can buy a
house. Not liking someone isn't a good enough reason to reject them. It is
difficult to keep a community from becoming a clique. 

Buzz said:
>>My initial reaction is if something like you describe happenned here, we
would want to halt everything and figure this out

In our group we have an agreement to deal with any conflicts within 3 days
and we have a method to handle those conflicts. Since we've instituted those
practices we've had to use it 2 times. Our final default on conflicts is an
agreement to independent (outside the group) mediation. No conflict has
gotten that far (unless you count Sherri from Eno Commons spending a few
hours mediating a conflict).

The entire event sounds very painful for the group, especially losing an
already committed household. It also sounds like the group now needs to do a
lot of work around the event. Would the family who dropped out bewilling to
participate to close it up? That would probably be the best for all involved.

Corey Yugler
Synergy Cohousing