Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Why woudl anyone join a cohousing group?

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Bob Alberti asks:

> A)  Why would anyone join a cohousing group?

I've lived in N St Cohousing for five years, and I wouldn't have missed 
the experience for anything.  I also know people who have left cohousing 
communities citing concerns similar to the ones Bob describes.  I think 
the experience varies greatly depending on the person *and* on the 
community - my belief is that communities vary quite a lot in the nature 
of the experience they provide.  Some communities are going to be much 
more suited to some people than others.  Also, different people get very 
different things out of any given community.

I'll give a few reasons why I like living here.  Probably others in N St 
would have quite different reasons than me.


Getting to meet really neat people

Perhaps because cohousing is new and different, it attracts a lot of 
interesting people.  I get to live and interact with some of them on a 
very regular basis.  In addition, interesting folks come through to visit 
and I get to hang out with them too.  

I don't know about you, but I generally have a pretty hard time finding 
like-minded people to hang out with.  It's easier in my community. 


Regular social interaction

Casual social interaction does not come easily to me - I am not an 
extrovert person.  Absent cohousing, I have a tendency to end up only 
interacting with my partner and at work.  Living here, I find that I 
interact casually all the time - over dinner, bumping into people on the 
path, neighbours dropping by.  I don't have to make any effort for this to 
happen - there is just a background buzz of social interaction in my life.  
I think I'm happier and healthier as a result.


Personal/professional growth

Cohousing and other communities tend to have a strong culture of effective 
meetings and effective conflict resolution.  (Some have much stronger 
cultures than others).   I have personally learned a tremendous amount 
about how better to handle myself in the world as a result of my exposure 
to N St and other places and people in the communities movement.  

I am not exaggerating when I say that what I have learned has allowed me 
to transform my workplace from being rather dysfunctional to being quite 
effective.  My workplace now makes all decisions in consensus meetings 
with a facilitator and a notetaker.  We have a clear overall sense of our 
goals and we pay regular attention to whether we are on track to achieve 
them.  People work together and co-operate rather than working on separate 
parts of the project and blaming each other when the parts did not fit 
together.  Better process has directly translated into greater 
effectiveness (and, incidentally, into more pay and prestige for me).

Certainly, living closely with other people brings up conflicts.  If you 
never talk to anyone, you will never have any conflicts.  However, 
handling them gracefully is a skill that can be learnt.  The better I have 
gotten, the easier things have been for me (and those around me :-).  No 
doubt there is room for quite a bit more improvement.


Help in difficulty.

If my car breaks down, I know that there are half a dozen I can borrow 
within walking distance.  If I have a shitty day, I can whine about it at 
dinner and there are any number of people who will indulge me by listening.  
If I go on vacation, there are numerous people who I can call on to watch 
the house, water the plants, feed the cat.  If I need a ride to the 
airport, someone will be there for me.  I just don't have to worry about 
those kinds of issues.


Feeling like I'm on the cutting edge

This is maybe not such a nice reason, but I'm trying to give a fair and 
honest picture here.  I like to feel that I'm pushing the edge, doing 
something special and unusual, differentiating myself from the "grey 
herds".  I like challenges.  I enjoy doing things that other people
tell me will be too difficult to do.  Living in cohousing gratifies that 
part of me.


Helping me to cut resource use

I feel guilty when I use a lot of energy/resources since I know as a 
civilization we are using up the planet at an unsustainable rate.  Living 
in N St helps me in two ways.

 1) I can directly share things.  My wife and I don't have a second car 
because we can borrow one occasionally.  In turn, we loan ours out and I 
believe that helps other people to not have a second car, or, in some 
cases, not to have a car at all.  Similarly, the community has much fewer 
than the usual number of washing machines, lawn mowers, etc.
 
 2) I get support and encouragement in my thinking from others here who 
share my concerns.  When I feel like lapsing, there are other people who 
can set me a better example - and I can return that service at another 
time.
 

> B)  Why would anyone reading this mailing list want to join cohousing?

This is a concern that comes up regularly.  Firstly, I don't know of any 
unmoderated forum on the Internet that is as civil and informative as 
cohousing-L.  There may be some, but cohousing-L is way above average.  I 
encourage everyone to keep it that way.  Even the recent "flamefests" have 
been pretty understated by the standards of the medium.

However, it is true that most discussion on cohousing-L is about difficult 
aspects of cohousing.  Most people don't post anything unless they have a 
problem that they don't see how to handle and they are asking for help.  
If people are having a really great time hanging out in their community, 
they tend to keep hanging out instead of logging on to tell the rest of us 
about it.   It's probably going to stay that way.  Cohousing-L works as a 
forum to share information and work on difficulties, but not as a way to 
inspire (most) newcomers.

Stuart Staniford-Chen
N St Cohousing