Cohousing-L Mailing List: Bill of Rights/Social Codes

[Marti Major (marti.major]

Dear Joe:

We here in Salt Lake are going through the same thing.  We will be
developing our "Bill of Rights"; we already have a conflict resolution
process which has taught us we need the social code too.  Our government
has come to the constitution/laws and cops conclusion already, we are
just independently arriving at the same conclusions.  What genius!  Well
we need a specific list of minimums.  This includes work, participation,
manners, hot tub protocols, and yes, pets.  This process forces us all
to deal with our various ideals of what cohousing is.  These visions
that we each hold separately do not always (hardly ever is more
accurate) include each other's visions.  We need to get more or less on
the same page before we go into partnership to the tune of $100,000 to
$150,000 each houselhold.  Before our construction starts, we need to
know what we expect out of each other and what we hope to avoid.  Even
then there will be no guanatees, but we will atleast all be more
concious of what we are getting into.  

We have not focused on our social architecture, we have spent all our
time/money on physical aspects.  If we have no harmony, the architecture
won't matter, because the value of our homes so closely knit together
will be nothing if our community is not harmonious.  Hoping that harmony
organically manifests from our architectural design is ludicrous.  We
need to conciously create the structure for our interactions,
socializing and physically working together.  To assume that we will all
know what the right thing to do is, and that we will always choose the
right thing, is unrealistic.  

Creating community is alot of work.

Marti Major, Wasatch Cohouing, SLC., UT.