Cohousing-L Mailing List: law and/ of cohousing

[Mark Fenster (mark.fenster]

I just joined the list, and wanted to introduce myself
briefly and request some information and contacts from
list subscribers.

My name is Mark Fenster and I'm currently a third year
law student at Yale. In addition to being a long-time
participant in various cooperative community institutions
(long-time volunteer and administrator for community
radio stations, member of food coops) and thus having
a general interest in cohousing, I'm currently working on
a research project on how law (property and land
use laws in particularly) shape and limit local the social
functioning and culture of communities. 

My hope is to compare a private, for-profit attempt to
create a new "community" (eg, a "New Urbanist"
project) and cohousing's more collective,
resident-designed and -owned practice. My interest is
in how legal doctrines and practices might be biased towards
the commercial developer (or not). I'm especially
interested in how cohousing groups have learned
or developed ways of designing agreements
and contracts, and set up formal and informal rules on
shared facilities. I'd also love to learn how and when cohousing groups
begin to consult and work with lawyers (and how
they learn of lawyers to work with), as well as their dealings with
municipal and county governments and agencies, and any other
legal issue of significance.

I would love to hear from both professionals and
residents.  My hope is to produce something both
academic and journalistic, and to be at once descriptive
about current law and practices and prescriptive
with respect to legal and policy changes for the future.
(I'm also a sociologist, from a previous academic life,
who is intensely interested in how people deal with
the law and lawyers.)

Any assistance would be most appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Mark Fenster



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Mark Fenster
mark.fenster [at] yale.edu
203/865-7438