Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: cohousing and disabilities

[Mac Thomson (ganesh]

Greetings from snowy SW Colorado,

Here I am at my desk catching up on recent coho-L postings instead of 
heading out with my snowboard to catch some of that fresh Pow.  But if I 
went boardin' I wouldn't be able to make it back in time for our 
cohousing meeting this evening, so . . . .

A topic has been batted around of late on coho-L that is also of current 
interest to our group, San Juan Cohousing - Durango, CO.  That is the 
issue of people contributing various amounts of work during the creation 
of the project.  I will also chime in that I love the approach of 
Liberty Village, "People put into cohousing what they are willing, able, 
and inspired to give.  We give without expectations for the level of 
effort of others.  The desire to help is nutured in an environment of 
acceptance of whatever people are willing to contribute."

I think that we follow that approach fairly well with our 9 current 
member households (out of 24 planned), but we've just run into a 
situation in which we have a difference of opinion and maybe some of you 
have experienced this and can lend us your wisdom.  There are some 
people that may be interested in joining, but they say that their lives 
are too crazy now to participate in the creation of the community.  
Basically, "Call us when it's ready and we'll move on in."  Some of us 
feel that this may be OK assuming that they'll be solid contributing 
neighbors once we're living in the community.  After all, we need 
members and their money and what we're eventually looking for is good 
neighbors and not good developers.

Others feel that this is not at all acceptable and that we shouldn't let 
these people sign up to be members.  If you want to share in the 
harvest, you need to share in the field work.

This issue becomes further complicated by the fact that we have people 
that live hundreds of miles away that want to join.  They obviously can 
only play a limited role in creating this neighborhood.

How have other groups dealt with people that want to live in the 
community, but DON'T WANT TO do the work to create it?  What about 
people that CAN'T do the work because of distance, disability, etc?
-- 
           Mac Thomson                   San Juan Cohousing
           ganesh [at] rmi.net                Durango, Colorado
            Web Site:   http://www.rmi.net/~ganesh

 "In the long run men hit only what they aim at.  Therefore, though they 
should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."
                          - Henry David Thoreau