Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Choosing and working with a builder

[Jim Snyder-Grant (jimsg]

At New View (Acton MA) we had a system like this. A volunteer trioka:
1 person to take calls or receieve letters from community members (and 
all the phone calls were written up on little 'issue' forms). One person 
who was the building expert, who helped decide if the issue was complex 
or contentious enough to go to some committee or professional, and a 
third person who met with the builder on a regular basis to go over the 
issues that got through the first couple of filters. 

One of those poeple also got back to households about their issues - I 
forget who.

There originally was a 'development committee' which did all the heavy  
negotiating and budgeting and coordinating before the construction 
started: but the committee fell apart slowly, afterwards. This troike 
was a response to the coordinating work that was not getting done. 
Observation: the sort of people who volunteer and do well at the intense 
'heroic' work of development are often very distinct from the sort of 
people who volunteer and do well at more ongoing 'maintaining' work.  
We've seen a big turnover in who is working a lot, now that we live 
here.

-Jim Snyder-Grant
New View Acton MA
jimsg [at] hotmail.com
Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] NewView.org


>From: "Rob Sandelin" <Floriferous [at] classic.msn.com>
>Subject: RE: Choosing and working with a builder
>X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
>X-Comment:  Developing cohousing - collaborative housing communities
>
>One idea I heard from someplace or another, create a committee of 
people to be 
>the building laison folks, and then allow members to submit requests, 
ideas, 
>etc. to the building, via the committee on 3X5 index cards. This way 
there is 
>a paper trail of people's issues. The committee reviews them, and then 
returns 
>it (with an explaination of why it aint going to the the builder) or 
passes it 
>up to the builder, who then deals with it.  You don't get many of 
these, maybe 
>a couple dozen and it makes a record for you to ensure that, yes Rob, 
we did 
>so deal with your issue.
>
>Rob Sandelin
>Sharingwood Cohousing
>Where there is still one excellent built home for sale, and a couple of 
>building lots.
>
>

---
jimsg [at] hotmail.com
Jim Snyder-Grant
(please excuse mandatory ad appended by my email provider)


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