Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The $200,000 invisible wall

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Carbon copies? No.

Because we are all people who somehow or another are able to buy land and 
build a single-family home, even at a specific price tag----this makes us 
all "CARBON COPY" people??

One thing cohousing has brought home to me is that even among people who 
(like about 98% of our town) happen to all be white; and who (like most 
new residents of our town) are mostly over 50 years old, with many years 
of college education, there is a great deal of diversity. Diversity about 
available money, available time, health,  attitudes about money, rules, 
food,  politics, simple living, generosity vs fear of exploitation, 
experience in realms of career, relationships, travel or immigration, 
trust, and group-process skills. Some of us earn $50,000 a year, some 
earn $5000 a year.

We are married, domestic-partnered, single, parents of grown and of 
growing children, gay and heterosexual, Jewish, Pagan, Presbyterian, 
Quaker and Buddhist. Some like to be undisturbed in their homes, others 
welcome drop-ins. We're high-tech and Luddite. Meat eaters, vegetarians, 
and vegans. 

Indeed, we had hoped our diversity would look like a major ethnic and 
socio-economic mix. And we still are trying to work with 
affordable-housing possibilities, for example. But we have all been 
stretched in our understanding of the ways others can be different and 
still be near and dear to us.

(If you are, or have been, married or partnered, it's statistically 
likely that you are "demographically" similar--but you know how many 
cultural differences there can be among the nominally similar.)

Ideals are vital, and move us in the right directions. It would be great 
if my choice of housing could simultaneously end racism, sexism, ageism, 
able-ism, and imperialism. If it could end hunger and homelessness and 
save endangered species. No matter how large or small a step in the right 
direction one takes, there will be others who think you haven't gone far 
enough.

But at least I am committed to a scheme which requires that I continue my 
personal growth, learn from the ways others differ from me, and with me. 
A scheme which has linked 20 families instead of dividing them with 
sanitary strips of roadway and tall hedges.  I feel fine about my choice.