Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House space

[Stevenson/Bitner (lilbert]

>We're wondering if other communities who've been using their Common Houses
>for a while might comment on how much use you get out of your teen rooms, if
>you have them. We'd also appreciate getting an idea of how frequently your
>guest rooms are used. Thanks!
Teen rooms are notoriously underused, but if you want them to feel like a 
part of the community, why not give them a room? You can take it away 
later if they don't use it.  We did that, but were sure to involve them 
in the decision.  They agreed that the room would become a general 
purpose room that they had access to when they wanted.  We don't have a 
guest room- couldn't afford it, but we don't seem to suffer much.  We 
have lots of trades, where one person goes away for a holiday, and 
another has people in to visit who stay at the first person's house(but 
they have to take care of the cat/dog/goldfish/plants or whatever).  It 
works pretty well.  Some groups have onsite childcare, which is a great 
use of the space, but requires different code specs, and makes a room 
unavailable for anything else. We recently looked into using some room in 
the CH for shared office equipment. We didn't do it, but it's a good use 
of pooled resources if you don't need exclusive use of it.  Why not 
devote part of a  general meeting to brainstorming on ideas for the 
commonhouse? 

Have fun, 

Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, CA