Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: New group in Hartford forming/lot of interest

[Sharon Villines (sharonvillines]

>> Should our group hire a
>> cohousing consultant to work with us now?  We are not efficient with meeting
>> times and tend to talk in a random way.  I think we need to get our act
>> together before others jump on and realize we don't.  When have other groups
>> decided it was time to hire a consultant?

(I'm speaking from the position of not having yet participated in the
successful completion of a cohousing project but having been reading this
list and a lot of other materials for almost three years and many years of
other project development experience.)

After working with one group that had gotten to the point of spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars and 6 years working on a project that has
been abandoned, and with another group that has spent less than a year and
will be built (knock on wood) in April, my advice is that you can't do this
without professional help. Either you have people within the group who are
professionals or you find them.

Cohousing is an odd animal. It's a real estate development of the millions
of dollars size, just like any other real estate development,  but its feet
are in the hand-made houses movements of Woodstock and California in the
1970s. It requires a lot of feelings exploration and group process skills,
with their feet in the 1970s also, but getting built requires being task
oriented and focusing on execution and details in ways that have nothing to
do with having dinner with friends.

Professionals tend to have either business experience or people experience,
and you need both. This list is a valuable resource for sharing of
experiences and information about contacts with professionals who understand
cohousing.

This is actually a good time to explore professional support because you can
consult with a lot of people and make decisions about which ones you will
work best with later. I would advise using the list actively to ask
questions, and paying on an hourly basis for advice. This can be done by
telephone.

I advise paying at this point for two reasons. Some project directors work
with groups expecting to be  paid when the construction loan is obtained.
You are so early in the process that no one could be expected to do this but
if they did, you don't want to have expectations or obligations to anyone
before you are sure that the relationship is working.

Initial consultations, exploring options and explaining each other to each
other, are usually not "on the clock."

One reason to use professionals is to move faster. I have 25 years of
working in an educational context with adults who are trying to change their
lives. Two years is the average time that most adults can bend the rest of
their lives around accomplishing a goal that is not their full time job.

Start by working out what has to happen in the two years before you burn out
and you will see what kind of advice you need.

--

Sharon Villines
MacGuffin Guide to Detective Fiction
http://www.macguffin.net
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington, DC
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~takomavillag/