Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Consensus and Lenders

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

I have heard of a few places where the local Fannie Mae office (The federal
loan guarantee program and almost all banks use) did not care, or did not
notice that decision making was by consensus. However, I heard from dozens
of sources, inside and outside cohousing, that consensus is often a
rejection point for loan guarantees. This is something that can come up very
late in the game of funding, and is easily corrected by having a voting
backup. As long as you have a voting backup of some kind of majority you are
fine in many cases  having consensus listed in your decision making process.
However, ask your funding consultant (banker, broker, etc.) what they think.

I also firmly believe that any group that attempts cohousing without a
voting backup is backing itself into a potentially very bad place, where one
pissed off/dysfunctional individual can derail your whole project. Having a
voting backup is insurance which keeps people like that from destroying
years of work.

I would imagine the Texas area would be pretty conservative about this
stuff.

Rob Sandelin
Author of the Cohousing Resource Guide mentioned which is out dated and been
entirely replaced by the Intentional Communities Resources Pages at
http://www.ic.org/nica/resource.htm


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l [at] freedom2.mtn.org
[mailto:cohousing-l [at] freedom2.mtn.org]On Behalf Of Peter Scott
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2001 2:22 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Concensus and Lenders


Here at Earthsong our legal stuff refers to a two step process, of firstly
that the group "shall be consulted" using the group decisionmaking process
(defined as 2 attempts at a consensus etc) and secondly failing that a 75%
majority vote of financial interests. While we see the latter as a backstop,
the banks etc see the latter and dont really care about the former. You can
read the fine print on our website at
http://www.ecohousing.pl.net/resource/ca.html

Peter Scott
Earthsong

jonathan ogren wrote:

> We are in the beginning stages of forming a cohousing group in Austin,
TX.  Like many cohousing groups, we are going to use concensus as
our decision making process.  In  one of our very helpful
sources of information,The Co-Housing Resource Guide compiled by Rob
Sandelin, it says you should not state you are using concensus as your
decision making process in incorparation documents because it is not a
recognized decision making process for many lenders.  Is this something
to be concerned about? Has anyone put concensus in their bylaws and majority
vote in their incorparation documents and had a conflict?  Is it
possible to create both documents so they do not conflict?