Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: salaried members for development process

[Sharon Villines (sharonvillines]

> Do any of you have experience with putting a member on salary for the
> development phase? How did that work (or not)?

The front side of hiring within the group is that you expect someone from
within the group to be as committed to the outcome as the rest of the group
is. Often they are more committed and willing to give up other activities to
devote more time to the project. But as in all hiring from "within the
family" you can get either highly trained competent committed people or
Uncle Harry's favorite arrogant and incapable child who needs a job and will
work for less.

We had two members "on staff" but not hired directly by the group. One
worked with the developer to promote cohousing and the other was hired with
grant monies to work with the architectural firm (also owned by the
developer) to study and choose appropriate green materials. They were both
invaluable to the project. They worked actively on teams as well as "going
to the office every day." They each had clear qualifications for the jobs
that would have gotten them hired even if they had not been members of our
group.

Other projects have not been so fortunate, or even so willing to have some
members paid to work while others weren't.

A defining characteristic of cohousing is the tension between being a
"community" and being a $ multi-million real estate project. How many people
who want to live in a house actually know how to finance, design, and
construct one. Even fewer know all the legal ins and outs of government
regulations. Or how to juggle all the sub-contractors and contractual
specifications involved. And how many of us even know how to build the
community we think we want?

It's one thing to become a member of a community and another to either
invest your life savings or mortgage your financial future to one. Cohousing
requires both. 

Uncle Harry's spoiled and lazy child can be taken on as a church secretary
and nurtured into a responsible adult but it takes a lot of time and others
can cover for him when he fails. If you hire him as your construction
manager, and construction is starting, you are in trouble.

It is very hard to develop or strengthen a new community when one of its
members just delayed the whole project for 6 months by not meeting a city
deadline for permit applications or allowed the basement foundations to be
poured in such a way that they all have to be torn up again delaying it even
more. Or at an orientation has not impressed 20  prospective members with
his knowledge of north and south let alone east and west.

The kinds of expertise required in real estate development _change_ from one
point to the next. If you hire a member, how do you un-hire them when the
needs of the group change?

Are you trusting them because you know them or because they know the job
that needs to be done?

A member may still be your best bet, and we couldn't have done without ours
being on staff, but being in DC we also have a particularly adept and
professionally trained group of members who know how to handle group
process, contracts, and agreements.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org
Where all units are sold, only one still to close, and we are still trying
to find out why the gas fireplace on one unit comes on when the one next
door does, why the phones go out every fourth day, and whether there really
was soundproofing installed between all the units.




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