Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: I never join a club that would have me for a member...

[Judy Baxter (BAXTER]

From: Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing, Minneapolis, MN

Jeanne Goodman of the Jamaica Plain Cohousing group in Massachusetts. 
wrote:
<What should we do if someone wants to join the community and we don't like
the individual? Apparently there was one group that was almost pulled apart
because someone wanted to join who was very demanding, opinionated and
intolerant.
We have been advised that this is a self-selecting process 
>

We are both a coop and a condo (and a master association - a long story).
The coop must approve members (buying shares to live in the 'Big House' )and
the condo has  no control over who buys, ex, except self selection.

Historically, the coop , in my opinion, finds it very difficult to tell someone
we don't want them - we have never done it, - one person whom I ( not everyone)
didn't want, self selected out, and another  lost priority (through a genuine
misunderstanding).   And coop financing is much less available and more
expensive. 

the condos legal documents could have (as I understand it) required approval,
but we were told this would make it much harder to get FNMA approved mortgages,
and the buyers didn't want to pay more.

I can't advise you - personally, I think the coop fits better with cohousing,
but few groups have gone that route.

And several folks in our group will point to 'difficult' people who we approved
joining, one who spent a year and a half vacillating, and point out the
fallibility of , at least our, process.  And it *is* fallible and very human.
And self-selection does do an awful lot.  Our 'difficult' folks have not split
the group.

Good luck
Judy

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community,(MoCoCo) Twin Cities Area, Mpls.,MN

recently had a fascinating talk by Daniel Greenburg, about _Living_Routes -
a program for (mainly) college students, experiential learning about
sustainability in ecovillages,  http://www.livingroutes.org

where, after 8 years in residence, we are finally ready to take on re-doing our
porch  into a 4 season large space for play, dance, . . . 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- e-mail:      baxter [at] epi.umn.edu
15 homes - 7 new townhomes plus 
        8 coop apartments       in the Mansion (a rehab Georgian building)
(built as a retirement home in 1924 -) which also serves as our Common House
coops moved in 1993, townhomes in 1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A studio size home may be for sale in future, we don't know when 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Voice Mail for Monterey Cohousing - 952-930-7554
 web page: http://www.jimn.org/mococo/ 



_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l