Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Households to Adults Ratios

[Kevin Wolf (kjwolf]

Sharon
I would like a clearer definition of what "participate in the community" 
means.  We have a long-term member (home owner) who we rarely see but she 
helps with rituals a couple times a year and occasionally shows up at a 
meal, and does her house's turn at organizing the community work day.  Does 
she "participate"?

We have a couple of grad students who get so busy we may see them for weeks 
on end, but then they cook or come to a work day.  Do they "participate"?

A few years ago we had a person (renter) who didn't do anything for/with 
the community.  He clearly didn't participate.

I guess I am also a little uncertain as to the objectives of this 
evaluation.  Is it to:

Gain an understanding of the minimum number of participating adults per 
number of households in a community (or per total number of persons in the 
community?)  for it to work well?

In 1988 we were a community of four houses, 14 adults and 2 kids.  We 
worked quite well for what we wanted to accomplish even though probably 4-6 
adults did not participate in any of the work involved in the community.

Every year since then we grew some.  My estimate is that we've averaged 
50-75% of the adults cooking in any one month, 30% coming to a monthly work 
party, 30% to monthly meetings, and 100% (if they are around) to the big 
celebrations.    Over the course of the year (in almost all of the 16 years 
we have been around and evolving), 100% of the adults participate in some 
work/meeting activity that gives back to the community.

A few years ago we had problems because the number of community meals per 
month dropped to about 2 per week.  Some of those cooking became resentful 
that they cooked each month but they had few opportunities to eat 
meals.  About ten years ago when we built our path and worked four weekends 
in a row, some of the hard core workers became resentful over those who 
didn't work as much.  Both issues were resolved differently.  With the 
path, we don't organize big projects any more and expect them to be 
completed over a short period of time.  They will get done as we have the 
energy to get them done.  With the meal cooking shortage, we called a 
special community meeting and worked out a new way to keeping track of who 
cooked, gave recognition to those who met a certain standard, made it 
public who wasn't cooking each month (because their names were left on the 
menu as not cooking so the non-cookers could find each other if they wanted 
to add a meal in that month), and in general re-recognized how important 
meals were to our community.  It worked.

So, what is it that could be accomplished in the development of this ratio 
of participating adults per households in cohousing communities?

Kevin




2.  Ga

At 07:46 AM 4/27/01 -0400, you wrote:
> > Sharingwood
> > 22 homes, 78 residents of which 10 are renters
>
> I'm keeping a list of these and will send it to the list.
>
> Please count adult residents, meaning adults who participate in the
> community. Some renters do and some don't.
>
> Where is Sharingwood?
>
> Sharon
> --
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
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****************
Kevin Wolf
N Street Cohousing Community member
724 N St, Davis, CA  95616
530-758-4211
kjwolf [at] dcn.davis.ca.us

To download my facilitation manual or other material on
consensus decision making, visit www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/kjwolf

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