Cohousing-L Mailing List: common house tensions to resolve

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Dear Cohousing-L listserver:

I want cohousing to be easy! A garden of social delights. With magic 
elves to deal with the work and the prudence and make all conflict melt 
away. Once upon a time it sounded like that in the books and articles I 
read. 

But no. Last night's discussion circle on common house uses left me 
tense. A year in, we are using our beautiful CH well for meals, socials, 
personal parties, meetings of members' groups. Yet it is often empty - 
all day many days, plus several evenings a week. 

Now we have a lot of people who want to make it available for 
concerts/workshops/classes which, though organized or sponsored by a 
member, would invite the Public. We tried a few, and it seemed like, in 
moderation anyway, it was pleasant and was satisfying to the sponsoring 
members and enriching to the larger town community. (Had a 
guitar-orchestra concert with 85 attenders, a guru workshop that had 
40-50 visitors during two days, a parenting class that met for 7 Tuesday 
evenings. Attenders paid money, and we got a buck a person, and the rest 
went to the performers/teachers: each event netted us about $100.)  

And we have people who want to use our health-department-certified 
kitchen to prepare food to sell or serve to the Public, for various 
worthy causes (Unitarian bake sale, Land Trust dinner, etc) here or 
elsewhere. We also have members who think it would be great to use the 
kitchen for catering business to help them support themselves- it was an 
early cohousing vision of ours that people could work close to home, 
using community facilities somehow. Like the home office spaces we never 
figured how to do. Or the workshop ditto. Some people would like to 
"sell" dinners at the CH to the public. 

But our insurance company says any "public" use is not covered by our 
liability insurance, and we could get sued over food poisoning or falls 
etc etc. So one member's satisfaction could expose all of us to lawsuits 
and devastating expenses. 

And what about our status as a nonprofit, if we "rent" to someone for 
catering or dances or such?

And who administers it all, fielding requests, checking outside user's 
own insurance (if that can cover us??), following up on clean up etc. 

Is it fair to the rest of us, who paid for the building and its taxes and 
utilities and insurance etc, if a few members use it intensively? 

Socially, in human terms, it seems really important to facilitate 
individual members' desires and satisfactions and participation in worthy 
causes. Having concerts and classes and stuff seems like a positive 
thing. But we also have had a bad experience with a liability situation 
(during our construction) and some are strongly concerned that they not 
get personally exposed to the risk, and that the community not, again, 
have to devote hundreds of hours of volunteer time to processing a risk 
situation. 

What do you do? Have you figured out how to use your CH for 
member-initiated public events, or for commercial cooking or cooking for 
outside events, without exposing yourselves to liability risks? Have you 
found a way to administer such uses in a way that doesn't unfairly burden 
those you use it less? Is your CH a resource just for members and their 
guests, or for the public if members sponsor something, or for rent to 
the outside world? Do tell. 

Overwhelmed in Washington

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com

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