Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: common house tensions to resolve-this got long

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

As always, Lynn, your questions are worded so well that it's easy to answer
them.
> 
> 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.

Good. It's nice to have peace and quiet, and to be able to plan things
spontaneously in the CH.

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

Very much endangered. In CA anyway, you can't use the CH or anything else to
make a profit, not even a dollar. This could cost you big. We have gotten
around this in the past by having "donations." But we have to be careful not
to take in any money ourselves. For instance, you have a concert and the
performer tales donations, but the HOA does not get a cut, except to pay for
what it cost, like the food.
> 
> And who administers it all, fielding requests, checking outside user's
> own insurance (if that can cover us??), following up on clean up etc.

We have a policy that the sponsoring member must be responsible for cleaning
it up to exactly what it was like before the event. We don't check up on
insurance. The common house committee does scheduling every week. People
make requests and put them on the bulletin board.
> 
> 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?

IMO, no. This will breed resentment sooner or later. Of course, some members
use the CH more than others, but we ban regularly scheduled outside events
from the common house, unless it's mostly for cohousers. We still have one
weekly event, a band practice, that is a tradition, even though only one
person is left in the band who lives here. We all like going into the CH and
hearing the music.
> 
> 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. 

Yeah, I suppose. But I think it's dangerous at this tender age to over-use
your common house. We really limited groups tightly in the beginning. It
took awhile for me, amongst others, to feel ok about seeing strangers in the
CH too often. Now I don't feel bothered. But we've had a CH for 9 years.

Also, there is a personal internal pressure to use the common house,
especially if it is empty often. Especially when it's new, the possibilities
present themselves all the time. I used to want to volunteer the CH all the
time, to every group I belonged to, whether or not it was really right for
the situation. there's a part of me that wants to show it off, be a good
hostess, etc. But there are other places for these groups to meet. They
won't dissolve without cohousing.

Frankly, we tend to be a bit insular. It's good for people to belong to
outside groups and actually LEAVE COHOUSING every week or so!

>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. 

Yup. I personally would block consensus if someone wanted to use the CH for
commercial purposes. It's not worth it.
> 
> 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.

We don't rent it out, for the above mentioned problems with non-profit
status and liability. We have plenty of groups who meet here for free. Most
often they are presentations, fundraisers, or other one-time events. All
must involve someone who lives here and sponsors the event.

When scheduling CH use, we used to have guidelines about the number of
outside events that were scheduled. It was something like: only one outside
event per month-that is, an event not open to cohousers, and we had limits
on the number of events that could be scheduled during dinner time, and we
prioritized events according to how involved cohousers were with the group.
For instance, the neighborhood association was a high priority, but a work
gathering was low.

We still have a general policy that prioritizes groups, but we rarely worry
about it. I think not having commercial use of the CH has allowed us to feel
more comfortable in it. I would hate to walk in on a commercial enterprise
of any sort when I was in my bathrobe doing laundry. I want the CH to feel
like my home, not a business.

One more thought. Years ago when we were discussing this at a meeting,
someone made the following point that impressed me with it's clarity. Just
because the common house is empty, doesn't mean it's being wasted. The
knowledge that it is there is a worthy use in itself. We need it to be our
collective space, one where we ALL feel comfortable, or it's not a common
house.

We don't need to fill everything up, whether it's the common house, or our
schedules, or our heads. We need space to just be, and so goes the common
house.


-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento California
tamgoddess [at] attbi.com

> 
> Overwhelmed in Washington
> 
> Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing

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