Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Conflict Resolution

[Kevin Wolf (kevin]

Greetings,

I am in Kevin's office using the fax machine he shares with the community. :)  
I saw your heading, and as one of the Conflict Resolution Committee members, 
thought I would respond. 

We have what we call the Community Life Committee, that basically organizes all 
our annual and traditional holidays, ceremonies, celebrations, etc.

A sub-group of this committee handles conflict resolution, which we define as 
issues between members in the community, rather than community issues.  Either 
party or both can initiate the process by contacting one of us. We use two 
people to mediate. We offer a variety of processes, but have found that by the 
time an interpersonal issue gets to the committee, it is usually intense and 
needs our most formal mediation process.  This is a three-hour commitment and 
follows a format used by the City of Davis Mediation group.  

The format includes airing the issues, creating empathy through a series of 
questions, and creating a written agreement of resolution.  It is very powerful 
and has had positive results.  We have used this process with roommates, life 
partners (more difficult) and landlord-renter. 

Hope this helps! 
Laurie Mason
N Street Cohousing Member - 12 years

At 06:53 PM 5/23/2003 +0100, you wrote:

>Hello,
>just joined this list from the first new build Cohousing in England (that's
>old England U.K.) Our constitution obliges us to set up a "Disputes
>Committee" to mediate and resolve conflict between members. The idea is that
>members would go to the committee for possibly trivial disputes including
>and especially those between friends. It would not be the last resort, but
>something that we would learn to use as conflict is inevitable and issues
>between individual can  be seen as communal issues and not private matters.
>Have other communities used standing  disputes or resolution
>committees/groups? If so how do they work and are they used and are they
>successful? If you don't use formal conflict  and resolution, how do you
>deal with conflict and disputes? Is it seen as a private matter between the
>individuals involved? What about when members break or disregard rules?
>I'm sure these things have been discussed before - so sorry for being
>tedious.
>Our first 8 houses will be ready next month and all 35 units will be fully
>occupied by end of year.
>
>David Michael
>Springhill Cohousing
>Stroud, England, UK
>
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