Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: retrofitting exisiting condos into cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 5/29/2003 3:21 PM, "Maggie Dutton" <mdutton [at] shaw.ca> wrote:

> Can anyone share their experience of working with a traditional condo that
> became a cohousing community after move in?

I don't have this specific experience but managing a condo is a lot of work.
People really have to be committed to doing it. We hire out our financial
management (all the dues notices, etc.) and get some help on finding
contractors for various jobs we can't handle, but the day to day is very
time consuming. Just keeping doors working without a handyperson onsite is
hard.

The problem with a "regular" condo will be that the owners did not sign on
to do the work and they will have no mechanism for resolving community
conflicts. Condo Commandos will not easily give up their power (however
stupid and nonexistent). The trade-off is that they make the rules and
others live with them being thankful they don¹t have to do any work.

In our community where it was very clear that people were signing on to do
the work, we all have very different ideas of what "work" is and how much
people should be expected to do. The current average range of what gets done
(aside from meals) goes from 4 hours a day to 4 hours twice a year -- and
this is from my definition of work. Others would vary.

The work is the work.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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