Cohousing-L Mailing List: The Economics of Cohousing: Work & Participation

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 7/08/2003 12:37 AM, "Becky Schaller" <bschaller [at] theriver.com> wrote:

> ** You could relate work participation to money.  One way to do this is to
> raise everyone's homeowner's fees.  Then those who do the required amount of
> work would have their dues lowered accordingly.   One   difficulty with this
> is that for some people it will be a hardship to pay the higher fees and
> others will be able to afford to do so on a regular basis.

Thanks to Becky for the nice long summary of all the ways to encourage work
in communities. After watching this process in various venues -- churches,
coop schools, food coops, cohousing, and a million other voluntary
associations (like families), I finally had a stunning realization. We are
conceptualizing "work" in the wrong way. We are treating it like a voluntary
activity when in fact it is an economic necessity. WorkShare should be
considered part of the budget and handled by the Business committees, not
the Social committees.

I shared my insight with John Buck, the Sociocracy guru, last night and he
just looked at me and said "Why would you do anything else?" Duuuuh!

We have been transferring our experience with voluntary associations to
cohousing, but cohousing fundamentally includes an economic commitment. Work
that has to be done is work that is required to keep the community
economically viable.

We muddle up what is "work" that the community agrees needs to be done, and
"work" that people do to suit themselves and few (if any) others. We see
ourselves as begging and see motivating residents as our responsibility.

We also put "affordability" and "economic hardship" in the voluntary social
sector instead of in the economic sector. There are very good ways to
determine economic hardship on an equal and fair basis. There are also good
ways to fund current hardships with future income -- economically sound
solutions and not charity solutions.

It seems that we are in danger of perpetuating the "noblesse oblige"
traditions of the paternalistic upper class for whom "charity" was a
"voluntary" and thus "pure" activity, appropriate work for women and other
decorative creatures.

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



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