Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Bylaws for land acquisition

[Dale Grover (dgrover]

Corporations are regulated at the state level, so any bylaws or 
structures from another state might not be very useful--or, at least, 
they won't let you avoid the need to have them completely reviewed by 
a lawyer for compliance with your state's laws.

If you do involve a lawyer, it might be very useful to get someone 
who "gets it," and understands the values you are seeking to 
incorporate into your bylaws.  Their energy/time (and your money) can 
go into moving the project ahead, rather than fighting them when they 
don't want to vary from "the way everyone else does it."

Our land was bought by the developer, so we only had to worry about 
setting up the final corporation to run the association.  Due in part 
to both lender and state law issues, cohousing in Michigan is (to 
date) set up as condominiums, which then falls under not only general 
state corporate regulations but the additional state condominium 
laws.  Taking a cue from the local Friends Meeting, we met the 
state's requirement for a board of directors by having every member 
on the board, and writing in consensus decision making into the 
bylaws (with voting only for some situations or where the state 
mandates it).  Not every group may be willing to make this level of 
commitment, nor might other states have the same requirements (either 
of corporations in general, or condominiums specifically).

--Dale Grover
Great Oak Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI
www.gocoho.org

> Hi cohousers,
>
> Several member families of Oak Village Commons in Austin are setting up
> a corporation for the purpose of purchasing the property for the
> cohousing community.  We are interested in the bylaws of other groups
> who set up corporations for this purpose, so we don't have to spend so
> much time and money on reinventing this wheel.  Some of the standard
> forms of these things don't feel right for a consensus group, so we're
> hoping other groups have come up with some workable variants.  Please
> reply if you have corporate bylaws, buy-out provisions, etc. that we
> might be able to use as examples to make this process easier.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Cat Barron
> interim project manager
> Oak Village Commons
> www.oakhillcohousing.org
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L