Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Karen Craven's blog about cohousing (with permission)

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> http://intentionalcommunity.blogspot.com/2005/02/i-found-problem-with- 
> cohousing.html

I found this very interesting after I got past the first few paragraphs  
of (erroneous) assumptions about cohousing. She makes the point I was  
intending to make but have been very busy. I'm starting a new  
newsletter (as some of you have noticed from my signature line) and am  
really up to my ears in "stuff," mostly getting the first issue to a  
printer and mailed. (Those who have already subscribed should have  
received  your first issue yesterday.) So I'm sorry I couldn't weigh in  
on this earlier.

The point I wanted to make and that Karen makes is that almost by  
definition conservatives have communities already. It is the liberals  
who are always in search of something more perfect who are out there  
looking for it. Although I think she makes a good point also about  
population density being the reason there are more cohousing  
communities on both coasts, they are also the most liberal. The  
heartland is more conservative, and if you want community, there is  
where you can find it without starting from scratch.

By definition conservatives prefer the tried and true to the idealistic  
and untested. A liberal will more likely opt for the ideal. But the  
conservative's expectation that the poor pull themselves up by the  
bootstraps is also accompanied by very strong community ties. It sounds  
false when a pseudo-conservative like Bush advocates it, who never  
pulled himself up by anything, but in fact all those little churches  
exist to pull people up by their bootstraps. They are also in fact  
neighborhood commonhouses.

Most of what I feel about community started in fairly to very  
politically conservative neighborhoods and churches. My model for  
cohousing comes out of those neighborhoods and churches with an overlay  
of college campus. These neighborhoods are populated with several  
generations of families who have intermarried and  inter-divorced and  
lost their children in several different wars together. They  
alternately "get religion" and lose it again and believe the bible is  
literally true. They do not believe in evolution. But in the day to day  
scheme of things, how  much does that affect your willingness to take  
in your neighbor's kids when their mom goes to the hospital? Growing up  
in these communities and churches was very much like cohousing. You  
always go to the church on the corner -- everyone does. That's where  
you trade vegetables in the summer when you have too much zucchini and  
they have too many tomatoes. That's where you go for Sunday ice cream  
socials. When you need  help you call the Pastor and he calls whoever  
it the community can help  you. Cohousing takes this one step further  
by bringing real estate and architecture into the collaborative.

Periodically the police come to Takoma Village to look around and  
familiarize themselves with our layout so if they are called here on an  
emergency they will be able to find the entrances and exits. Once they  
sat down and I did an orientation to cohousing in the dining room. Two  
of the men belonged to a local church that was trying to do build the  
same kind of community on the land around the church. "We got the land  
but we don't know how to do it." I directed him to the website and the  
sources I knew at that time, but since his community was definitely  
restricted to his church, his neighborhood, I doubt if  he found a  
comfortable fit at cohousing.org.

One of the objectives of my newsletter is to discuss building  
communities like those found in small towns and churches and in  
cohousing, without the religious exclusions of either one. They both  
include and exclude in different ways. This is necessary to form a  
group -- by definition it has to have a center and boundaries.

Sharon
---
Sharon Villines, Editor and Publisher
Building Community: A Newsletter on Coops, Condos, Cohousing, and Other  
New Neighborhoods
http://www.buildingcommunitynews.org
(A very rough website, mostly just a link to subscribe. More coming  
soon.)