Cohousing-L Mailing List: welcoming new members

[Lynette Bassman (lbassman]

Hi.

 

I am a founding member of the Fresno (California) Cohousing group (soon
to be an official LLC).  We have thirteen families, we are under
contract to purchase a parcel of land, and we have begun the design
process with The Cohousing Company.  Our final design workshop is in
early June.  We plan to submit our documents to the planning department
by their August 30th deadline.

 

I would like to get some information about how groups at our stage of
development go about taking in new members.  We have decided not to open
the group until the design process is complete, but we are getting calls
already from people who are interested.  Here are the questions we have:

 

1. At what point do you invite new members into the group (i.e.;  before
or after planning approvals?)

2. What materials do you provide to represent what the group is all
about? 

3. How do you make sure that people are aligned with the group's values?


4. How do you handle people who are problematic (i.e., uncooperative,
"crazy", substance abusers...) 

5. How do you handle process issues when the original group has done a
lot of work on process, so that the new members will feel fully
integrated and welcome?

6. How do you handle waiting lists?  (We think that there is pretty
lively interest in our community, and we only have another 14 units to
sell, so we need to figure out how to properly document seniority (or
some other prioritizing process) in case there are more interested
families than there are available units.)  

7. Anything else you think we should know that I didn't ask about.

 

Thanks so much.

 

Lynette Bassman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

California School of Professional Psychology at

Alliant International University

phone: (559) 253-2240

fax:  (559) 253-2267

lbassman [at] alliant.edu