Cohousing-L Mailing List: selling units/values

[Fleck (foam4u]

Hi All,

Funny, I think these are the same thing. When we were building we
fast-tracked the process because materials and labor were going up at
10%/year. This could have meant an increase for those involved of
$20,000/each which would have pushed out several families.

What we skipped in the process of building was deeper discussion around
values and expectations. This is coming back to bite us big-time now. We
don't have a work requirement and some folks have opted out. We don't have a
meals participation requirement and about 1/3 of our members don't
participate. We're urban condos and some folks gave away all their gardening
gear when they moved in because they didn't expect to ever have to garden
again. We've got lots of planted and wild areas anyway.

Our landscape budget got cut in half this year (dead plants are OK with some
folks) but we don't have enough volunteers to maintain what we've got. And
our budget hasn't been approved for 2006 yet because 3 people weren't paying
attention or attending meetings (no requirement to do so) and freaked when
they saw the final numbers and blocked the whole thing.

When we were marketing the project we heard over and over - "We don't care
what it looks like, we're interested in who's living there." I would take
this to heart. Anyone (well...) can build a house but building a community
is much harder. If I were to do it again, I'd wait to build and not expect
things (like values and participation) to "work themselves out later". They
might not so figure out what you can live with now. Talk, talk, talk,
listen, listen, listen.

Anne at Jackson Place - Seattle

Chinese proverb - "The best memory is not as good as the worst paper"