Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: Shadowlake Research Project

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Mar 22, 2006, at 5:36 PM, Lisa Poley wrote:

> I did not anticipate that putting out information and an invitation to
> participate in this study would cause such intense reactions. It is 
> clear
> that some have had negative experiences with cohousing researchers in 
> the
> past and that there is apparently quite a lot of burnout out there.

People are just tired of filling out bad questionnaires. It takes a lot 
of time and we get nothing in return.

Mostly, once people are living in cohousing, they just want to live in 
cohousing. Not as one of our members put it, to live in a fish bowl. 6 
years after move-in we still do orientations almost monthly for people 
who are just curious (we have no openings). Visitors come to meetings. 
Tours pass by. Even the police and firemen stop by for tours. It just 
gets old. Next we will have paparazzi!

Partly that is burn out but but more clearly we are busy and don't want 
our time wasted. Building and sustaining a community takes a lot of 
time. Most of cohousers want to focus on that.

Studies done so far don't focus on anything that would help our 
communities run better, only on building new communities. The people 
who focus on that are cohousing professionals -- developers, marketers, 
facilitators, etc. -- some of whom are on this list but they are not 
the people you want filling out questionnaires -- unless you are 
surveying professionals.

Nothing personal or even anti-research, it's just not what most of us 
are here for.

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