Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: Tragedy of the commons & cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Mar 28, 2006, at 5:47 AM, Tilstra wrote:

> When I worked with a developer, he flagged the advice he got from a
> professional service running body corporates, that they find it better
> to have an individual run the common house, and have this person paid
> for by locked-in body corporate fees.
>
> So, does cohousing succeeds when a select group of relatively
> well-educated and idealistic people get together?

Looking at this question requires a pull back to a larger picture -- 
autocratic corporate bodies find a hired anything to be better because 
their only means of governance is total, autocratic hierarchical 
decision-making control and money-based relationships. By definition, 
they have no other basis on which to steer an organization.

All the cohousing organizations are also corporations but structured 
differently. If a corporation is structured sociocratically, the 
residents would make this decision as well as deciding how the 
commonhouse would be managed and used. The general circle would select 
the manager or managing body (a team) and decide whether they would be 
compensated.

Most cohousing communities do not consider commonhouse management to be 
such a huge problem but with larger communities this may become an 
issue.

On Mar 28, 2006, at 7:06 AM, dahako [at] aol.com wrote:

> The tragedy of the commons and related social sharing disorders 
> primarily occur when the people owning and sharing a resource aren't 
> either continually reminded of their long-term interests or forced by 
> a strong hierarchical control structure to behave themselves.

And this is one of the problems of large cohousing groups. There are so 
many people to constantly remind and all control structures are 
rejected as autocratic.

> So, in cohousing, we have a group of people who self-select for good 
> citizenship, are constantly meeting and eating with the other 
> users/owners of the shared resource, endlessly discussing shared 
> interests, and living in close physical proximity to the shared 
> resources.  I think it's a reasonable set up for mostly avoiding the 
> kind of short run thinking typical of the tragedy of the commons.

Unfortunately, as cohousing becomes easier to build and easier to get 
into, the filter for good citizenship frays. Constantly meeting and 
eating with is not the case in large communities. And "shared" means to 
some people "mine."

One of our members recently moved to Dancing Rabbit where they have 
looked at resources differently. Jobs related to resources that 
everyone uses are required and assigned to all members (like emptying 
the compostable toilets). Other resources cost. As much as possible 
they try to apportion the costs fairly according to use. They also 
require people to live there for one year before they can become full 
members -- a very high threshold.

But the result is a very affordable community. One person lives there 
for $4,000 a year. He choses to use and pay for those parts of the 
commons that he needs.

This has completely changed my view of "user fees" since I moved into 
cohousing. i thought it would be the case that use of the common 
elements would be balanced -- everyone using one or the other but not 
all of them so it would balance out in the end. This has been far from 
the case and some, like the laundry room, are more high maintenance 
than others. I thought the collection of small fees here and there 
would burdensome and create problems of its own -- equity, graft, 
discrimination against the less moneyed.

But in fact not having user fees has made the community less affordable.

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