Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: why people leave cohousing

[Richard and Emily (june227]

What do you mean when refering to control issues specifically with parenting? 
Parents not appreciating feed back from their neighbors? Neighbors feeding 
(etc) other peoples children in a way they werent' comfortable with?
-Emily

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Rob Sandelin" <floriferous [at] msn.com> 

> Over a ten year period I interviewed about 60 people who had left or were 
> leaving cohousing, some from my own community, others from places where I 
> was doing workshops. Here is a simple list from those interviews in order of 
> frequency: 
> 
> Change in job requires move 
> Out of state family crisis 
> Control issues (parenting issues are part of this) 
> Bad relationships with neighbors 
> Privacy issues 
> Cost, personal finance, issues 
> Location issues 
> 
> Often it is a combination of more than one thing. For example a bad 
> relationship and the community is too far from work. It took on average 
> about two years for someone dissatisfied with their situation to actually 
> move, sometimes this time was spent trying to rectify privacy, control or 
> relationship issues. The lack of success in doing so was a common thread in 
> why people left. 
> 
> It was surprising to me how bitter some people were upon leaving cohousing, 
> it reminded me of how people in divorce talk about their ex. I took away 
> from this the impression that some people place a huge emotional attachment 
> to their community fantasies and when reality does not match they blame the 
> community for somehow failing them. The people with no bitterness in the 
> parting were mostly very clear that they did not match the kind of people 
> that would be happy living in community, that it was an experiment that did 
> not work out for them. 
> 
> In my own community all of the above issues have been cause for people to 
> move on. Location is probably one of the largest, followed by control 
> issues, especially parenting control. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rob Sandelin 
> Sharingwood Cohousing, Snohomish County, WA 
> Naturalist, Writer 
> The Environmental Science School 
> http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm 
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