Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Incentive to formally dropout of forming group?

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

A bit of wisdom from one of the Cohousing Professionals:

http://www.cohousing.org/mkt/professionals
(I can't recall which one, as I've had the chance to learn from many)

If you structure your group's equity agreement so that a member's withdrawal
triggers the conversion of the project equity into an interest bearing loan
(at a low rate that all can agree to), then many folks will have incentive
to withdraw once they have emotionally decided they are not continuing -
especially if they lack faith that you'll complete the project.

The idea is that while there is no interest available for equity investments
to members... they (hopefully) realize good returns on their investments by
being able to live in their community home - and sometimes receive discounts
from those investments. At the time that a member withdraws, then their
project equity turns into an interest-bearing loan to the group. The group
takes on the obligation to repay the loan with interest at achieving some
future milestone. I believe that the specifics of how a group structure
"Their Deal" is really important and believe there are a bunch of gotchas in
the details.

Some groups have had tremendous difficulties with emotionally withdrawn
members who (sometimes) start focusing on their potential individual
benefits of ultimately owning a unit for resale instead of realizing values
around their own life in community. Also, dealing with folks that are not
truly present (whether in attendance or not) for complex decisions can be
tough, regardless of their intentions.

On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 7:37 PM, Kristen Simmons <simmonskristen [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Does anyone have experience with providing incentives for equity
> members to formally drop out of the group when they know that they
> will not buy a unit?
>
> Has any group been in the situation where an equity member household
> knew that they would not buy a unit for whatever reason, but did not
> leave the group? Did this negatively affect the group?
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Kristen
> Stony Brook Cohousing, now forming in Boston, MA
> _________________________________________________________________
>
>
-- 
Craig Ragland

Coho/US executive director     New Earth Song project manager       Songaia
Cohousing member
http://www.cohousing.org        http://www.NewEarthSong.com
http://www.Songaia.com
  craig [at] cohousing.org               craig [at] newearthsong.com
craig [at] songaia.com

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