Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re "Instant Cohousing"

[R.N. Johnson (cohoranda]

    We all bonded quite a bit during our 6 month long 
just-before-the-market-crashed escrow.  We held social events, potlucks and a 
1/2 day garden planning/visioning retreat. We started our meal rotation and did 
a whole bunch of work parties in the first six months on site.  It has 
definitely helped to have community building and conflict resolution 
workshops.  New Brighton Cohousing had a core group of three households that 
had worked together for a long time, and several of the other households were 
connected in one way or another to one person.  Members had varying degrees of 
experience living in community, and working with consensus or group 
decision-making. 
  We are still relatively new, and still learning to work together, especially 
around money issues but I don't think we have had a harder time than other 
communities in their first couple of years.   
My first advice would be to find ways to work together - whether on cooking 
teams, volunteering together in the community, or helping each other to pack up 
and move.  Secondly, plan those community building workshops on a regular 
basis, and get help on setting up good meetings.  Thirdly, if you have families 
with kids, I would encourage the parents to get together as soon as they can to 
share information about parenting styles,  and start to develop guiidelines for 
children and adults, parents and non-parents about what the expectations are. 
Fourth, get together and have fun- game night, picnic in the park, go camping 
together, have a singlalong, talent/no talent show- whatever.
There are burning souls who after years of work to establish a community, 
decided not to live there after all. There are many ardent cohousers who moved 
in after the community was established, or joined at the last minute. With all 
the multi-unit properties on the market due to the economic troubles, this 
could be an opportunity for many forming groups to establish a community.  
I spent many hours in design committee meetings planning for a beautiful 
sutainable built from the ground up community that we could not afford to 
develop.  But for me, it was more important to live in community, than to live 
in my dream house. By moving into a smaller house with shared walls, better 
insulation, and  into a community shared laundry, guest rooms, tools, and 
common space, with better access to public transportation I have reduced my 
energy use and pollution, and gained a wonderful community. 
Randa Johnson
New Brighton Cohousing
Aptos, CA



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