Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Low cost community housing group

[Tom Hammer (thammer302]

I am amazed that it is not obvious why the statement below is  
offensive.  It can be reworded:  "people who can afford to buy lower  
cost homes are more likely to be dysfunctional."  If that is not  
classism and dysfunctionality, I don't know what is.  It is in the  
same category as "<insert ethnic group or sexual preference or  
disability> are more likely to be stupid <or substitute other negative  
adjectives>."  Any stereotyping statement that attempts to keep out of  
cohousing communities people of a certain class or group will leave  
cohousers open to the frequent criticism that we tend to be white,  
college-educated, relatively wealthy, non-diverse, and elitist, and we  
will never successfully attract more diversity if we don't actively  
discourage such attitudes and actively recruit diverse folks.

Personally, I yearn for more diverse communities of all types across  
our country, such as the one I currently live in, but specifically in  
cohousing.  I daily am thankful for the rich diversity in my small  
town of 8000 people that is 35% Hispanic, about 25% "working class"  
and 10% "poor" and 10% African American.  There is an uplifting  
positive spirit here of cooperation, mutual respect and  
neighborliness, and I am enriched by the differences among the people  
around me.  I would never want to live in a community filled with  
people who think that those of lower incomes are more dysfunctional  
than those with more material wealth.

Tom Hammer
Kennett Square, PA

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:44:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Low cost community housing group
To: -cohousing-L mailing list <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Message-ID:
        <Pine.LNX.4.64.1001221059420.17308 [at] farnsworth.tigertech.net>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Lyle Scheer <wonko [at] monkeyhouse.org>
is the author of the message below.  It was posted by
Fred, the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
due to a format problem.
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

On 1/22/10 9:54 AM, Chili Head wrote:
> I actually cannot believe someone would write this (not Marganne, but
> someone else):  "these can attract people who are highly dysfunctional
> and thus the community can end up spending inordinate amounts of
> energy dealing with social pathology, something cohousing, with its
> economic barriers is largely free from ..."
>
> Gotta say, even if we HAD money, I wouldn't want to be part of a
> community that embraces such opinions.  If that's the true nature of
> the majority of this list, I'm likely outta here.
I'm not clear what is odious about the quote above.  Perhaps if it had
ended with, "...and that's why I feel the current model is good."