Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing as a transformational influence upon society Was: Teeth in Rules

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

(wearing my communitarian hat, and not my Coho/US ED hat)

On a simplistic, individualistic level, home ownership helps keep cohousing
communities together... few who own homes can casually leave without going
through a sale. This is clearly not specific to Cohousing, when considered
as a neighborhood. Ownership is, however, much less common in other forms of
more utopian intentional communities, some of do not offer ownership as an
option.

On a community level, what keeps cohousing communities together is active
participation by enough members. Perhaps the most beneficial, to me, is
eating food with my friends. Food that they (or I) have prepared with care
and consideration of others' needs. A factoid I shared at the 2011 Natl
conference is that just 5% of cohousing communities eat as frequently as we
do at Songaia (5/week) and none of those surveyed (80) indicated that they
ate more frequently.

In my experience, the main source of disintegration is the disease of
non-participation. If non-participation spreads, the "community feel" shifts
and the cohousing community can devolve into being just a condo with an
atypically large clubhouse.

Craig Ragland
Songaia member (1992-2010)
Songaia Associate (2010-present)
Life Song Commons member (2010-present)


On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:26 AM, Wayne Tyson <landrest [at] cox.net> wrote:

>
> I would be most interested in what keeps cohousing communities together and
> what causes their disintegration.
>
>