Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community Guests in CH Guest Room

[Douglas Larson (ddhle]

>I'm interested to know if, in addition, communities are 
>open to having "community guests" stay in their CH 
>guest rooms. By community guests I mean people who 
>contact you via the contact person you name on your 
>website or via the community directory on 
>www.cohousing.org (or www.on ic.org) or someone 
>referred by a friend or a friend of a friend)--that is, 
>they are not the guest  of a particular resident.
>

Anyone from outside Songaia who comes to visit us, whether they stay in the 
guest room or not, is required to have a resident host. It doesn't matter if 
the visitor contacted us via our website or is a friend or aquaintance of a 
resident. In all cases the visitor has to have a Songaian host. While it isn't 
common for visitors who are strangers to stay in our guest rooms, it has 
happened on past occaions. So to answer your question, yes we allow this. I 
believe that the Songaian who is contacted or who responds to a website or 
email contact, does inital screening to assess the intentions and purpose of 
the prospective visitor. Now that I am thinking about it, I believe that while 
its fairly common for a complete stranger to come visit, its quite rare for 
that person to spend one or more nights. There is no policy against it, rather 
I think the specific Songaian host involved judges what strangers seem 
appropriate to stay overnight. 

Douglas Larson,
Songaia Cohousing