Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Standing exclusive-group dinners vs standing

[Thomas Lofft (tlofft]

Considering that the common house facilities are paid for by everyone in order 
to be made available for community functions, Liberty Village has a policy 
permitting their use by individual members for family and friend functions, 
whether the community is invited or not, as long as the event does not conflict 
with a scheduled community event, or for rent by community members for use for 
external functions.  Similarly, the guest room is available for rent by any 
member for themselves or guests.  We have never had a request (in our first 12 
years) for a continuing preemptive use by members that would deny concurrent 
use by the community.  We do have continuing dinner groups that rotate dinners 
among their individual homes, but never take over community facilities for 
their ongoing dinner groups. These never interfere with community meals.  My 
personal position would be to encourage the community to adopt a rental policy 
for any users that conducted exclusive group events that were not open to the 
entire community.Tom LofftLiberty Village, MD
"The standing exclusive-group dinners do commandeer the use of the CH kitchen, 
which can accommodate only one group at a time. At the same time, our CH's 
Great Room can seat multiple dinner groups.
Given this information, what would you say? Howard KatzJamaica Plain Cohousing, 
Boston, MA 02130 
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:41:48 +0000
From: Thomas Lofft <tlofft [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Standing exclusive-group dinners vs standing

Request for clarification: Do the  'Standing exclusive-group dinners' 
commandeer the use of the CH kitchen and dining area and preempt it from other 
uses? Or, perchance are they undertaken in the private residences opf one of 
the exclusive group households? Thanks for clarifying, I think it makes a 
difference. Tom LofftLiberty Village, MD  In Regards to:Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 
07:26:18 -0500

Hi Fellow Cohousers-

In your experience, do standing exclusive-group dinners inhibit the
growth of standing community-group dinners?

Some definitions:
* EXCLUSIVE-GROUP DINNERS are cooked by and serve only the members of
the group and their guests. Nonmembers can attend if they bring their
own dinner, but they are not served by the group. Group membership is
controlled by the group.
* COMMUNITY-GROUP DINNERS are cooked by a group of community members.
The group is open to any community member, and the group serves any
and all who sign up in advance.

At the 30-household Jamaica Plain cohousing, we've have a standing
10-household exclusive-group dinner group for about 4 years. During
this time, our standing community-group dinners have attrished
repeatedly.

Any thoughts on whether this is correlation or causality?

Assume that both kinds of group cook equally well.

And if this question has already been answered, please feel free to
refer me to the archives.

Thank you very much.

Howard Katz
JP Cohousing
Boston, MA 02130

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Howard Katz
Mystic River Communications
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