Re: Need information on Common House use | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Sharon Villines (sharon![]() |
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Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2020 09:06:10 -0700 (PDT) |
> On Aug 25, 2020, at 12:04 PM, Barbara Smith via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] > cohousing.org> wrote: > > Our plans are before the Littleton Planning Board and among their questions > is: why do we need a common house? If you have condominiums in your area use the data for which of these have “party rooms” or “recreation buildings”. It is common for condos to have these. Use this as an analogy. If there aren’t condos, use the data on condos in other areas. People look for these. > One member maintains that a Common House is "never used”. If you walk through a CH it may look unused. If you sit there, reading or working a puzzle, you will see more people coming in and out. It is the central spot for picking up mail, leaving things for other residents or sharing sweets left over from parties, or boxes of vegetables not picked up from the CSA delivery. A place to congregate on snow days or when the electricity is out. During a 5 day outage we had a charging station on a generator in the CH. And kept the refrigerator working. The most crucial use is having a place for everyone to meet. The whole membership and teams. Even if teams could meet in homes, meeting on common ground is more open and welcoming to community members who are not part of the regular teams. And in tense times, meeting in one person’s home may influence the discussion — or lack of. Some homeowners will insist on serving tea and cookies which can not only take up meeting time but create interruptions to deflect focus on hard topics. Meals and even a large kitchen for canning or baking is important to many of our residents. As is the laundry, workshop, exercise room, kids room, tv room, computer in the office, etc. We have a Take-It-Or-Leave-It (TIOLI) table in a hallway corner that we really miss during the pandemic. It was closed down to reduce touching surfaces —by adults as well as children. I’ve change from expecting to only preserve and fund the spaces that are used daily by a majority of members to the expectation that each part of the CH is of strong interest to a few members of the community. For a few it will be vital even if they only use it on Saturday and that is what makes it possible to have the resource available for occasional use by others. Like having a playground attracts people with children, the resources attract people who want to use them. For example, the workshop is not particularly important to me, but I like having in the community the people for whom it is central. The same for the one time a year watching the Super Bowl. Less than how many times something is used is how important it is to how many people. The CH is used daily by people doing laundry, who don’t have their own televisions because they only watch specific programs, picking up mail 2-3 times a week, for indoor package delivery, a place to “work at home,” a quiet place for conference calls, etc. All of the spaces may not be used daily but they will be used weekly by a number of different people, and are useful to all at some point. It’s the central place for organizing workdays — a list of tasks, for example, and people to explain them. Right now the kids room is being used by several children under age 6 who are bubbling with each other for a pre-school activities with working-at-home parents alternating as teachers. And playing outside in a play area without other children. The ping pong table is set up in the dining room since we aren’t having meals and it is a game that is natural to distancing. Think about how you operate as a forming community — you need meeting space, space for potlucks, to watch a football game together. It has been very helpful to other forming communities to be able to use our CH. And for the neighborhood association to hold community meetings occasionally. A very small community — under 12 units (?) — may be able to build these facilities into the homes or annex buildings, but for a large community, the CH is important if not essential to make housing cohousing. Sharon ---- Sharon Villines Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC http://www.takomavillage.org
- Re: Need information on Common House use, (continued)
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Re: Need information on Common House use Diane, August 26 2020
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Re: Need information on Common House use Barbara Smith, August 26 2020
- Re: Need information on Common House use Ann Lehman, August 26 2020
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Re: Need information on Common House use Barbara Smith, August 26 2020
- Re: Need information on Common House use Muriel Kranowski, August 26 2020
- Re: Need information on Common House use Sharon Villines, August 26 2020
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Re: Need information on Common House use Diane, August 26 2020
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Re: Need information on Common House use Bree Kalb, August 26 2020
- Re: Need information on Common House use Sharon Villines, August 26 2020
- Re: Need information on Common House use Lisa Kuntz, August 26 2020
- Re: Need information on Common House use fergyb2, August 26 2020
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