Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What you call the first group & Nolo Press [was Early Bank Account Types for Explorer Membership Dues and Professional Fees (Lyn Deardorff)

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 8:00 AM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> Nolo Press was started by two legal aid lawyers who were helping
> low-income families in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s.
> Charles (Ed) Sherman and Ralph (Jake) Warner
>
Small World department: Ralph Warner lived in one of the homes on the
property that, starting in 1994, gradually became Berkeley Cohousing. It
was before my time here, but based on mail that showed up for him a quarter
century after he moved (!), I believe it may have been in one of the units
attached to what became our Common House.

So yes, technically, we had evict the author of the book “how To fight your
eviction!” ;-)

A related story also linked to law self-practice: This was one of many
challenges that emerged in a self-developed community in the early days of
the movement, hiring a builder that was in over their head in work on a
multi-building project involving older existing structures, making
significant mistakes (some of which emerged a decade or two later) leading
to the group doing all its own paralegal work for a year to prepare for a
lawsuit, which went to arbitration, and the builder put in inflated damages
and the community put in actual damages... and the arbitrator split it down
the middle. So the pioneers and early members here won on principle, but
had to come up with $17,000 per household (up to 10% of purchase prices)
quickly (after they already had home mortgages) to avoid a credit-report
ding.

Some community members had insisted on holding the builder publicly
accountable, rather than quietly settling for far, far less at the close of
construction.

The price we pay today: collective community unease with financial
processing, requiring us to take extra precautionary steps as part of any
process involving spending money. It is enough work that some great things
we could do collectively never get started or get stalled. On the other
hand, this is leading at times to projects getting funded by a sub-group,
rather than the entire community.

The benefit we reap: we have excellent books and a great projection process
that forecasts and adjusts dues and helps us avoid shocks, and as a member
I can feel secure and confident in our collective capacity to watch out for
our shared funds.

A condo-reserves consultant who came here to consult some years back said
“I’ve never [before] been to meet with an HOA and been at a meeting with
every household represented” - typically it is a small committee of a
not-necessarily-representative elected board.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach & EcoVillage Ambassador
Cohousing California / East Bay Cohousing
  at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing