Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Sample Rules and Regulations

[Fred-List manager (fholson]

David Heimann <heimann [at] theworld.com>
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Hello Everyone,

        As against havint (or not having) discussions and decisions on
specific policies beforehand, a good approach is to agree on a set of
core values or vision, and use those to develop the policies (ours at a
https://sites.google.com/site/jpcohousinginternet/our-vision-statement).

        Of course, it can help making the values statement appropriate
and useful to use them to develop a number of policies during
development and see what general discussion issues seem to come up.
I've heard that a useful set of policy discussions about the ones about
the "four P's" -- progeny, pistols, pets, and pennies!

Regards,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing


Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2021 12:14:06 -0500
From: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Sample Rules and Regulations
Message-ID: <BA25F6D3-CA22-4E07-A0D8-A8FE9EDBA90A [at] sharonvillines.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=utf-8

I totally agree with Diane and left her post appended so anyone who
didn?t read it will read it. Resolving all (or even some) of the
difficult issues before move in is impossible because you don?t know
what the difficult or even the not difficult issues are.

Certainly you don?t know enough to specify details and enforcement.

Discussions about principles and concerns are important. A household
with a favored pet is not likely to make any commitments without
assurances that their pet would be allowed in their private unit, or
be grandfathered in if there are more restrictive policies. But a
guiding principle that private units are private as long as behaviors
or conditions respect the privacy of other units (noise, fumes, etc.)

A person with allergies would be hesitant to commit unless they knew
the group generally understood and accepted allergies as a physical
condition that would be resolved in ways that would allow the person
to use the common areas. But before move in is not the time to
negotiate a list of which plants can be planted and which magic
markers used in the common house.

Some basic governance issues have to be resolved in order to file
Bylaws and other legal documents. Will you use consensus
decision-making? Will you have a board? What will their duties be? Who
makes what decisions? All this will begin changing after move-in as
you work with your experiences but it is good to know whether the
group members generally favor democracy. Governance is a process of
steering and making corrections, not setting all the rules in stone.

But people will be equally fearful of a group that refuses to discuss
any principles before move-in. Certainly the principles of cohousing.
Rules are often less important than the spirit in which they are made.
Exploring the intention of the group is important. But that will
change too.

Sharon


> On Feb 23, 2021, at 8:58 AM, Diana Carroll <dianaecarroll [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
> Ed Sutton says "I strongly recommend that cohousing groups undertake
> drafting clear and difficult policies before building and moving in."
>
> We (Mosaic Commons, Berlin, MA) got this advice and followed it, and had a
> lot of policies around "hot topics" in place before we moved in, some even
> before we had land.
>
> And...I can't really recommend it as whole-heartedly as others recommended
> it to us.
>
> We spent a LOT of time and emotion on rules that turned out to be
> inapplicable to the site we found. We worked hard on compromises between
> people with strong feelings on multiple sides of issues -- and then some or
> all of the stakeholders in that issue didn't move in. We found paths that
> reflected the will of the group, and then the makeup of the group changed.
> And we completely failed to anticipate which things would turn out to be
> really controversial after move-in.
>
> I guess I would say it's not a bad idea to get started on "hot topic"
> policies but don't spend huge amounts of time, energy and social capital on
> them like we did.  (It took us six months to decide on a pet policy that in
> the end didn't meet our needs after move-in.)
>
> "Once a loving person has begun feeding feral cats, it is too late to write
> a pet policy."
>
> We spent 6 months on a pet policy that didn't mention feral cats once.  It
> didn't occur to us.  So had this turned out to be an issue, we would have
> had to discuss it. It's just not true that it is "too late to write a
> policy" if you didn't address it before move-in.  Fortunately that
> particular thing hasn't been a problem for us, but it certainly could have
> been...you just cannot possibly anticipate all the things that turn out to
> be troublesome, so you *must find a way to deal with them in real-time. *
>
> Diana
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 8:28 AM Ed Sutton via Cohousing-L <
> cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
>
>> Takoma Village and Mosaic Commons have posted excellent examples of Rules
>> and Regulations.
>>
>> I strongly recommend that cohousing groups undertake drafting clear and
>> difficult policies before building and moving in.
>> Once conflicting parties have dug in their heels and people have taken
>> sides, it is very hard to establish a conflict resolution protocol!
>> Once a loving person has begun feeding feral cats, it is too late to write
>> a pet policy.
>>
>> In consensus process, procrastination can be weaponized and a history of
>> avoidance becomes the community precedent/common law.
>> And in many cases, once someone has purchased a home, the community has
>> little or no legal recourse to enforce community rules or consensus
>> decisions.
>>
>> It is very important that people considering moving to a cohousing
>> community read and agree to clear descriptions of expected behavior before
>> buying in.
>>
>> Ed Sutton
>> Eno Commons
>> Durham NC