Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: background checks and screening prospective members

[barb howe (barbndc]

Hi everyone,
I've been looking to join a co-housing community for several years now. I
haven't found one yet, but I thought I would like to weigh in on this
discussion.

I also am one who has to take medication on a daily basis. I wouldn't like
to think that I would be considered to be "unfit" to be part of a community
with other humans if I were to stop taking this medication. (I have strong
incentives not to do that anyway because I don't want to get sick, but
still I hope I would be seen as a whole person not just someone who has to
take medication in order to make herself acceptable to human society).

I certainly see both "sides" to this question but I put "sides" in
quotation marks because I don't think we should think of this as a
dichotomous issue of one thing or the other. I agree with Jim, it's too
nuanced an issue. Many survivors of abuse both want to feel safe and
protected from abusers AND also need to take daily medication themselves.
That's the case for me. I have a high score on the Adverse Childhood
Experiences chart (that's a form doctors use to try to quantify early
childhood trauma) and while there's no direct cause and effect relationship
between abuse/trauma and mental health disorders (genetic predisposition
also plays some role), it's not uncommon for survivors to have mental
health issues themselves. A policy intended to weed out abusers may end up
also weeding out survivors of abuse. It implies that only people who don't
have mental health issues are fit for society but the reality is, our
society is so messed up most of us have mental health issues at some point
just from living in it.

Excluding people with mental health issues just increases the stigma around
mental health and it's based on a misperception of mental health as being a
permanent condition of the person when the reality is we all have varying
degrees of mental health and unhealth throughout our lives. We slide up and
down the mental health scale all the time. I know a brilliant, wise,
compassionate behavioral therapist who is now in his 90s and suffering from
poor mental health himself now unfortunately. No one is immune. It's an
illusion to believe that because we are mentally healthy or unhealthy at
some given point in our lives, we will always be in that state forever and
ever. It's just not the case.

I agree with the person who said something like all life is risk. It is not
possible to create communities that ensure that no abusers get in. Abuse
hides itself extremely well. Most children are abused by members of their
own family, and only a tiny percentage of abusers actually get prosecuted
and convicted resulting in something a background check could pick up on.
As a survivor of abuse myself, if I thought background checks could protect
me from future abuse I would be all for them, but it won't work. I think
the best any of us can do is try to get to know the new person as well as
you can beforehand and that means simply spending time with them. There's
no form or background check that can substitute for time spent. If you're
around someone long enough and they have toxic behavioral patterns you will
eventually see it. But it takes time.

Thanks for having this conversation and for this listserv.

Barb Howe
(currently in Tampa but looking to move to some co-housing community
somewhere one day)