Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Enforcing CC&Rs

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

You may want to work your way through your agreements slowly, over time. I
suggest bring up several at meetings and ask people if they consent to them
for now. For the ones without consent, figure out if you want it gone until
it's fixed, or kept until it's fixed. And then have a team of people work
on it.
Count on that taking a couple years.

As far as enforcement, it's useful to have steps (tell the person face to
face, tell the person in writing, tell again in writing  with consequences
for compliance listed, tell them you are going to impose consequences,
impose consequences.)
At Mosaic Commons Cohousing in Berlin, MA, 15 years since move in, we don't
have much experience with this as we mostly don't have very many people who
are willing to do the telling.

I mean we have lots of experience with the *problem* we just don't do much
to enforce anything other than non-payment of fees, and we find even that
pretty difficult.

The idea of consensus and consent and all the forms we use for decision
making, is that if everyone is in on the decision then enforcement won't be
an issue. It's simply not true. Some people aren't taking an active role in
the decision making (even if they are at the meeting where the decision is
made.) Some people don't remember the decision. Some people are not rules
followers, even for the rules they helped make. And some people want to
follow the rules but cannot do what is needed.

(Hoarding issues often fall into "I want to clean this up" even when all
evidence is that they are not doing anything about it.)

-Liz
(The Rev. Dr.) Elizabeth Mae Magill
Pastor, Ashburnham Community Church
Minister to the Affiliates, Ecclesia Ministries
www.elizabethmaemagill.com
508-450-0431


On Fri, Jun 21, 2024 at 11:32 AM Petra Martin <petra [at] petramartin.com> 
wrote:

> Our (young) community <https://fifthstreetcommons.com/> was founded by two
> couples, one of whom never lived here (but owned a unit that has since been
> sold) and the other who did live here for a while (but that unit has also
> been sold). They retrofitted intentional community into a former apartment
> complex and outfitted us with what looks like a boilerplate set of CC&Rs
> <https://fifthstreetcommons.com/governing-documents/>.
>
> Bottom line, we inherited a bunch of rules that we had no hand in creating,
> one rule is being violated (don't store stuff in the carports), and we've
> been going around in circles for nine months trying to rewrite that rule in
> a way that works for everyone, with no resolution in sight.
>
> Some of us are thinking, "Hey, it seems like it might be less painful to
> just enforce the rules as written," but no one has ever done that here.
>
> So, two questions:
>
>    - Do you have community-generated CC&Rs that you're willing to share
>    with me, so we can see how other cohousing communities have written
> their
>    rules and agreements?
>    - How do you enforce your community's rules? What are the
>    steps/escalations? (These
>    <https://www.hoamanagement.com/how-can-hoa-enforce-rules-regulations/>
> feel
>    fairly standard for HOAs but don't necessarily seem like a perfect match
>    for cohousing/intentional communities).
>
> Thank you for helping us work through this!
>
> Petra Martin (board president)
> 360.202.7403
> *WhatsApp* <https://wa.me/13602027403>
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