Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Addressing Conflicts as Community Issues [was Community Mediation in cohousing ?neighborly awareness? from becoming surveillance (with CPS calls)

[Hafidha Sofia (hafidhaao]

How this first sounded to me: a neighbor is repeatedly calling CPS on a family. 
What it sounds like now: a dispute between current leadership and an undefined 
group within community 

I’m curious what the role of the listerv is in this dispute?

Where there is no ask, there can be no answer.
Stopping the CPS calls was a straightforward and high priority need, but now it 
seems the problem is something else that has not been well-defined.

Generally speaking, when there are struggles within a community, the members of 
that community are the only ones who can settle it.

Third parties can sometimes - for a fee - be helpful with reviewing and 
advising structures. They can also sometimes teach communication skills and 
provide tools for conflict resolution and governance. What they can’t do is 
serve as investigators, protectors, arbiters or judges. (Though a community 
could decide to have such roles within itself.) 

Cohousing communities are self-managing. Community members have to talk with 
each other, get very CLEAR about what it is they want or need, ensure alignment 
with the community’s ethos, and then take actions to get their needs met. This 
can be incredibly difficult work but it is also the heart of living and working 
in ANY community. It is NOT a failure of community to encounter these 
challenges. In these types of conflicts, all those involved will be stretched 
beyond their comfort zones.

As much as possible, be organized, focused, and solution oriented. 


Hafidha



Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 17, 2025, at 8:05 AM, Kathryn Lowry via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> Sharon,
> 
> What you’re describing is a sharp contrast to our community’s response.
> 
> When parent concerns for safety were dismissed or delayed by our Steering
> Team, the Team responsible for prioritizing topics of community concern for
> our monthly Plenary meeting agenda, one of my neighbors who is a parent
> initiated a coordinated walkthrough of our common house kitchen to identify
> and mitigate safety hazards.
> 
> When a neighbor parent independently initiated a coordinated walkthrough
> through of the common house kitchen to identify and mitigate safety
> hazards,  a long-term resident and Member of Steering Team dismissed this
> effort as not possibly amounting to anything more than “speculation or
> conspiracy mode” because we (parents and concerned neighbors) didn’t have
> access to the policy work she had been doing to craft policies addressing
> safety concerns by regulating the conduct of parents and children.
> 
> Rather than identifying this as a major breach of community trust, other
> Steering Team members applauded the effort to go around this team’s own
> inaction and resistance to our efforts to improve safety for our children
> and our neighbors.
> 
> I’m utterly confused as to how this conduct is in any way an expression of
> the ethos of Cohousing.
> 
> Warmly,
> 
> Kathryn Lowry
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
> 
> 
>