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by Laird Schaub
COHOUSING GROUPS ARE a lot like other kinds of intentional communitywhile people agree on the value of building community, there tends to be confusion about exactly what that means and how to go about it. Sometimes the extent of the confusion is not apparent until after the foundations are poured, when it's harder to change your mind about whether you're in the right group.
How much community do you want? Don't assume that everyone understands the same thing by the paragraphs you put together for your promotional literature. It is not enough to have a vision statement. You have to spell out what it means. For example:
While answering these questions may not be easy, my point is that groups will necessarily develop implicit answers in the absence of explicit ones. In the end you only have two choices: Take the time to get clear, or deal with the tension arising from the confusion.
My emphasis here is not which answers you have but that you have answers, and that everyone in the group or considering joining knows what's expected.
As an example of how ambiguity can drain energy, let me offer the humbling story of how my community belatedly addressed the issue of cleanliness. After more than 10 years of hardly giving it a thought, it finally rose to our consciousness that we had constant background tension about how clean things were and who was doing the work. Occasionally this would erupt into outright anger, yet we didn't make any substantive headway on this issue until we sat down and defined cleanliness room by room, and figured out how to divvy up the work so that everyone did a fair share.
Today at my community, "clean" means vacuuming the living room twice a week, mopping the kitchen floor once a week, and so on. We got two valuable byproducts from this experiment in explicitness: a drastic reduction in tension around who was taking advantage of whom, and a much cleaner house.
Should your group use consensus?
Like many communities, cohousing groups tend to adopt consensus as their decision-making model. And, like most other communities, cohousing groups tend to use this cooperative model without bothering to read the owner's manual-and then get frustrated that "it doesn't work right." In general, few groups using consensus devote significant time to training in the process or evaluating the group's progress in learning it. This despite the fact that cooperation is not easy to practice. With some exceptions, nearly everyone in our culture is deeply conditioned to be competitive, not cooperative. Unlocking the potential of consensus involves undoing that deep conditioning, yet it's rare to find a group that has thought this through before choosing consensus over Robert's Rules.
It is a radical thing to believe that each individual has the wisdom, and therefore the responsibility, to stop the group from proceeding in the face of a principled objection, and that it is the group's responsibility to help the individiual access and articulate their piece of the truth. I knew a consensus-based community who developed the motto, "In Us We Trust," which tells me they understood consensus in its fuller sense. Consensus is not about trusting higher authorities, or empowering the majority (believing that most of the people will be right most of the time). Consensus is believing in the collective and the wisdom of going slow enough to make sure that everyone is on board before the train leaves the station. It is understanding the high cost of leaving some people behind.
While I'm personally excited about the potential of consensus to build a cooperative future, my advice to groups about using it is that they get as clear as possible about what they are getting into and consider training with flotation devices before swimming in the deep end. In fact, after being called in to apply mouthto-mouth to some groups who got in over their heads, I think it may be better to stick with voting ("the devil you know ... ") than to use consensus naively.
When money talks, time walks
While the above comments apply to all communities, I've noticed two kinds of challenges that seem more common among cohousing projects. The first has to do with the dynamic tension between time and money in large-budget developments. With total costs in the millions, making interest payments on large loans exert considerable pressure to make decisions quickly and keep design and construction on schedule-even at the cost of the sense of community that everyone said they were joining the project for!
On top of that, there is an initiative today among cohousing developers to pioneer a streamlined model whereby the entire design and construction phases can be telescoped into two years. This greatly reduces the time that capital is tied up in a project and gets people into their homes much quicker. The downside is a tendency for groups to struggle with a sequence of decisions that come faster than they can digest. It can get in the way of the group bonding interpersonally and taking ownership of their community. Community starts to happen to them rather than from them.
At the same time, good process does not have to mean slow decisions. It is my experience that groups which communicate well tend to act decisively, though it takes time to get to that level of trust and cohesion. As a group is learning effective communication and inclusive decision making, skilled facilitation is often critical-having meetings run by people who hold a clear understanding of the group's process agreements, and who can gently, yet firmly keep the group on the path they've agreed to follow. There is probably no better reinforcement for making the switch to a more inclusive process such as consensus than getting consistently good results. In the beginning, good facilitation is often crucial to having that experience.
Let's assume you have good facilitation. Given all the benefits claimed for building strong community, why not emphasize it right from the start? Subtle dynamics here can get in the way. In their eagerness to "fill"-sell all the housing units-cohousing groups tend to soft-pedal defining "community" in the early stages for fear that prospective members may be put off (believing the widest net captures the most fish), and for fear that strong bonding among the early joiners will create a barrier that later folks will have to overcome (believing that it's better to delay community-building until everyone is on board).
More, there is often worry that getting clearer about who the community is may risk losing some folks already in the group. This is compounded by the possibility that some members may not yet be clear about what they want and are reluctant to enter a group clarifying process without knowing their own minds first-especially when their own position in the group may be at stake! Also, there may be hesitation about taking a lead in focusing the group on this topic for fear that it will be perceived as a power play. And sometimes the group does not address its ambiguities because they lack confidence in doing it well. Still, I think that any delay in knowing "who we are and what we're here for" is a poor bargain.
First of all, propsective members tend to be pretty savvy. Underlying tensions and ambiguity about who the group is will not be that difficult to pick up by people who pay attention. By delaying the work of defining your community you will effectively be screening prospective members for their tolerance to ambiguity-or worse, for their insensitivity to underlying tensions or for a lack of commitment to community Can you afford that?
Second, the issues don't go away because you don't address them, and it is that much more daunting to face them further along, when the greater investment of time and money means there are that many more chips on the table.
Third, the delay strategy overlooks the advantage of having a clearly defined vision to draw people who share that vision. If the community definition is fuzzy, community recruitment will be fuzzy, too.
The interest pressure on some cohousing groups can be great enough that they commit to construction before they fill, figuring that the last people needed will be attracted to the fact that the project is underway (proving that the group does more than just hold meetings), and there will be that much less wait before moving in. Unfortunately, interest charges can start mounting up as fast as the dirt once the bulldozers start rolling. It's a game of high-stakes poker knowing when you have enough lots sold to start building, and there is terrific pressure to find those last members. It takes considerable discipline to not shortcircuit the membership-selection process at this stage and say "yes" to anyone with the down payment. And it's a heck of time to discover that you have different meanings for the term community.
If the community gets sloppy at this stage and accepts new people without making clear the expectations of membership, it sows the whirlwind. It may solve the shortterm problem of attracting enough members and spreading the financial load, but the group risks reaping a harvest of future frustrations about what kind of community they have built and whether they all belong in the same one. Think carefully about which costs more.
Taken all together, I think it's a mistake to delay the work of building and maintaining group cohesion. It doesn't get easier, and delaying means a group may find itself in an interest-generated pressure cooker without the group glue to withstand the heat.
Controlling who becomes a member
Another challenge particular to cohousing is control over who buys the houses. While there are no laws preventing cohousing developments from being privately financed, in practice that seldom happens. And there are laws against discriminating about whom you sell property to if its development was financed through federally insured institutions. In the beginning, this is seldom an issue. In fact, it's a sales advantage to guarantee owners that they have free reign over whom they re-sell to (in the unhoped for event that the community doesn't work out far them). The problem comes down the line, after the community is full.
It is natural for a group to want control of its membership, to be in the collective position of assessing potential members for a good fit, and holding authority over who may join and who may not. Unfortunately, bank-financed cohousing communities lose this authority.
When filling, cohousing projects tend to be protected by the fact that units typically cost a premium over similar housing in the general market. You literally have to pay for the intangible of community and that tends to be an effective filter for community-oriented members. Matters get more complicated, however, when you consider turnover. Because each owner has the legal right to sell to anyone, the community must depend on the good will of the leaving member to participate in the selection process for their replacement. When leave-taking is cordial, this does not tend to be an issue.
However, not all separations are easy, and if someone leaves the group as a result of conflict, there may be considerable breath-holding about who the new members will be and how well they'll fit in. And I'm not talking about maliciousness, just the potential awkwardness of things not working well with whoever turns out to be the highest bidder for the home. Another way this comes into play is "inheritance roulette," where a deceased member's property passes to an heir who has no prior involvement with the community.
Legally, the community only has informal methods available for screening new members-such as developing a waiting list of qualified people with whom they've already established a cooperative relationship. But the leaving member may not be obliged to draw on that list. Reflecting on this, there is an obvious incentive for the community to do a crackerjack job of dealing thoroughly and constructively with conflict. In the end, the community's ability to retain control over its membership will depend solely on its degree of cohesion and the willingness of leaving members to work with the group to find suitable replacements.
In places where experiments in planned community developments are in the second and third generation of owners (such as the town of Columbia, Maryland) it appears that commitment to building and maintaining the neighborhood (and pedestrian orientation) has weakened considerably. The point here is that the enduring strength of the community will be a social test more than a design feature.
What we can do
OK, suppose you were not clear at the start about the specifics of community membership and how to handle conflict, yet you've already moved in? First of all, you're in good company. Most groups are not careful about these questions at the outset, relying instead on the substantial good will of coming together to carry them through the hard times. Luckily, sometimes this works (otherwise there probably wouldn't be much of a growing communities movement). But what are the options when the houses manifest before the clarity? What if the only thing you're clear about is the extent of the differences? There's hope.
First you need to find out what community" means to each member. What was it you thought you were joining? And also ask the reverse: What are your reservations about community, or what requests from others do you have resistance to? If your group feels stuck, it's quite possible that there are imbedded hard feelings or fears that are getting in they way of hearing each other and building trust. If so, getting this on the table may be a precondition of building anything. If the tension is great enough, it may be advisable to bring in an outside facilitator to shepherd this process.
Next I'd examine what people want, being careful to look beneath positions to the underlying interests. It's been my experience that people often get blocked when trying to negotiate "positions" ("We want to paint it green" vs. "We want to paint it red") while there's a great deal more to work with when discussing "interests" ("We value a serene, earthy feeling" and "We value a bright, stimulating environment").
There is a common dynamic tension between those who say, "I don't want any action taken until we've heard each other out and can come to agreement" (the "processers") and those who say, "I want more action and fewer meetings!" (the "doers"). While these positions are on a collision course, it is probable that the baseline interests are not, offering room to navigate a course of action that might work for all.
However, even with a greater understanding of everyone's interests, you may still disagree about level of engagement. What then? I suggest exploring what is possible with those wanting more involvement getting it from each other and those wanting less allowing this to go forward without them.
While this may sound obvious, there are two traps here. The first is to not pigeonhole people as "processers" or "doers" and to keep the door open for changing positions on the engagement continuum. The second is to have a process by which everyone has a chance to be involved in the issues they care about, and for the nonparticipants to trust that those who care about it will make good decisions. The key here is to be clear about authority and the process by which subgroups can or cannot make decisions that are binding for the whole. It will not work for nonparticipants to complain about or undermine decisions made in their absence if they were duly informed about the chance to participate but opted out. It is perfectly fine to delegate decisions to subgroups, so long as the limits of authority are clearly defined by the group as a whole.
In the end, the best way to narrow the gap is to have consistently dynamic and productive meetings. Who would want to miss those? After all, the house of community is built with the mortar of interactions, and the building falls if the mortar is not regularly renewed. You can do it slower or faster, but you still have to have the interactions. Community is not something done to you or for you; it is something we do together, one brick at a time.
Laird Schaub has worked as a group process consultant for the past 12 years, and with half a dozen cohousing groups since 1998, specializing in whole person consensus, dynamic facilitation, and conflict utilization. A community networker for two decades, he is currently Executive Secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community. He lives at Sandhill Farm in Missouri, which he helped found in 1974.
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