Cohousing, what it's like.

[penk]

I'm having a really hard time with a thread about Cohousing over on aroraborealis's 'confessional' thread. We have an obvious troll who is working very hard to lump Cohousing into some elitist, drama-filled, fratboy community of college buddies. Is this really the image folks see about Cohousing? Does the rest of my social group only see the drama, and not see what it's really like?

So, in that vein, let me show you what the days are like - it's 1:30pm, and today I have:

* Woken up in my house, with my son still snoring happily.
* Gone downstairs and chatted with my temporary housemates. People who have taken me in, because they are part of my community, during a hard time in my life. They are cohousers too. Had a delightful series of conversations.
* Made and ate breakfast with sleepy son, who quickly darted out of the house after food and went to the common house to play Magic with some of the other kids in the community.
* Installed some shelving into said housemates' kitchen - because my furniture is not being used atm, and would they like to use it until I need it again? Sure! - better they use it rather than it just sit in storage. Because we're all in the same community, it took 5 minutes to get the shelves out of storage and install them.
* Sent out mail asking for some cable connectors and wiring so we can set up to watch the superbowl in the common house tomorrow. I don't have all the gear, but qwrrty has a tuner, another household had some cables, and another household had a couple connectors I needed. I wandered around and picked up what I needed.
* Stopped by dbang's house because she txted me asking for a stud finder for some closet work she's doing. Dropped that off and chatted, also talked about one of her kids going with my son to a local game store this afternoon.
* Went over to omegabeth's house and sat chatting for a half an hour regarding life and stuff. Just socializing
* Back to the common house, installed the cabling and tested it - yay signal in the living room! While I'm not particularly interested in watching the superbowl, others are - and I like doing things for other people. It'll be ready for tomorrow.

And now it's 1:30, and I'm reading the above thread about how elitist, snobby, dismissive, and unneighborly we are, with tons of drama and stress at every turn.

It's frustrating - I love my community - why don't people see what we're doing right, and just spout out blather like this fool (who, btw, continues to post anonymously.)

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

"Those grapes, you don't want them, they are quite sour!"

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Also, hurray for you posting, y'know, the calm serenity of normal life that happens there.

Drama gets the attention because it's, y'know, dramatic, and then people attach drama to any avilable proximate identifier ("cohousing", "liberal", "gay", "college-age", "female", whatever it is they want to Not Be Seen As).

I have this problem with poly a fair amount, and strive to be quietly but visibly sane. It works, too, at least for the fence-sitting observers.

[frotz.livejournal.com]

I see that thread (at least in its current state) as being a bit more even-handed; as somebody relatively uninvolved it doesn't leave me feeling any particular contempt for cohousing. (It also doesn't seem worth more responses, but your motivation may vary.)

As for Mosaic, I see it (as part of the rest of your social group) as very much not for me, but I also don't get the perception of it being a drama farm.

As for the community, people are irritated by change, and you're going to get even more hate due to popular perception of a 40B development as a way to shortcut around responsible and acceptable development. Time heals all wounds there. (Or at least most of them. Some people live to be cranky. Ignore them, get on with life, and live the example you want to see.)

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

Cohousing appeals to some of my fantasies of community living, but I fear being unable to control it from devolving into an even worse nightmare than an HOA since it's so intertwined with life. One bad apple could upset the whole apple cart for me. This does not need to be a judgment on your community, just an explanation of my own fears

[penk.livejournal.com]

I even drew the parallel in one comment regarding Poly stuff. And yeah, there's some aspect of 'SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET!' - but in this case, they're casting stones at my home.

[penk.livejournal.com]

It's sort of remarkable how many folks we get who are interested in Mosaic, btu go "Ung, my experience with HOA's is AWFULE". We seem to have it down pretty well (maybe because 10 years of getting it "right" has worked to our advantage. Dunno).

And, not taken as a judgement at all :)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I have not been involved in that thread at all, but my impression of it was that there were some mild criticisms that were responded to by SH residents being assholes. Threatening people, accusing them of being rude when they were far less rude than many of those threads there (long before that little thing about drama I was being told people find me off putting, rude, angry and churlish), and otherwise...

Exactly what they said. You won't like to hear it, but you are proving their point with the really obnoxious responses. There was no, 'I'm sorry you feel that way, but here's some great things that I cherish, maybe it will change your mind', there was a big chorus of 'fuck you our lifestyle is great and how dare you attack it anonymously' in a thread that was about confessions, and a safe place to voice that, which that was certainly one.

Regardless of what you feel, you have people in the thread saying, 'wow, I'd been sort of neutral, but the responses of cohousers has convinced me that first guy was right', for a reason. And it wasn't the anon person who did that to you.

Take a step back and let it slide. Really. You're doing something interesting, but you're too involved - your emotional responses just made him look *right*.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

It is true and fair to say that I overreacted early this morning, but... nobody was "threatened" with anything but a good in-person telling off.

[missionista.livejournal.com]

Your description is lovely, and does make everything sound neighborly. But it also makes it sound very much like college, at least my experience of college.

I am way behind on that post. What page is the thread on? I'm curious to read it.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

'I am seriously going to get in your face in person. Be ready. '

that isn't a slang phrase that means telling you off. that's an aggressive term it comes from street basketball, and refers to when you're actively trying to be intimidating to the person with the ball, usually accompanied by smack talk. It then moved up to other uses, but the same aggressive stance of trying to intimidate.

Regardless what you *think* you meant by the phrase, that's not what the phrase is taken as. it really does imply intimidation and physical aggression, in addition to the telling off.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

Well, I will say that, upon hopefully mature reflection, I decided co-housing was Not For Me, despite feeling some attraction to it emotionally. A few things led to this.

As you noted, co-housing is hard. While I do get the sense that there is much happiness and good in the model, a lot of what y'all in that community have discussed in this forum has been the difficulty of getting it together both financially, and in terms of getting N intelligent, relatively alpha personalities all pointed in the same direction. From a lot of what's been written on LJ, Mosaic Commons has been a vasty exercise in cat-herding.

I hear you saying that it's worth it to you. And lo, I say *yay* for you! *I* find cat-herding to be difficult and intensely stressful. It's not clear to me that I would tolerate the amount of it which has seemed necessary to get MC off the ground, and I salute all of you who did all of that heavy lifting. It's not clear to me that all of that would be worth it *to me*, but I'm glad you finally got what you wanted, and that it seems to actually *be* what you wanted. It also seems to me that continuous cat-herding is required to keep the model going. Again, worth it if it's what you want, but I'm not that invested in your vision, so don't want to do the hard work to make it real. Nothing against your vision in that. (I will also recognize that what I call cat-herding is other people's community building. It stresses me out, but some people seem to thrive on it).

Finally, with all of that as background, someone like myself, looking at your community, could reasonably see it as a relatively closed group - not in that it does not welcome others, but in that the others do not have that background of having worked so hard for your vision. Because they did not participate in that work, many will feel separate from those who did do it. You all have a lot of shared assumptions and experience, worked out over years of trying to get MC off the ground, and new people don't share that, and can never share it, in the same way as you all do.

So take that as the view of an outsider from MC who nevertheless knows and likes quite a few of the players. I'm really glad you have something good for you. It would not, IMO, work for me, despite the fact that I do share some of the sense that a co-housing model has some of what I want in a community.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

I think there are lots of people for whom cohousing in general, or Mosaic in specific, would not be a good fit...nor vice versa. I'm a-okay with that. That's a little different than angry hostility.

"Because they did not participate in that work, many will feel separate from those who did do it. You all have a lot of shared assumptions and experience, worked out over years of trying to get MC off the ground, and new people don't share that, and can never share it, in the same way as you all do."

that may be true, but our community now has lots of people who did not work on it for years. We have some oldtimers, like me, who have been at it since we were kneehigh to grasshoppers. We have some middlers who joined in the last few years. And we have brand new folks who've moved in in the last 6 months, having never met any of us before that.

By the time all the homes are sold, the original long-timers will be a small minority of the folks in the community.

Of course, the nasty folks in the anon-thread don't know that. They haven't come out to visit, met our new folks, actually experienced the community...they cast stones in ignorance.

Which is Not Okay.

[jasra]

That sounds like a nice day.

[penk.livejournal.com]

The link to the thread in the confessional is up in my original post above. Most commentary has died down (phew), but gosh it was a little stressful there for a bit.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I don't agree that the criticisms were less obnoxious than what shayde or jacflash said.

That said, I figure: that's kind of why it's an anonymous forum, so people can let it all hang out a bit. It's really important not to take any of it too seriously. So, yeah, it's annoying, but big deal.

Why do you care?

[(Anonymous)]

Why are you having such a hard time with this?

If you love your community (which you obviously do), and it's something you have worked so hard towards, why do you care so much what people outside your community see or think? I doubt you were working on this to make people outside of the project happy, what does it matter?

If you are secure and happy in the project, this should be barely a blip, as said above, not a big deal.

Obviously it's not for everyone.

It does seem you protest too much..

Re: Why do you care?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Speaking for myself:

Mostly I don't care what other people I don't know think of me. But in this case I care because we still have houses to sell. That's a financial burden and I'm eager to convince people to come buy in. I think that living here is awesome, and is worth it despite the high price tag, and I'm happy if your boat is floated by something completely different. But no matter how pleased I am by my own living situation, it's hard not to be upset by random uninformed criticism if I'm worried that it might upset a sale.

arrogance

[(Anonymous)]

"why don't people see what we're doing right,"

Right? Co housing may be "right" for you, but don't assume you are providing any sort of social greatness above the rest of us.

It is right for you, and that's great, but you certainly aren't doing anything thing "right" for the rest of us.

This is my greatest complaint, as if you are all better than others, that you are doing something "right" while the rest of us are wrong.

Other statements on your website such as this
"had this been a traditional subdivide-and-build, the impact would have been far far worse."
also give the impression that you believe you are above others. Maybe if you'd realize that what you are doing is for YOU, and for others interested in this sort of life, but not better or good or "right", you might draw in more people.

BTW your development IS, plain and simple, a sub division, no better nor worse than a "traditional" ( whatever that means) sub division. Your limited construction experience also shows you know nothing of what of you are blathering.

It's this attitude that is off putting.

Re: arrogance

[penk.livejournal.com]

I will not engage in a debate with someone who will only cast stones anonymously. If you wish to have an intelligent discussion on this topic, identify yourself.