Thanks to Flower, my super fan follower on her – believe me, there have been some haters too (especially one person who works for cohousing as a promoter/developer), she has found a true story account from another cohouser. It sounds so familiar. We were so nice at our community that everyone just followed along with families that did have some big issues and made it everyone’s problems. That boundary making is so important. Covid hurt us too just like in this story. Enjoy:
I found this on a site about cohousing experiences. It is long and in two parts. Here you go:
geeves_007
Hi there, the community you’re considering joining sounds similar to the one we left…
I don’t want to be discouraging, because I believe intentional community/cohousing can be a huge force for positive change in the world. It just didn’t work for us. To answer your questions:
How long did you live/have you lived there?
One year
How did people in your life react to your move to cohousing?
My partner and I were the founding members of a new community that eventually went through to completion and move-in. We gave more than anybody else (time/energy/money etc) to this community because we were there from day one. We hammered out the idea in a rental we were living in, and moved into a brand new community 7 years later. I still can’t believe it worked!
Our friends and family were very happy for us and excited to see how it all worked out. I’m sure some thought it was a crazy idea, but they were all very supportive and encouraging.
What is/was your favorite part? Least favorite part?
Our favourite part was community building. Getting to know almost 30 families from across the whole spectrum of stage of life / ages etc who ended up being our community and the founders that built the building and moved in together. The process of meeting all these people are getting to know them was something we’ll always value.
The pandemic really harmed our community. It happened at a crucial stage of the process and suddenly we could no longer gather in person. Prior to the pandemic, our community meetings (pre move in) were a mix of business and socializing. We always included time to share food in a potluck fashion, have some fun activities to break up the business, plan something unique for the kids etc. After the pandemic, we could only meet by zoom and our meetings quickly became a burden and a chore. There was no fun any longer, just business. People became frustrated and argumentative. Tensions ran high.
There was a spectrum of opinions about the pandemic – no real strong antivaxxer types, but actually some very vocal people demanding extremes of caution. Judgement for anybody gathering in any way/shape/or form, etc. People taking it to the extremes of isolation – which is not really compatible with a multifamily community with many children etc. It wasn’t sustainable and the pandemic really fractured our community badly.
After moving in, our least favourite part was probably just ongoing conflict hangover from pandemic times. The community developed some bad habits of allowing a few vocal people to monopolize all the airtime in community meetings and community communication. People that were negative and needy and probably never a good fit for cohousing to begin with. But because we were all patient and empathetic people, we allowed these few bad actors to really make the community experience largely negative. We allowed them to complain and whinge to a very disproportionate degree. We allowed their own personal problems to be projected on to the community at large, when we should have nipped it in the bud by rebuking them with a “that sounds like a YOU problem, and not something the community can really fix for you”.
Instead, we allowed community discussions to focus on just a few households and their bottomless complaints, instead of focusing on positives and things that included everybody. Unfortunately, it was really a situation of a few toxic people making a great thing quite negative. The negativity was ultimately what led us to leave, as we decided that after all the work and time and energy to complete the project, we did not wish to tolerate that kind of negativity in our home-life, and fortunately had the means and opportunity to move on. It was a very sad time.
If things went to shit, what happened?
Sort of covered as above. Things haven’t really ‘gone to shit’ for that community though! We actually still keep in close touch with many people living there, and visit often. They still have their issues, but are slowly getting better at setting boundaries as a community. That was really what spoiled it for us. People’s personal problems continually resurfacing in community meetings and being projected onto the community. It was really only a few households that couldn’t establish this boundary. Most people were very sensible about what was a personal problem and what was a community problem. Our failing was allowing those people to develop those habits because we were too kind and nice to ‘nip it in the bud’ when discourse started heading in the wrong direction that way.
Did your life get better or worse when you joined? When you left?
If you ask my kids it got way better when we joined because suddenly we lived in this community with all these other kids they knew from the development process so it was play time central. It was very cool and exciting to move in. Common meals began earnestly (pandemic aftershocks made this a struggle as even as late as late 2021 some members were strongly opposed to common meals and other similar gatherings) which was very fun and happy.
For my spouse and I life got better after we left. Living there had many positives, but I think we had just been too badly traumatized by the conflict during the height of the pandemic by some members that really went off the deep end, we could no longer live there comfortably. I still blame largely the pandemic, as opposed to an inherent failing with the cohousing idea.
Did you grow up in cohousing? How was it?
No I did not
Overall, it was a wild ride for us. We invested so so much, and part of the implosion for our family was definitely our own failure to set appropriate boundaries. In order to get to the finish line (a completed building ready for move-in) we got in the habit of making other people’s problems our own problems and fixing them where we could to just keep the process moving ahead. My spouse and I are very effective people. We can be a force to reckon with in getting shit done, as evidenced by the multifamily community we largely built in a very high COL location. But we lost our mojo after move-in. Suddenly it was like peaking behind the mirror and we realized ‘holy crap, some of these people are parasites on us and instead of dealing with their own personal shit they are continually shovelling it on us’. So we decided the best way to fix that was to leave. In hindsight, we could have stuck it out for longer and many of these issues would have probably eased with time. I still think what was ultimately needed was a bit of an epic throw-down confrontation with the few toxic households that were capitalizing an oversized portion of community energy and bandwidth. We all knew who they were and could see it. Just everybody was too polite to say anything..
Cathartic for me to write this to you stranger! I think it can be a great thing, and I wish it would have worked out differently for us. Sometimes life throws you curveballs!
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