>I've lived in a housing cooperative before and have written about
>that experience. That article is one of my more popular works and I
>still find pirate versions of it at punk shows and bookfairs.
>
>Bill's comments about the process of expulsion from groups and
>co-ops are very interesting. A legally incorporated co-op should
>have safeguards that prevent mickey mouse purges of troublemakers
>and dissenters. Somebody who has signed a lease with a co-op should
>have the same legal protections as any renter. Several months ago I
>was working on the by-laws for our future co-op and I had to include
>some language about what happens when people leave the co-op.
Don't recall ever seeing that article. Remind me where I can get one of them there pirate version?
> A structure and policies should exist that encourage people to
>"sleep on" contentious issues. Groups should have to give the
>"problem" person a fair hearing and an option to seek an outside
>mediator.
The woman I mentioned in my last post was given all that. It was just a show of course. The outside mediator was paid for (and chosen) by the co-op and of course the officials from the co-op got at the mediator comprehensively.
The thing is, at least here - I can't speak for the law in other jurisdictions than Australia, is that the provisions for expulsion are quite vague. So "offenses" for which you can be expelled are totally arbitrary, they can be and usually are made up on the spot to suit the circumstances.
In that climate, other people in the co-op are subject to pressure to go along with the people in power, because of course they are subject to the same arbitrary "justice" if they offend.
The only protection is that a member can take action in the Supreme Court under the 'oppressive conduct against members' provisions of the Co-operatives Act. I am probably the only person in Tasmania to have ever done that, but you either have to have a lot of money to hire a lawyer (which tenants of a low-income housing co-op don't have) or be a competent bush lawyer. I doubt the US has any effective legal protections against exploiting such expulsion clauses either (at least that is the impression I got from observing the regular use of expulsion as a tactic within the American based IWW) so I can't urge you strongly enough to just rule it out completely.
>There is a variant of hasty group dynamics that I call the "February
>problem." Over where Bill lives this could be called the "August
>problem." I observed this phenomenon while living in a co-op in
>Madison, Wisconsin for several years. It involves the increase of
>hostility between housemates during the latter months or month of
>winter. People have been cooped up for several months and they tend
>to get more hostile towards other housemates. In this situation, I
>think the best thing for a house (or group) is to give things
>several weeks to cool off or resolve themselves.
Our winters aren't quite so harsh here that you can't venture outside. That means it can happen anytime, here you're never safe. But we don't have a name for it. ;-)
>During the period I lived in the co-op (which had 10-11 members), we
>had very few interpersonal conflicts and drama, compared to other
>houses. I attributed this to the fact that our house had irregular
>meetings, sometimes just 2 per semester. Other houses had weekly
>meetings. I think that anybody who is forced to go to a mostly
>unnecessary meeting every week is eventually going to start taking
>out their emotions and problems on other members. My theory is that
>the very frequency of meetings causes more problems than they solve.
Yeah. I can take meeting or leave them, but I know for some people they are a form of torture. Our meeting are only held every two months and then we always have them over a counter meal in a pub or a decent restaurant. Account paid for by the co-op of course. But the main thing is to restrict the business of meetings to only those things that you really need a meeting for. A few corporate governance decisions and governing policy. If you have policy in place to cover routine situations, then you only have to bring those situations up at meetings when some kind of policy implications are involved. Things that the policy don't cover etc. Then you make a general policy to cover it and get on with the main business of enjoying that fat juicy steak. ;-)
Its a good investment for the co-op. We don't have to drag people kicking and screaming along to meetings and there's no resentment if some people occasionally can't make it.
Its a waste of time sitting around in a meeting with a committee making decisions about how and when and who will organise to get every little plumbing problem fixed. We just give a budget to each tenant and make it their responsibility to organise all that. There are some problems with that too actually, but nothing is perfect and decentralised problems are less threatening than centralised ones.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas