Things to Keep in Mind While Living in a Coop
Think about how the following relates to your experience of cooperative living? Do you remember particular examples, positive and negative? How could future situations be improved? One way is to develop household agreements that support and restrict the following behavior.
SUPPORT…
- High involvement – time & energy into relationships with housemates and household agreements
- Financial solvency
- Shared values that housemates agree to
- Clear expectations of household members
- Easily communicated individual needs
- Equal rights for all members
- Confrontation of problems
- Verbalizing issues as they arise
- Members speaking up when uneasy
- Maintaining mutual positive attitudes towards each other
- Maintaining positive member attitudes towards the coop
- Group trips outside of the house
- Members regularly committing to make the household agreements work for everyone and to stay engaged to the process of creating those agreements
- Members committing to have it be a coop house
- Creating reasonable & acceptable household agreements; not just ideal ones
- Members committing to be flexible and make compromises
- A sense of belonging and responsibility to others
- Acknowledgment that conflicts will emerge
- Acceptability of diverse opinions
- Physical touch (hugs, high fives, etc.)
- Housemates verbalize what they appreciate from each other
RESTRICT…
- Unwillingness to deal with conflicts
- Unwillingness to make decisions or create order
- Too much individualism over being part of the group
- Housekeeping conflicts
- Jealousy
- Sex scandals
- Low communication
- Lack of care expressed towards others’ needs
- Unfulfilled expectations
- “Power plays” e.g. No manipulation
- “Rescues” – don’t act on your perception of other housemates’ needs (disempowering for them, leads to burnout and feelings of not being appreciated for you)
- Someone taking on more responsibility than others
- Secrets
- Lying
- A housemate taking over by inviting guests over all the time or being the only one to invite new housemates
- Working with and living with the same people might not be a good idea
- Devaluing or putdowns towards the coop – If members stop valuing the coop (e.g. approve of it, be proud of it) a tyrannical leader can emerge from the most or least committed member
Housemate Dynamics
It is important to attend to, and be aware of, the patterns and dynamics among housemates. Examples of these include:
- Be aware that a person in a coop has three types of relationships within the house:
- A collection of one-to-one relationships.
- A group entity/life.
- Relationship to self.
- When two or more housemates develop particularly close ties with each other, be aware a limited interest in dealing with the group as a whole may develop.
- Housemates who do not develop these closer ties may feel alienated and leave.
- One researcher found that the greater the number of meaningful, caring, loving relationships in a house the higher the turnover tends to be. Conversely, many poorly performing relationships will also lead to high turnover.
- Coops whose housemates consider each other friends increases compatibility.
- Compatible housemates and compatible friendships are not the same thing. It is ok if a person is a great friend or a great housemate and not both.