Common Hearth Cohousing is run by its member households, the future residents of the community. Until construction is complete, we operate as Common Hearth Cohousing, LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). Once the physical community exists, the LLC will dissolve, and we will operate as a condo assocation.
At twice-monthly meetings, the Associate Households and Equity Households (or Signed-On Folks) make decisions about the community through a consensus process. After thorough discussion of a proposal, Signed-On Folks indicate that they support it, are neutral, accept it with reservations, or block the proposal. Blocking is available only to Equity households, and only when they believe that the proposal would be bad for the group as a whole. Blocking of consensus is very rare, usually avoided through further discussion and revision of the proposal.
Much of the work of Common Hearth is done by teams of Signed On Folks. Currently, our teams include:
In the future, we expect to have additional teams, including Membership Development, Community Support, Physical Facilities, etc. We also form ad-hoc teams as needed.
Legally, the members of the Coordinating and Finance & Legal teams compose the board of Common Hearth Cohousing, LLC. In practice, Common Hearth is deliberately non-hierarchical.