How About a Community of Communities?

I think that Jeremy is heading towards making a problem for us!  But worry not, I may have come up with a solution.

We are being just too successful with our marketing, albeit we're working with a small budget

Look how many people have joined the Facebook Group.

That's quite a lot for a co-housing community with 30 dwellings!

But if you think that's a lot, look how many have registered their interest on the Facebook Page!

Of course, these aren't paid-up shareholders.  We've only got about 60 of those.

Clearly there's a demand out there that we may not be able to fulfill.


Now some people are hanging on tight to their £50 until they've got an iron-clad guarantee that they will get a house.  Others have divvied up, just to be able to be involved, even though they don't actually want to move in.  But, I suspect, that leaves a considerable number who would put their hands in the pockets for the £50, if only actually getting a dwelling didn't look like such a distant prospect.

So here's my thought.

What About a Community of Communities?

There's a huge amount of work to be done to set up one New Forest Co-housing Community (and quite a lot of expense).  But a lot of that work would be reusable if there were a second (third, fourth) community.

At present there are people who want to live in Bransgore, Hordle, Woodlands, etc.  Instead of squabbling, how about we have more than one community?  The legal work will probably be the same, the establishing of the infrastructure (sociocracy, Loomio, etc) will be the same (just change the name for each community).  All would be interfacing with the same planning authority.  The Communities Circle work would probably be very similar.  Each community would just copy the work so far, tweak the details--job done.

This way we can collect more fifty quids with a clear conscience, have more people to do the work, have a greater range of choices.

What do you think?  You could put comments below, and if the idea gets that far it cold be sent for consideration to a circle (which one?)