I Was A Teenage Homeowner
From LothWiki
I Was A teenage Homeowner was written by Amanda Werhane on the subject of Lothlorien and featured in communities magazine's Spring 2001 (issue 110).
At the tender age of 19, I became the proud owner of a beautiful lake-front property. That's when I moved into Lothlorien[1] Cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin, one of then-nine houses in the Madison Community Co-op (MCC) system.
Entering into community living as a collage student provided a practical education in democratic self-rule, feminism, and collective ownership, even as I pursued on academic education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
As a kid growing up in the suburbs, I had found few outlets for democratic expression, few role models for a budding feminist, and little exposure to alternative socioeconomic systems. It had become increasingly frustrating to me that I had so little say in matters central to my life, such as education and housing. Moving away for collage, I was eager to be "on my own," but admittedly rather clueless as to how to do it.
I spent freshman fear in a dormitory, and come springtime, faced the challenge of finding myself a new dome by semester's end. I had no intention of moving back to my parents' house, because in my mind I was an independent adult - and I looked forward to summer in the city. Besides I could just hear them saying, "This is our house and as long as you live here, you'll follow our rules. When you have your own house, you can make you own rules." In fact, it was just that to which I aspired.
At that point a classmate happened to invite me to dinner at a place with a magical name: Lothlorien. I had no idea what to expect of this co-op named for J.R.R. Tolkien's elf paradise in The Lord of the Rings. What I Found was An intriguing lakefront castle, zucchini Parmesan, and the funky community I would call home for the next four and a half years.
As a teenager at Lothlorien ("Loth"), I was one of the youngest members. Remarkably, I found that I had an equal say in the operations of the co-op - equal to my fellow undergrads, equal to the grad students among us, equal to those on government aid, and equal to the non-student members of all ages. In weekly house meetings, we made community decisions by consensus, seeking to incorporate the needs and desires of each individual into decisions everyone could live with. For the first time, as a young person, I had a voice in decisions that directly affected my life! We created our own annual budget, set purchases, house dynamics,and policies.
This kind of tangible, direct democracy was a completely new experience for me. While it took time to learn the basics of facilitation and meeting process, active listening and conflict resolution, I had as much opportunity to do so as anyone else in the co-op. And the more I learned, the more confidence I gained. If someone had told me before I moved into Loth that I possessed leadership skills, I would have been quite skeptical. Yet over the years I grew to take responsibility an house treasure, and later, MCC cooperative Education Coordinator, then Co-president, and served a term as a board member of North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO).
at Loth I was surrounded xy a variety of female role models, and a cooperative community that cared about gender equity. We took care to maintain a roughly 50-50 gender balance, elect women to traditionally male positions such as treasurers and maintenance workers, and hold meetings to discuss gender dynamics within the house. It wasn't a feminist utopia, but it was a place that listened to the concerns of women. Most important to me was the chance to live, work and speak honestly with older women who had already experienced the issues in life that I now face or might someday face we discussed career choices; body image ad beauty; relationships; birth control and sexually transmitted diseases; pregnancy, abortion and adoption; sexual harassment and self-defense; sexism; and eco-feminism. My female companions were activists, artists, biologists, doctoral candidates, mothers, political campaign staff members, musicians, and world travelers. It was a safe space to shed habits I'd picked up over the years in order to conform to habits I'd picked up over the years in order to conform to a concept of femininity to which I no longer subscribed.
Together, the 30 or so of us made a community. We were each responsible in many ways for the collective well-being of our physical and social surroundings. Just because I was young and crazy didn't mean I could regularly flake out on my dish shift or forget to pay the telephone bill without facing the consequences. I gave my time and energy to the co-op, and the co-op provided me with shelter, food, companionship, clothing (thanks to an ever-burgeoning "free store"), and life skills.
Older co-opers, some of whom had been members for six or more years, provided continuity and stability to the community. I respected the system they had helped to create, the traditions they,d carried on. I also appreciated not having to constantly "re-create the wheel," as the organizational memory provided by long-term members helped us to avoid some problems and recover more quickly from others. Even new members sometimes came to us from other cooperatives of intentional communities across the country, offering multiple perspectives on the issues we faced together.
In this society, it's far more radical for a person in her 30s, 40s, and beyond to live collectively than it is for a college student - it can take deep dedication to the concepts of collective ownership and communitarianism. Seniority didn't gain them any advantage at Lothlorien when it came didn't gain them any advantage at Lothlorien when it came to room lotteries, "workjob" (chore) sign-up, or use of common areas. Now that I'm a bit older myself, I admire common areas. Now that I'm a bit older myself, I admire these folks more than ever. It can be exhausting and frustrating to live with students, as they stress out over exams and papers and experiment with their newfound freedom from parental constraints. Of course, not all young people from parental constraints. Of course, not all young people are students (a fact which many seem to forget) and our membership also included those enrolled in the "school of life" rather than an educational institution.
While i wouldn't trade my experience as a student in a community co-op for anything, I am also a supporter of community co-op for anything, I am also a supporter of student-only cooperatives. The factors which drive their formation - housing costs and availability, proximity to campus, as well as the compelling forces. I support the further integration of student co-ops into community co-op networks. In this model, individual co-ops form around various interests, joining together as members of an umbrella community. Within the 11-house MCC system, for example, one co-op seeks to attract international members, one has Jewish focus, one houses only women, one provides subsidies and childcare to parents with children, and one identifies as an activist house. Other urban community co-op networks in the United States include the Solar Community Housing Association in Davis, California, and the Community of Urbana-champaign Cooperative Housing (COUCH) in Illinois. I believe that uniting student-only co-ops and community co-ops in such co-op steworks would combin the best of both worlds.
Amanda Werhane has since lived in various co-ops and collectives in Madison, Wisconsin and Oakland, California. She and her partner, who met as fellow "Elves" at Lothlorien, are currently between communities.
