Renting in Community

I recently worked with a community that wanted to tackle the issue of renting. Did they want to leave the matter solely up to owners, or did the community want to have say in how that went? 

It occurred to me that this was an excellent example of a topic that was both complex and potentially volatile, so the group and I put some effort into thinking through the kinds of questions that the group might usefully address in order to have a comprehensive policy. Following is what we came up with. While each question may not be potent, or necessarily challenging to answer, our aim was to generate a list that would cover the waterfront.

A.  How important is it that renting be in compliance with local building code and occupancy laws?
B.  Renters impact parking. To what extent should they have the same access to parking as owners?
C.  Should the formula by which homeowner dues are calculated take into account rental units? If so, how?
D.  In what ways should policy differ if the rental is whole house, or rooms in an owner-occupied house?
E.  To what extent should rental units be allowed because they make living in the community more affordable for the owners?
F.  Rental units in some houses increase the assessed valuation of all homes in the community. To what extent, if any, should the increased tax burden on homes without rentals be supported by those that have rental units?
G.  What say should the community have in who is being rented to?
H.  Do you want renters to be involved in community life? If so, how do you want to accomplish that?
I.  Should there be any limits on renters’ access to common facilities and community activities?
J.  What responsibility should the community have for orienting renters to community life? What portion of this can be expected of owners?
K.  Should renters be introduced to the community? If so, how?
L.  Is there a safety issue with renters? If so, how can that be dealt with?
M.  Should there be an upper limit on renters to protect the viability of the community? If so, what is it and how will rental options be rationed among owners?
N. To what extent does renter policy and expectations change by length of rental (say, less than 90 days)?
O.  Does whole house renting beyond a certain number impact ability to get mortgages?
P.  What are the positives about renters?
Q.  Impact on community resources
R.  How will we handle situations where renters are not compliant with community norms and agreements?
S.  To what extent are landlord/owners responsible for what their renters do?
T.  What is the community's liability with renters?
U.  How to balance community interests and private rights
V.  Do we want/need a community member to be a liaison for each renter?
W.  How to ensure that our renter policy feels good as a package?
X.  What does “renter” mean (as distinct from guest)?
Y.  How do we take into account lovers, guests, pets, etc that often accompany a renter?

Our plan for addressing these was to tackle one strand at a time, developing the best answer we could before moving on to the next. Recognizing that the answer to one strand might depend on the answer to another that has not yet been addressed, we agreed to assume that we have a satisfactory response to unaddressed strands when and then proceeding. 

To the extent that some strands seem more foundational than others, it may make sense to be deliberate about the sequence in which they'll be considered, keeping in mind that eventually they'll all need to be addressed. (Note: the order in which the strands are listed above is arbitrary.) Further, it may make sense to clump a few strands to be considered simultaneously, though I cautioned the group about the dangers of trying to take too large a bite at once—they can be difficult to chew and swallow.

Closing the Deal

As a process consultant, I frequently get asked what are the greatest challenges that a facilitator faces. I think they fall into three major categories. Here they are, listed in the order in which you will probably need to grapple with them (luckily, all don't make an appearance with every topic; in fact, blessedly, with some topics, none of the three show up).

First, managing non-trivial emotional distress. When a topic triggers upset, you often have to deal with it as a pre-condition to making meaningful and lasting progress on the issue. That means you need to have an idea about how to do that, plus the chops to carry it off—typically in chaotic conditions. This is not a simple skill, yet an important one. For more about handling conflict, see my blog series on conflict: March 21-April 2, 2009.

Second, once you've cleared the air, the next major alligator to wrestle with is flushing out all the factors that a good solution needs to take into account—all to be accomplished before you start fielding proposed solutions. As facilitator, the hard part here is keeping the group sufficiently disciplined to stick with brainstorming the factors, before some folks jump to answers.

Even after the well has run dry on surfacing reasonable factors, there are still two more steps to creating a solid platform for problem solving: vetting the brainstormed factors for those appropriate for the group (as distinguished from personal preferences), and checking to see of there should be any prioritization of the factors (for example, when creating a pet policy, child safety appropriately comes ahead of Fido's preference to be unleashed).

The third challenge—and the main focus of this blog—is facilitating the group's consideration of how best to balance the factors you've just identified, polished, and blessed in the preceding step.

If the topic is complex, I suggest aggregating elements of the solution piece by piece, demonstrating to stakeholders how their concerns have been adequately reflected in what’s being proposed. In general, you’re better off checking first with the stakeholders you think might have to stretch the furthest to feel included—on the theory that if you can’t hold them, you probably don’t have a viable solution and you might as well know that from the get-go.

The trick here is steadfastly steering the group away from the advocacy that was featured in the preceding step (when you were identifying factors), and repeating to the group the mantra: "How well does this suggested solution balance the factors we came up with?" When a person feels their concerns have been left out of a proposal, ask them what would work better. Invite everyone to be a part of the solution, rather than a naysayer.

You are trying to create an atmosphere of inquiry and collaboration rather than survival of the fittest. Often, the facilitator—who is actively looking for the creative solution—will see a good way to balance disparate factors sooner than others, who tend to be more oriented toward protecting turf.

Caution: if, as facilitator, you offer up a solution that you think would work well, you have to gracefully stand down in the presence of resistance. It's all well and good to help the group move along; it's not OK if you're fighting for your ideas, as it will tend to undercut the neutrality that is the backbone of your license to operate.

The key to selling your idea to the group is showing how everyone's core concerns are being addressed. If someone feels left out, they'll be reluctant to get on board and you'll have to try another tack. If everyone can see how all players are being held and at the same time being asked to give a little, your idea will be more palatable.

When closing the deal, a crackerjack facilitator is part cheerleader ("We can do this!"), part magician (you're apt to see solutions others miss, especially if you're the only one in the room looking at the glass half full), and part sheep dog (continually urging the group to move in the direction of the corral—that will hold everyone—and away from protecting isolated ideas).

Getting a Handle on Things

Today is Day Two of a week-long visit in Las Vegas with my son, Ceilee, my daughter-in-law, Tosca, my granddaughter, Taivyn, and my ex-partner and dear friend, Annie (who's also Ceilee's mother). Taivyn has now crossed the 10-month mark and this is the fourth visit to see her that I've been able to finagle since she emerged into the world last April 20. Notably, it is the first time that Annie and I have been with our grandchild simultaneously, and it is already being great fun for both of us.

As someone who's on the road half the time (as a group process consultant, as a community networker, and now as a doting grandparent), I often benefit from the hospitality of others. Often I stay with friends; sometimes I stay with clients. When I'm at a friend's (and I'm not totally absorbed with a client), if I'm there more than a day or two I try to figure out a way to repay their kindness by giving something in return. While this is most commonly my taking them out to eat, or a gift of Sandhill honey or sorghum, on occasion people will allow me to tackle a home improvement project—especially if they know me pretty well.

As a homesteader on a farm that values self-sufficiency, I've learned basic carpentry, electrical wiring, plumbing, chain saw work, and an assortment of other DIY skills. My son, of course, knows that. And while Ceilee enjoys that kind of stuff himself (after all, he grew up on the same farm where I learned these skills), he's got a regular 9-5 M-F job and doesn't have much time available for home puttering once relaxation, cooking, eating, and quality time with his wife and daughter (not necessarily in that order) have been subtracted from his limited number of waking hours at home. All of which is to say, Ceilee had a list of projects waiting for my arrival. I flew into McCarran Sunday night, and had a screwdriver in my hand by 8 am Monday morning.

• • •

As a professional facilitator, it's important for me to figure out what's happening during a meeting. On the surface level, that means tracking the conversation and where it seems to be heading. Beneath that, I'm also expected to be able to get a handle on the interpersonal dynamics in the group and how the patterns there tend to complicate consideration of the issues.

Take last weekend. I was working with a group that was wrestling with the issue of how to fairly revalue the houses on their property. Although the group owns all the homes, member equity in the community (which they have a right to receive as a cash payment if and when they leave) is tied to the value assigned to the house that each member lives in. Originally, that value was tied to what it cost to build the house, adjusted annually by a COLA (cost of living adjustment). However, when the group recently looked at the possibility of building a new home (to accommodate additional members), they discovered, to their chagrin, that the cost of new construction was vastly higher than the book value of their existing homes. Perhaps double. Part of it was not selecting a good enough COLA; part of it was that construction costs have been rising faster than inflation.

As all members are expected to contribute equity to the community in relation to their housing, this reality created a great awakwardness. Under their existing agreements, if a new member moved into a house already built, they would simply asume the equity position of the former resident—which, for purposes of this explanation, might be $150,000. However, if the new person build a new home (instead of moving into an existing one), then their equity contribution would essentially equal the cost of construction, or $300,000. Double the price for a home of the same size and quality.

While this higher value would be returned to them if they left the community, it created a much higher financial bar for them to join, and the community wanted to address the issue of affordability both on grounds of fairness and diversity (hard to attract the younger members needed to effect an intergenerational mix if the buy-in costs were so high). There was dynamic tension between wanting the equity value of houses to rise—so that leaving members would receive a payout large enough that they had reasonable options for finding comparable housing elsewhere—and wanting equity values to be suppressed, so that cost was not a prohibitive barrier to joining the community.

While the issues were complex and not everyone found working with numbers equally comfortable (remember the range of enthusiasm in your fourth grade math class?), the waters were made even muddier by unresolved tensions among key members of the community Finance Committee, all of whom were long-term members of the community. In addtion to different philosophies and different ways of looking at the world (all of which fell within the normal range of what I see in cooperative groups, yet which are no less simple to navigate for being common), these folks also had very different communicaton styles and tended to find one another irritating.

We spent about 10 hours of plenary time grappling with this topic over the weekend. While we made steady progress laying out the background and identifying the values and factors that a good solution needed to balance, we really didn't turn the energetic corner on this topic (and get into that softer, more cretaive space where creative soltuions best germinate) until we were able to flush out a fuller statement of the tensions among Finance Committee members. The bad news was that this didn't occur until the 9th hour of the conversation. The good news is that it occurred at all, and proposals are no longer being held hostage to the unresoled interpersonal dynamics.

So this was a pretty good example of how I'm expected to get a handle on things, to help the group get unstuck. It's all in a weekend's work.

• • •

Imagine my amusement when I discovered what home improvement project headed the list that Ceilee and Tosca had generated for my visit: to install handles on all the cabinet doors and drawers in their new house (there are about 50). I guess getting a handle on things is what I do during weekdays, too.

Untangling Hair Balls

Last week I was in Atlanta (at East Lake Commons) to deliver Weekend I (of eight) of the two-year training I’m offering with my wife—Ma’ikwe Ludwig—in Integrative Facilitation. In exchange for hosting the weekend, the home community had the chance for outside facilitation of meetings on real issues (I figure the students learn much faster facing live bullets than through reading, watching demonstrations, or practicing role plays).

In this case, East Lake Commons selected a community favorite: Work/Participation. It’s probably the single topic I have the most experience navigating as a process consultant. In fact, almost all cooperative groups struggle with this one.

In addition to being a volatile topic (one in which emotional distress is common), it’s also a complex topic. That makes it a double whammy, and it’s no wonder that groups struggle with it. While it was a tough nut for the students to attempt to crack in Weekend I, it also offered an abundance of teaching moments, one of which I want to share in this blog: a model for tackling a complex topic (aka “a hair ball”), based on the old military strategy of “divide and conquer”:

Step 1: Identify all the questions that need to be addresses (the interwoven strands of the hair ball).

Step 2: Tackle them one at a time. Hint: while it’s likely that some strands will make more sense to tackle before others, don’t get hung up on the sequence. Expect many of the strands to be interconnected and for there to be complaints that the best answer to the current strand depends on the answer to other strands. Do not be dismayed! Just be diligent about keeping the focus on one strand at a time. If you allow multiple strands to be discussed concurrently, you’ll be at risk of getting swamped by the variables, which expand exponentially. (See Step 7 for how to navigate the issue of interconnectedness.)

Step 3: In working a particular strand, your first order of business is identifying all the factors that a good response to this issue needs to take into account. This is essentially a brainstorm, where you want to set aside evaluative comments—at least at the outset. Warning: Once you’ve determined that a particular strand is plenary worthy, make sure that this step happens in plenary (as opposed to in a committee).

Step 4: After you’ve completed identifying factors, go through a vetting step, where you establish that each factor generated in the brainstorm belongs on the list by virtue of its being connected with at least one explicitly held common value. The point of this is to separate legitimate group factors from personal preferences.

Step 5: Next comes problem solving, where you attempt to find the proposed response that best balances the factors that survived the winnowing of the previous step. Hint: the trick to having this stage go efficiently, is making it clear that you are looking for suggestions that connect and bridge the various factors; you are not looking for advocacy here.

Step 6: After crafting your best response for dealing with this strand, set it aside and pick up another. Repeat as needed, until all strands identified in Step 1 have been addressed.

Step 7: Last, take a look at the whole package, to ascertain how well the individualized responses hang together as a cohesive package, making adjustments as needed.

• • •

Note that in this model, problem solving (Step 5) does not begin until you have completed identifying (Step 3) and vetting (Step 4) all the factors that a good response needs to take into account. It is very common for groups to struggle with complex topics because well-intentioned subgroups attempt to draft proposals prior to the factors having been agreed upon in plenary. Don’t fall into this trap! For good results, it is important to keep one’s problem-solving cart squarely behind the criteria horse.