Community-led housing commons exclude people through classed and racialised decision-making processes.

Evidence

Commons can be places of exclusion (Stavrides, 2015; Caffentzis and Federici, 2014; Arbell, 2021a). Barring people who could in other circumstances be commoners is the obvious first way in which people cannot engage in the practice that will transform their subjectivity. Members highlighted a range of ways in which communities were exclusive. Identities and life experiences were a major factor: those with prior organising experience, higher education and professional background felt more comfortable joining and taking leadership roles in CLH communities. Engaging in formalised decision-making processes had a classed and racialised dimension. Referring to the decision-making system used by Community 2, one member said “this is not just a housing community, it is a Sociocratic community. And not everyone wants to be part of that”. This resonated with a comment from a Community 3 member, who said that the way educated White members ran meetings was exclusive and alienating for those of less privileged background, to the extent that they disengaged. — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the idealised framing of commons/CLH as inclusive utopias — parallel to critiques of co-ops and intentional communities elsewhere that hide their own exclusions. — connects to: The federal government deliberately excluded black families from postwar homeownership programs — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 322; Antiracist movements admitted the excluded without ceding defining power over criteria — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 114; Mixed-race families were systematically excluded from colonial welfare benefits. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 839 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘commoning’ as a subjectivity-forming practice requires actual ability to engage, which membership alone does not guarantee.
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 88

Related

• Housing policy biases who can form intentional communities toward privileged groups (similarity 0.82)
• Antiracist movements admitted the excluded without ceding defining power over criteria (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Urban regeneration discourse conceals racialized inclusions and exclusions #corroborates (0.82)
• The federal government deliberately excluded black families from postwar homeownership programs #exemplifies (0.78) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 322
• Antiracist movements admitted the excluded without ceding defining power over criteria #qualifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 114
• Mixed-race families were systematically excluded from colonial welfare benefits. #exemplifies (0.72) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 839
• Racial exclusion becomes legally unactionable once reframed as private moral preference #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1875