Consensus assumes there is a best answer for the group. Sometimes there is not. Some decisions come down to personal preference and should just be voted on, for example the color of the tile in the commonhouse bathroom. I like green, you like brown. Brownish-green is ugly. Greenish-brown is ugly. There is no right answer, only my and your preferences, and if we are both equally adamant about our preferences then consensus is a useless waste of time. Assuming either color is equally valid as a choice then there is no best answer. Granted we could spend hours and hours and hours until someone gave in on the decision, but that isn't consensus, its just wearing down opposition to your point of view.
I think one of the central truths about joining a cohousing group (especially before it is built) is that it is scary. *Living* in cohousing is great, but joining up with a group that has a long way to go means taking a lot of risks. You have to sink lots of money, lots of time, lots of emotional energy into the process. You have to let people really get to know you and that feels vulnerable. The biggest one is the money - it's extremely scary to put thousands of your own cash into a process, trusting that everything will work out.
At the beginning you don't fully understand what your group will mean, but you do know (if only from reading this list!) that it's a very hard process, and that not all groups succeeed. So you take a big risk. Your parents probably think it's weird and your coworkers might not approve if they heard about it. ("Oh yes, Stuart lives in a commune").
Once you are a year or two into the process, you have already invested a lot which you don't want to lose, and yet you know you will have to invest a lot more before you are done. It isn't as bad as joining the Mayflower, but if s in the same category: a grand crazy endeavour which most people have never heard of, many do not approve of, and which may well end in shipwreck.
In addition, you are doing this enterprise with a whole lot of other people who you initially don't know. You have to work with them and depend on them. You have to live with them too, and give up some of your control of what might normally be your space to them. Thus while making cohousing happen is exciting, and at times joyous, it does involve fear too. I think this is why consensus is so important. In a meeting, at the back of your mind you always know that if the group is about to do something crazy you can stop them. You on your own, just because you think it's crazy. That gives a lot of security - you've got all this investment in the community, and if you see something that you think is going to endanger that investment you can stop it - or at least have it modified till it doesn't threaten. You don't have the same security in a voting system - the majority can screw-up and there's nothing you can do.
Now of course, you quickly learn that blocking consensus is not something to do lightly. With your power to stop the process has to come responsibility - you can single-handedly derail the group, as can anyone else. It has been my experience here at N St that people learn not to do that. I think this is a wonderful and surprising thing about people. Before I moved here I would have said that consensus could not work because there would always be *somebody* who would block it and so the process would never get anywhere. That does happen for a while, but the longer people work together, the better they learn that the progress of the group depends on their willingness to be positive. We learn to compromise, to look for creative ways out, to state our real fears rather than the ones we hope will sound most persuasive, and only to block as an absolute last resort.
We also learn from our previous experience of blocking consensus that we are far from infallible. I have personally blocked consensus on a decision because I feared some bad consequence, only to later see that my fears were completely unjustified by actual events. We also learn to trust that the other people in our group are fair and reasonable and will do the best thing they can. We team to let go of our fears - and thus the group can move forward. Bottom line - one reason consensus is very important to a cohousing group is because it gives people a sense of control when embarking on a very risky enterprise. Understanding that can give insight into why it goes wrong sometimes.
Here is a partial bibliography about consensus; right now this is borrowed from the Sunward home page, but we may want to put those books in which we ourselves have been utilizing.
Butler, C.T. Lawrence, and Amy Rothstein. On Conflict and Consensus. Cambridge: Food Not Bombs Publishing, 1987. [Online Version]
Hunter, Dale, Anne Bailey, and Bill Taylor. The Art of Facilitation - How to Create Group Synergy. Fisher Books, 1995.
Hunter, Dale, Anne Bailey, and Bill Taylor. The Zen of Groups - The Handbook for People Meeting with a Purpose Fisher Books, 1995.
Kaner, Sam. Facilitator's Guide to Particapatory Decision Making. New Society Publishers, 1996.
Mindell, Arnold. Sitting in the Fire. Lao Tse Press, 1996.
Schub, Laird. Introduction to Consensus. Audio Tape. FIC 1997
Estes, Caroline, and Laird Schaub. We Tried Consensus & Got Stuck: Now What?. Audio Tape. FIC 1997
Building United Judgement - A handbook for Consensus Decision Making, Published by the Center for Conflict Resolution, 1981.
A Manual for Group Facilitators, Published by the Center for Conflict Resolution, 1981.