The Boundaries of Belonging
On kicking people out
How small housing communities handle questions of belonging and exclusion offers profound lessons for how we as a society can collectively balance freedom and safety.
We often view questions of inclusion, rights, and protections through the lens of nations — as fights for universal franchisement, or civil rights. It is less common, but arguably more interesting, to consider these questions at much smaller scales — namely, in housing communities, and their choices about who to include or exclude. In these intimate settings, the questions are less abstract, and more human.
Understanding these dynamics is a matter of deep personal interest. I have often experienced the tension between connection and autonomy — craving acceptance, yet bristling at the limitations of groupthink. The challenge of navigating these tradeoffs has shaped both my work and my worldview.
Every sovereign (i.e. non-oppressed) community must be able to determine its own membership. The key question is how they navigate these choices. Over the course of three examples, we will trace out an evolution of eviction processes, from instinctive tribalism through to more sophisticated institutional practices — and explore what this progression reveals about how to better live with difference.
Example 1: Vibes & Tribes
The first case represents instinctual governance — an unstructured, reactive process that prioritizes group cohesion over fairness. The example comes by way of the site formerly known as Twitter, in which a disgruntled housemate reposted this message:
There is a lot to unpack here.
First, it is important to acknowledge that the other housemates are not being hostile, and are clearly trying to be sensitive to Rob’s feelings. This is not a mean message: from their perspective, they are kindly asking someone to leave so that they can continue working towards their vision of an ideal culture.
Unsurprisingly, Rob did not feel the same way, and took his story online. Many came out to his defense, while others would criticize his actions.
From the perspectives of his critics, the housemates had done nothing wrong — they had invited Rob in on a short-term basis, only to decide that Rob was not a “fit” with the culture the leaders were hoping to create. In the context of cultivating a certain “vibe and tribe,” Rob’s eviction was arguably essential.1 By getting upset, Rob was proving that he didn’t “get” what the house was going for.
And yet, there is clearly a disconnect. If the house had done nothing wrong, then why did Rob feel compelled to air his grievances? Why did people come out to support him?
In his 1944 The Great Transformation, Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi famously framed housing (specifically, land) as a “fictitious commodity.” We treat housing as something we can buy and sell, when in reality it represents something deeper — a feeling of rootedness and security. Housing is not merely an address and monthly rent, easily exchanged for another in at most 30 days. Rather, it is a social and emotional anchor.
By arbitrarily evicting Rob, the housemates had undermined his sense of connectedness and safety, positioned him as an “other” in the context of his housing community, and left him no recourse other than starting an online flame-war.
We lead with this example because it arguably represents the “default” for a group of humans. Without structure, process, or extensive personal development, this is what we do. In this case:
The group had no clearly-defined processes for asking someone to leave
The group decided post-hoc, with no transparency, that Rob did not belong
Rob now finds himself unhoused, with no recourse other than to cause drama
Everyone loses: both Rob and the housemates come away looking bad
Ultimately, the “vibes and tribes” approach to community-building undermines itself when it fails to deeply honor the experience of its “others.” Once someone has moved into a space, they are — for better or worse — a part of that community. Removing them should be done only with great care.
Example 2: Chaortica’s “Offboarding”
The second case introduces more structure, but muddies the boundary between policy and cultural norms, complicating enforcement. The example comes from the now-defunct Chaortica in San Francisco, who developed an “offboarding” procedure later open-sourced as their “Conditions of Membership & Crisis Response Policy.” This guide was shared with me early in the process of developing Zaratan’s legal documents, and was a useful point-of-reference. Here is an excerpt:
When compared to the first example, Chaortica’s offboarding process shows a significantly richer appreciation of notions of rights and protections, as well as a more robust premeditation on the interpersonal challenges involved with asking someone to leave a community. Another excerpt, attempting to pro-actively set expectations:
We recognize that excluding the member-in-question will always feel easier to the rest of the community. We also recognize that what is easiest may not also be the most just. It will not always be clear how much inclusion is correct and we must trust in each other’s good intentions. Generally, in non-emergencies, the process should be completely transparent.
The document is also very specific about steps to be taken in cases of emergency:
If any housemate feels personally challenged by another member in a way that meets the definition of emergency above then they (and only they) are responsible for initiating the offboarding process:
Create a private Slack channel that excludes the member-in-question. The purpose of the channel is to:
announce and summarize the emergency
coordinate any immediate actions that need to be taken
schedule an in-person meeting
ONLY discuss and share to the extent that is absolutely necessary; i.e. NO gossip, speculation, editorializing, etc.
We wrote a lot of this type of policy — narrative-heavy and prescriptive — during my time at the Berkeley Student Cooperative. Over time I became disillusioned with this style of governance, as I saw how easily it was disregarded in practice. Time after time, other leaders and I would labor over specific policy language, only to watch members “wing it” when faced with unexpected situations. Putting procedures into writing does not necessarily mean that they will be followed.
Looking at Chaortica’s offboarding process, it is useful to distinguish between what is functional policy and what is only “best practice.” It is easy to write the words “NO gossip,” but it is hard to enforce them in practice, limiting their value.
In my opinion, the functional policies include:
Establishing the role and expectations of the community steward
Providing clear voting rules and timelines for the removal processes
Explicitly identifying an emergency contact for each resident
Even if the behavioral prescriptions go out the window during an incident, these “hard” policies will be useful in helping maintain structure in the offboarding process. Further, “best practices” language, while not policy, can be a useful reference point — residents can point to the document, and use it to help reiterate group norms.
What separates “functional policy” from “best practice” is the ease of enforcement, relative to the complexity of the policy. Complex behavioral prescriptions (e.g. around communication and tone) with no enforcement mechanism is not policy, but best practice. On the other hand, a signed document saying you will voluntary leave within 30 days of a “consensus-minus-one” vote, with an emergency contact ready to help enforce, is much closer to a useful policy one could (for instance) bring as evidence in court.
On balance, while somewhat limited in practical enforceability, the “offboarding” process’ sensitivity to the experience of the person being evicted represents a clear step up from the previous “vibes and tribes” approach.
Example 3: Chore Wheel’s “Hearts”
The third case uses digital tools to separate decision-making processes from social dynamics, allowing for accountability without arbitrariness. The example comes from Hearts, part of Zaratan’s Chore Wheel suite of governance systems. Hearts is a reputation/strikes system, used to both recognize people going above-and-beyond, and to provide clear and objective accountability for those not upholding their commitments. Not explicitly designed for evictions, Hearts can be — and recently was — used as part of a larger process of removing someone from a community.
Hearts was heavily influenced by American economist Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel-prize-winning work on common-pool resource management, in particular the idea of “graduated sanctions” for rule-breakers, and the need for easily-accessible systems of conflict resolution for participants. The following is an excerpt from her landmark “eight principles” of effective institutions for shared-resource management:
5. Sanctions for those who abuse the commons should be graduated. Ostrom observed that the commons that worked best didn’t just ban people who broke the rules. That tended to create resentment. Instead, they had systems of warnings and fines, as well as informal reputational consequences in the community.
6. Conflict resolution should be easily accessible. When issues come up, resolving them should be informal, cheap and straightforward. That means that anyone can take their problems for mediation, and nobody is shut out. Problems are solved rather than ignoring them because nobody wants to pay legal fees.
One goal of Hearts was to overcome the shortcomings of overly-narrative policy-making by more clearly separating policy from process. Hearts aims to provide a general-purpose mechanism for accountability, while imposing few hard limits on how that mechanism can be used.
This is an advantage, as the process of establishing cultural norms is more clearly separated from the process used to enforce those norms. Unlike Chaortica’s “offboarding,” Hearts works regardless of how motivated housemates may be to uphold shared values — valuable during times of crisis, when the sense of unity might be weaker. Further, Hearts does not prescribe in advance all actions which might be necessary during an eviction process, leaving room for housemates to adapt to circumstances on the ground, rather than feel restricted by, or choose to ignore, irrelevant premeditated procedures.
Further, unlike Chaortica’s offboarding, Hearts allows for gradual accountability, making it harder for minor conflicts to escalate into full-blown crises. By centering processes of rehabilitation and feedback, situations which might otherwise culminate in a painful and disruptive removal can instead become opportunities for growth and (re-)connection. Where repair is not possible, the person being evicted feels respected — the outcome was not a surprise, nor was it arbitrary.
A few months ago, Sage House used Hearts was used to remove someone from the community. At a high level, what happened was:
Someone moved in who was a “bad fit” for the space — not conscientious, poor communication, dodged accountability. This was obvious to everybody.
Over a period of several months, people lost patience with the housemate, who did not accept feedback or make any effort to change their behavior.
The housemate started losing hearts, mostly due to not doing chores. At first slowly — and then more quickly.
Eventually they ran out of hearts, and received a fine. I got involved, negotiating a move-out in exchange for waiving the fine.
This was the first time that Hearts has been used to remove someone from a house. On balance, I feel as though the system worked well — empowering the majority of the housemates to make a collective decision, while ensuring the outgoing housemate retained a voice and a role in the process.
The process was not perfect — the housemates took a long time before they began giving sanctions, and once they did, they expected me to intervene in unrealistic ways. In this specific case, the separation of “structure” and “culture” created a gap in expectations, which will need to be closed going forward.
Overall, the Hearts system offers a structured yet flexible framework—one that allows communities to balance accountability with fairness, and enforcement with respect. Communities relying on written policies, or who have no system at all, should consider adopting these more advanced and dynamic techniques. If that sounds like you, please be in touch.
Discussion
Looking at these three cases, we can position them roughly in a continuum of separation between “structure” — rules and procedures, and “culture” — norms and values. In the first case of “vibes and tribes,” structure and culture were largely co-incident: people made up rules as they went along, based on their intuitions and feelings. In the second case, of “offboarding,” there was a written procedure which mixed both specific process and personal values. In the third case, of “Hearts,” the structure of the Hearts system was distinct from the norms and values of the residents.
When structure and culture are fused, decisions feel intuitive but are prone to bias and exclusion. When they are loosely connected, policies exist, but hinge on individual willingness to enforce them. Only when they are fully distinct can institutions function independently of personal whims, ensuring both fairness and adaptability.
I am an institutionalist, and believe it is important to know how to live with difference. I do not believe, as Rousseau did, that people are inherently “good,” and made evil by society. Nor do I believe, as Hobbes did, that people are inherently “bad,” and require a strong leader to enforce order. Rather, I believe that people are generally kind to their “in-group,” and cruel to their “out-group.”
We humans are many beautiful things — rational, creative, empathetic — but we are also fickle, status-seeking primates. We are quick to ally with power, shun the weak, and forget our promises. However, as American philosopher John Rawls famously argued in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, we should not be too content with our own position. The lines separating “us” and “them” are drawn in sand, and over the years many have found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly on the wrong side of history. We protect the minority and welcome the stranger, not because they are the “right” things to do, but because we can never know when we might wind up the minority or the stranger ourselves.
I know from personal experience how easily tribal lines can be re-drawn — one day everybody’s favorite, the next day thrown under a bus. Acute social dislocation causes real trauma.
In his 1945 The Open Society and its Enemies, British philosopher Karl Popper reflects on the nature of tribal consciousness:
Surrounded by enemies and dangerous or even hostile magical forces, he experiences the tribal community as a child experiences his family and his home, in which he plays his definite part; a part he knows well, and plays well.
Globally, we are witnessing a return to tribal attitudes. As the cultural center decoheres — due in part to the spread of poorly-designed communications technologies, as well as the failure of global liberalism to bring broad prosperity — people are closing ranks.
Tribalism is not the answer. But neither can we overlook the ways our systems have failed. Rather, we must learn to build new kinds of institutions — digitally-enabled, expressive, transparent, and neutral — and use them to explore new possibilities for living with difference.
A process for removing someone from a house may not, at first blush, seem remotely connected to these larger themes. On a closer look, however, we see that they are intimately linked. Instead of heated debates about immigration policy, reflect on how you, personally, might ask someone to give up their housing. How much respect, empathy, and firmness could you bring to that encounter? How much difference are you personally able to tolerate? What can these examples teach us about our world at large?
We are quick to mourn the open society, but slow to acknowledge the part we have played in its demise. By expanding our own ability to tolerate discomfort, embrace difference, and lead with both firmness and empathy, we lay the foundation for a better world — not through abstract policy debates, but by how we treat the people closest to us.
We have more agency than we think.
It is worth noting that in many jurisdictions, such an eviction would not be legal or enforceable. Talk about awkward.