giving/sharing/income diversity | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Judy (BAXTER%EPIHUBVX.CIS.UMN.EDU) | |
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 94 17:22 CDT |
Re: giving/sharing/income diversity on Thu, 25 Aug 1994 Rob Sandelin wrote: (Mike Adams wrote: >Allocating resources ( like housing ) by price is efficient only if money can act as >a proxy for the utility that someone will get from what is bought. But >if in the same community you have families with four children living in >two bedroom units because that is what they can afford, and childless >couples living in four bedroom units, I think that it can effect the >dynamics of the community. Rob wrote: =My experience differs. One of my neighbors at Sharingwood is a =millionaire. Another neighbor is barely making ends meet working 2 jobs. .. =that often projects come up which we could assess out to the =whole membership, such as our playground or basketball hoop or when we =bought our chipper. Instead we first solicit donations and pledges and =this usually suffices. Does this mean that some people put in lots of =money and others put in none? Yep. Does this cause a problem? Nope. Why =not? Because it's voluntary. When we choose to look for donations =first we do so in order to let people contribute in the ways that best =meets their needs. Its OK not to give if that causes problems and we =reinforce that. At Monterey we have done some of this (we haven't quite that range of incomes, ours probably range from approx $6000/year for two to $80-$100,000.) We have paid for outside consultants for conflict resolution by donation, and talked of that for some other possible common house expenses. =We are funding the first phase of our commonhouse with voluntary loans =from the existing membership. An assessment of $2,000 was charged to =everyone and some people have loaned as much as $25,000 to the =community with no guarantee of payback. Why? Because they want to. And =because they can. ... We have created a place where =people can freely give donations to the community. Simlarly, I can't face getting into all the complexities of our loans, etc. But, our original earnest money and downpayment were both collected on a "what you can afford" basis. We bought the original property with $100,000 downpayment, $79000 from the residents and the rest in loans from non-resident members. As one of our members keeps reminding us, only the residents are formally liable for the mortgages, which for a while we didn't realize, but I think morally we feel that we are all in this together. The result of all this is that people who couldn't qualify for a mortgage are now shareholders in the coop. We are similarly financing pre-construction development from loans from mostly members, some non-members - again, as freely given (well, not totally, we require new members to give at least a minimum loan of $1500). And people contribute - a media center, a cuisinart, plants, glasses, dishes, etc, for common use. Some is given, some is "shared" - by agreement, meaning that conditions of use are specified, community may agree to pay for repairs (or piano tuning), but ownership may remain with the individual. So I was able to use a tent camper last summer. I think the issue of pricing homes is more complex, tho, partly because the amount of money is so much greater, and also because the loans make it a long term commitment. We are pushing limits of most of us, so it gets tricky. I haven't time for more judy Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, (MoCoCo) Twin Cities Area, Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota e-mail: baxter [at] epivax.epi.umn.edu
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