Re: rental models of co housing?
From: Philip Dowds (rphilipdowdsme.com)
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 07:45:05 -0700 (PDT)
Like that of Raine’s, our Cornerstone community has had occasional or temporary 
conditions where the unit owner of record is elsewhere, and the unit is rented 
out to tenants for many months or several years.  Almost without exception, 
we’ve found our “temporary” tenants to be hugely enjoyable, helpful, 
interesting and active members of the community.  But …

But … Do these tenants have standing in plenary?  Are they empowered to help 
decide our annual budget, or our pets policy?  Can they make proposals, or 
object to them?  Or, are they always some sort of second-tier community member? 
 Frankly, we’ve not yet come with a solid answer on this one.  I’d be 
interested to hear how others have sorted this out.

Thanks,
Philip Dowds
Cornerstone Village Cohousing
Cambridge, MA

mobile: 617.460.4549
email:   rpdowds [at] comcast.net

> On Apr 1, 2019, at 10:07 AM, Raines Cohen <rc3-coho-L [at] raines.com> wrote:
> 
> Melanie -
> 
> While the economic model that has led to cohousing becoming the
> fastest-growing and most durable form of intentional community in the
> country has largely been its embrace of homeownership and the finance
> system underpinning it, there are indeed some innovations in rental
> cohousing.
> 
> Golden Gate Cohousing in Oakland, CA, is using a "resident-owned nonprofit"
> model, in which the renters together run a nonprofit that owns the
> property, similar to a housing coop (a form that is legally and financially
> challenging to create in California). While members don't gain any equity,
> housing can become more affordable over time as the nonprofit pays off its
> mortgage.
> 
> There was a North Bay (Sebastopol, CA) community designed to be
> affordable-rental cohousing, created with cohousing architects. But it is
> challenging to maintain community when people are there not by choice but
> by necessity, if they pass on an opening they might get dropped to the
> bottom of the list for affordable housing of any sort. And having a
> resident manager whose job it is to protect the investors' interests can
> make it harder to feel true autonomy in use of the Common House and other
> shared spaces.
> 
> Some other innovative rental examples include Common Fire cohousing
> (Tivoli, NY) and some communities based on Community Land Trusts.
> 
> Fundamentally, the challenge is that building housing takes money. And it
> takes a lot of careful thought and commitment to get that structured in a
> way that doesn't exacerbate economic differences, and gives people both a
> voice and a stake in the process.
> 
> There are certainly lots of rentals from individual homeowners in other
> cohousing neighborhoods. One here in East Bay Cohousing has an owner
> looking for students to share a home. A neighbor in my home community
> inherited a unit from her mom, a founder, and her renting it out for a
> while has brought us wonderful age diversity, and more variety in a place
> where turnover is otherwise quite low, with up to a dozen years between
> resales. We have a long tradition of people starting out by renting, and
> then buying when a unit becomes available... my wife and I were the first
> ones to buy in without already renting here, six years after the initial
> condo conversion (which itself was three years after the community first
> bought the site and started living in it by renting to ourselves).
> 
> Like Philip, I am concerned about the emergence of #coliving (the hip young
> hashtag for what our former E.D. Oz calls "cohouseholding", sharing under
> one roof) as an "industry," with private for-profit operators,
> venture-capital investment, and the like. How much of a role do tenants get
> in choosing their neighbors? Will they be able to build deep relationships
> out of a form built to support nomadic millenials? Do they ever get the
> autonomy we can experience with a site manager looking over their shoulder?
> Will this ever serve people throughout life, or is it just a kind of
> post-college dorm?
> 
> Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach & Cohousing California community organizer
> Living in community in Berkeley, California.
> Organizer, 2019 National Cohousing Open House Day -- is your community on
> the list yet? http://cohousing.org/openhouse2019/communities
> 
> 
> On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 8:39 AM Melanie G <gomelaniego [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Do any exist?  Or would that be out of sink with the logic?  Or maybe even
>> rent to own?  Just wondering after reading some of the abundant comments
>> about zoning, whether something like a rent to own situation might be
>> viable within a co housing framework.
>> 
>> thank you all for the richness of conversations here,
>> melanie (looking for community)
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