Cohousing-L Mailing List: bylaws/lenders/consensus/cost allocation

[Judy (BAXTER%EPIHUB]

MoCoCo (Monterey Cohousing)  is working on new bylaws, and looking for help in
a couple of areas.  
1. Consensus - we had gotten the idea from several sources that putting in
consensus as our decision-making process was risky in terms of FNMA approval,
and lenders.  I know there was some such discussion on this list a while ago
-but haven't gone back to the archives.  Now one of our members has been told
by a friend at New View (Francie or Franny or some such name?) that NV has
consensus in their bylaws and no problems with lenders.  Any info?  ideas from
others?

2.Allocation of shared operating costs/reserve funds.  Seems like that goes in
the bylaws too - and our lawyer is saying we should stay away from anything
complex, anything but per unit or per square feet.  We were considering, among
other things, a weighting of those two (unit, sq feet), and even looked at a
log function that Ian described from Cascade Cohousing in Tasmania.  Any war
stories?  We probably will stay away from the log function.

judy

Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, (MoCoCo)
Twin Cities Area, Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota
e-mail: baxter [at] epivax.epi.umn.edu