Cohousing-L Mailing List: Apportioning costs

[RAYGASSER (RAYGASSER]

Stephen Farley asked:

> A major conflict has come up in the group over 
> how to determine an equitable division of development costs; namely
> should costs be split by household or by individual?

> How have other groups dealt with this conflict in the development process?

We're going through similar processes at EcoVillage at Ithaca, but the 
question is a bit different. We're trying to decide whether to base the
apportionment of infrastructure costs by household, or by house size (some
factor involving sq ft & solar frontage). There's some thought that the 
bigger houses should pay more, both because they're using more land & 
can afford it more then those getting smaller houses. On the other side
of the question: The town's not asking how big the houses are or who's
living where when they tell us what water & sewer lines to lay: You want
thirty houses, you need this water & sewer...... Also, the people with
more money in our group tend to be older and living in the more "medium"
houses. The larger houses are for those with growing families, who typically
have some budget constraints.

There are several postings in the archives over the past year or so if
you wanna take a look there...

Ray Gasser, EcoVillage at Ithaca
raygasser [at] delphi.com