Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: renters policies

[Jim Snyder-Grant (jimsg]

Hi Laura:

You asked about renters & laundry fees...

>From a person who thinks about fees & fairness, but doesn't have a laundry
machine in the CH..

I am thinking that landlords are charging enough so that the rent partly
covers their condo fee. So, renters ARE paying for machine repairs, etc.,
via their rent.   The test of this theory would be: if I was an owner, and
my condo fee went up a bunch, would I feel it reasonable to raise the rent
the next time I could? I think so..

However, you are still possibly left with the feeling that there are more
people in the community, so the depreciation is happening faster. But again:
if those people did not rent, they could use that space for expanding their
own household: taking on a roommate or a lover; or having a child. So, I
think the rate of depreciation of the machines is probably going to end up
being proportional to the number of bedrooms in the community, whether the
bedrooms are occipied by renters or not.

We used the same logic to convince ourselves that having any special
'renters fees' was unreasonable.

-Jim Snyder-Grant
New View cohousing, Acton MA

Where we FINALLY have the mailboxes in the CH instead of at the entrance..
.where we have MANY events in the next few days: end of school parties for
various age cohorts, a couple of showers, the home schoolers get an event as
well, we even will squeeze in a meal or two.