Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Participation/Maintenance questions

[Peter Scott (ps]

> Are there cohousing communities that use professional property management
> services? Why/why not?

Your choice either way id have thought. Its like having a shared flat and 
decideing to get a housecleaner in once a week. It solves many arguments, but 
is an extra cost and you  need some soort of consensus on it.

> Does self-management mean accepting a lower standard of cleanliness,
> organization, and accountability?

Again your call. You can agree to standards, in fact write them up somewhere.

> What are the advantages and disadvantages of assessing maintenance costs *and*
> time commitments based on "unit entitlement" (based on square footage)? For
> example, unit owners with larger units would be expected to put in more money
> into maintenance and time into participation?

You may also find in some states you have no choice. We HAVE to assess levies 
based on unit entitlement. I understand the sort of accpeted cohousng wisdom is 
a hybrid of 25% by unit, and 75% by unit value. There are complex aruments for 
different systems but this is basically a compromise.

> Would it work to calculate maintenance costs (including heating, etc.) based 
> on
> unit entitlement, but have equal participation time requirements for each 
> adult?

> There has been a lot of focus on how to calculate time requirement for
> participation because at least two households want to pay in lieu of
> participating in maintenance, therefore there has to be a way of calculating
> their monetary contribution. Is there a different way of dealing with this?
>

Work participation is also complex, see for instance the recent thread about 
common house cooking and value of other work. There appears to be no commonly 
accepted cohousing thinking on this IMO i think its still evolving. There are a 
large number of threads on work, participation etc, even attempts to design 
internal LETS type systems.
Fundamentally there appears to me to be a conflict between trying to implement 
a fair system that keeps quibling to a tolerable level, but which doenst 
completely marketise away the gift type economy and cooperative nature of 
closer communiites. That being so I suspect that honest sharing and willingness 
to talk about it at length, as a group,  from time to time, may be part and 
parcel of closer communities. Otherwise we just go back to living in suburbia 
right?

--
Regards,

Peter Scott
Auckland New Zealand
Phone +64 9 832 4004 / 025 6240154
* Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood  <http://www.ecohousing.pl.net/>
* EcoVillage Association NZ <http://www.converge.org.nz/evcnz/>


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