Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: affordable housing - rentals

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Many rentals in cohousing are sublets, a basement apartment in a unit, or a
unit is shared by unrelated adults. When people rent entire units at
Sharingwood, they are often paying more than the monthly cost of mortgage
and taxes, and in our case many of these folks later have bought homes in
the community, having rented to "check it out".  However, this is not always
true. We have some folks who rent spaces well below market value in order to
encourage certain people to live here, and we unfortunately have a few
people who rent here because its cheap rent and there is a level of security
which they find comfortable, but they participate in community endeavors
rarely if ever.

Home owners create apartments in order to help pay their mortgage, and so
they have an incentive to find renters to fill an income space, not
necessarily a community active person. And, to this point anyway, our
community has been very willing to help out owners by allowing apartments to
be created, since it offers two advantages for the community in theory.
However, in practice, the economic self interest of the owner is served
first, the interest of the community come next. A  renter has never been
asked to move out because they are not participating. This same dichotomy
can show up when homes come up for sale. If I find a buyer that likes my
place, and since I am leaving, why should I care how much they get involved
in the community? I suspect, the longer a home  is on the market, the more
pressure their is to meet the economic need.

This is not to say that  renters are necessarily community slackers, we have
some wonderfully involved renters. I just wish we had more of them and that
we could replace those who aint, with some that are.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of don i arkin
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 11:11 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_affordable housing - rentals



Hi,  At Sonora Cohousing we have 2 units planned as long-term rentals by
their owners out of 36 units, about 5.5%.  I am curious as to why people
feel that rentals are the solution for low-income families.  It is my
experience that monthly housing costs for comparable housing is higher
for renters than for owners.  True, low-income families face significant
barriers to owning, principally down-payments and problems qualifying for
mortgages, but once they are in they are often better off.  (It is true
that in some depressed housing markets it is possible to rent for less
than monthly mortgage payments for the same place, but this is generally
a temporary phenomenon.)
        Therefore it seems to me that the better solution is to come up
with a method for assisting below the line buyers get a mortgage.  For
example,  once I sold a house to someone who couldn't come up with a
down-payment by lending him the down-payment.  He then paid me back over
time - he had the income, he just didn't have the habits necessary to put
money aside.
        If individuals or a community are willing to assume some risks
people who can't qualify for mortgages on their own can be helped through
methods like the one above (not always acceptable to lenders) or by
cosigners on mortgages.  Of course, they still need to be able to make
the payments which returns to the question of whether cohousing is often
too high end.
        Don Arkin
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