Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of community

[Sue Pniewski (SPniewski]

Liz, 
It is fully inappropriate for you to personally attack Howard and I.  
Obviously you are one of the "TAKERS".  
Gimmie Gimmie, help poor me, so I don't have to work so much.
Sharing has nothing to do with it.  
I "share" way more than you do, guaranteed.
I do in excess of $30,000 work of Pro Bono legal work each year.
For takers and scammers just like you.
I work for a company who gives 200+ homes a year to low income people.
So don't go there with me.  You are WRONG.

I spent a year on tour with the Dead in the 80s with a ton of people just
like you.
Nice enough people, but fully committed to getting by on the least possible
work.
Begging for food, begging for lodging, But not willing to work for it.
I worked on the road, and completed a doctoral thesis on this behavior
during the process.
For your information, I'm not rich.  I pay a lot of taxes.  A lot more than
you do I suspect.
You are SO wrong about the tax thing and your ignorance is laughable.
You get on some chat room, or some silly rally,
everybody spreads rumors about the horrible Republicans or whoever is the
focus that day
stealing money from the poor.  Such a joke.  You have NO IDEA.
YOU ARE WRONG.
Go back to school, get an education, and take some classes about taxes.
You can take free classes from the IRS if you can't be bothered to earn
money for tuition.
But don't spout off on this board about things you know nothing about.
These are good people. 
You ignorance is unfortunate.
Your need to force your ignorance and foolish beliefs down others throats is
reprehensible.


-------------------------------------
Susan Pniewski, Esq.



-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth Stevenson [mailto:tamgoddess [at] comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 6:22 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of
community



Howard and Sue: I may sometimes step over the line, but it's because I feel
it is critically necessary to open people's eyes to issues they'd rather not
face. Don't mistake my passion for some unthinking emotional response.
(Sorry, Kay-I *was* harsh)

Here goes again. I can keep it up as long as you can.
> 
>> Howard, I'm struck that you assume "fair" means everyone pays the same
>> amount
> 
> Not for everything.  But for paying for a capital improvement where we
> each own, by legal deeds, an exactly equal share of the resulting asset,
> and can sell that share (along with our unit) when we leave, then yes,
> I believe we should all pay equally.  Anything else is asking some members
> to directly donate wealth to other members.  I'm not particularly fond
> of kleptocracy no matter how it's disguised.

How about disguising it as taxes that moderate-income people pay and rich
people don't? Does this get your knickers in a knot, Howard? 'Cause it
pisses me off, big time. Our government steals from me and every other
tax-paying citizen every day to pay for welfare for the rich.
> 
>> and then conclude it's inevitable that the less well off will hold
>> things up.
> 
> I never claimed inevitability.  I said it was possible, because I've
> seen it happen, here in my community.  And I asked whether other people
> thought that was a price worth paying.  Or what other options there
> might be.

I've told you some options, and you're too invested in proving me "wrong" to
hear it. 
> 
>> The answer for us has been to [create]
>> a pool of funds available for capital improvements.
> 
> We have one of those too.  But our basement will take about $75K to
> finish off and we're putting something like $1-2K per year into the
> fund.  You do the math.

Poor Howard. I've done the math, and I still don't lie awake nights worrying
about whether you get your basement finished. What, by the way, entitles you
to a finished basement, anyway? If your group can't afford it, it can't
afford it. Live with it. The only people who get everything they want are
the extremely rich, and they are doing so by stealing from the poor.

Sound too socialist for you, Sue? Too bad. I can't imagine why you think
that's a bad thing, or, frankly, why either of you would even consider
living in cohousing. Sharing seems to be difficult for you.
> 
>> We assess a monthly fee for this purpose that is steeply
>> scaled according to ability to pay.
> 
> I object to this for reasons explained above.  Let's say we have 34
> households and we build a capital improvement worth $34K that is equally
> owned by all households.  If household A pays $2000 towards this and
> household B pays nothing, and then a few years later they both sell
> their units and leave, the net effect is that the value of each property
> was increased by around $1000, so household A has lost $1000 and B has
> gained the same amount.  This is no different in principal from just
asking
> household A to write a check for $1000 to household B.  (This could be
made
> fair by placing a lien on property B for $1000 that had to be paid when
> they sold their unit, but no one except me ever proposes that or even sees
> it as acceptable.)

Do you all *use* the common house exactly equally? The other end of this
cost/benefit equation that you have speciously created doesn't factor out at
all.
> 
> We have members in the community whose "ability to pay" depends partly on
> how much they choose to work (as a consultant, I fall in this category
> as well!).  If someone chooses not to work (as much) in order to have a
> more relaxed lifestyle or (say) donate more of their time to charitable
> work, does that obligate others to subsidize them?  If they choose
> to work more in order to gain financial security, does that obligate
> them to subsidize others?  I see "ability to pay" as a somewhat squishy
> concept which is often strongly influenced by voluntary personal choices
> (whether to go to college, what career to choose, how frugal to be,
> how many children to have, eat out or cook at home, ...).

...whether or not you're born white, whether your parents can afford to pay
for college, whether your company lays you off, whether you're gifted
intellectually, whether you have a disability, whether you were born in the
wrong country, etc. There are just as many reasons why it's not a personal
choice as reasons that it is. Your point is irrelevant. It's a crapshoot,
Howard. You chose to live in community, knowing that there was no equitable
way to allow for every conceivable factor in income distribution, yet you
continue to write like everyone has his/her hand in your pocket, taking
what's rightfully yours. No relationship is EVER equal, and make no mistake,
you're in a relationship with your community. It's time you stopped treating
it as a commodity that has no other meaning, or move out. (Thanks for the
inspiration, DW.)


> 
> Howard A. Landman
> River Rock Commons
> Fort Collins, CO
> 
> "There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite
> so important, as living within your means." - Calvin Coolidge

Perhaps you should take this to heart and stop pining over the basement.

-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California
tamgoddess [at] comcast.net

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