Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Non-participants in community

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello All,

I've read on this list and have seen in other cohousing communities the
basic foundation that work requirements are an obligation taken on by
consensus by the community in lieu of higher condo fees.  As such they
become obligations much the same as condo fees and can be enforced in the
same way as condo fees.  As far as I can see this does mean you can
require a mortgage holder to do x hours of work (or hire it out) in the
same way you can require a mortgage holder to pay condo fees.

In any event we at JP Cohousing are presently developing our work
expectations policy and are basing it on this "obligations we accept in
lieu of higher condo fees" approach.

Thanks,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing


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Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 14:04:46 -0700
From: "Rob Sandelin" <floriferous [at] msn.com>
Subject: [C-L]_ Non-participants in community
To: "Developing cohousing - collaborative housing communities"
        <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Message-ID: <LPBBLHKKBOKJBHOFMFDPIEBFEHAA.floriferous [at] msn.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"

I changed the title of the thread from work agreements to non-participants
to respond to Rachel's question about what about people who don't do squat.

In my experiences, cohousing has a larger percentage of people who are on
the low end of the contribution scale than other kinds of community. I think
this is inherent in the functional structure of cohousing. There legally are
limited requirements because if the requirements become too great, the banks
may not give mortgages. So for example you can not require a mortgage holder
to attend monthly association meetings, such meetings are voluntary. Nor can
you require a mortgage holder to do x hours of work. So all such agreements
are local, and have to be.

<snip>