Re: Losses
From: Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizverizon.net)
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:47:59 -0700 (PDT)
In terms of how it feels emotionally, I joined Mosaic just in time to have a small amount of money included in the sunk money connected to the last, and devastating, loss, and have some input.

First, about a month before we found the land we are now building on, I personally reached the decision that it was hopeless. I had written a note to myself to begin broaching the topic of considering figuring out a strategy to end the search and give up. The possibility of joint ownership of land in Berlin, MA came up at the next meeting, and we were off to new excitement. But I will say that there were months and months of meetings-- where it felt really hard to keep working on this dream. And I'm a relative newcomer.

Second sometimes I think about the the cost to our units. There is the concrete math: $200K divided by 24 market rate units is a cost of $8333 each.

And at the same time, since there are two cohousing communities of the same size building on this land, we can see an interesting phenomena in the diversity of cohousing groups. Our homes in Mosaic do not cost more than the homes in Camelot, even though they do not have this line item in their budget! And you can't even tell exactly why. We made so many different decisions about floor plans, and unit mix, and aesthetic choices, and environmental choices, and in the common house and common facilities, and more, that it would be impossible to pull just on the thread of our sunk costs and determine how that compares with another group. Different groups prioritize different things. Isn't that one of the strengths of this model?

Third, it is difficult to estimate the gain to a community that has taken a huge, real risk, looked like they might lose, and then turned it around. Building deep connections in community requires hard times handled well. We more than pulled that off. I certainly don't wish the hard times we had on any cohousing community. But I must say that it has created a depth to our community that I expect will serve us well into the future.

-Liz
(The Rev.) Elizabeth M. Magill
Mosaic Commons, Berlin, MA
I'm moving in this fall! Won't you join me?
508-450-0431



On Apr 21, 2008, at 7:01 PM, Sarah Florreich wrote:


On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Catya Belfer-Shevett
<catya [at] homeport.org> wrote:
In terms of how the accounting works, we basically put it in a line item as a project expense, along with all of the other project expenses. Our fabulous finance person reads the list, so she can say exactly which,
 but it might have gone in the marketing/membership line item?

 Honestly, rolled into the final project bucket?  Even 6 digit money
 doesn't break the bank. (Says me, anyway.)


Yes, our project is so large that even at $200K of sunk costs, it is
not really noticeable to the bank (2% of our oveall budget), so in
that way we were "lucky".  From what I've learned, one could allocate
it out to the lines it was spent on (legal, engineering, etc), or lump
it all in one unrelated, generic category like we did, as long as it
doesn't cause that line item in the budget to look greatly out of line
to what a bank would normally expect for that line item.

No one who has ever bought in after we did all that prior work has
objected to having to pay for this, as we make it clear it's the price
to get where we are.  Often one has to try a few times to get the
right land/buildings at the right time, when the stars are aligned and
all that.  :-)

- Sarah
_________________________________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/




Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.