Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Members and rentals (was Short-term Rentals)

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

Hi Ann.

As I said, our HOA budget is pretty much focused on the things all condos
need.  Our main expenses are: insurance; plowing; maintaining our septic
system and water supply (we have an onsite water treatment facility);
maintaining our common house and unit exteriors and critical site features
such as roadways and drainage; waste disposal; and of course building up
reserves for these things.  We also have smaller line items such as
accounting, legal fees, permits, that kind of thing.

Our cohousing budget is smaller, but still substantial.  (We are right in
the middle of our budgeting process so it's all fresh in my mind!)  This
budget includes: purchase and maintenance of common resources beyond those
required for basic legal/safety requirements -- lawn mowers, garden hoses,
etc; furnishings of the common areas such as couches for the living room,
dining room tables, movie projector, playground equipment, ping pong table,
etc; community garden and landscaping (the kind that's about looks rather
than maintaining the health of the site); money for social events, meetings
and workshops on topics like conflict resolution and facilitation; cable TV
and internet service for the common house; maintaining our hot tub; kitchen
stuff (not food -- that's part of the "meals" budget which is separate and
self-funding...but pots and pans and whatnot); basic common house supplies
like toilet paper, pens and paper and such; childcare for our meetings and
workshops; propane for our kitchen stoves and fireplace.

Our HOA budget doesn't have much wiggle room.  We share a physical site
with another cohousing group (Camelot), and the biggest expenses are shared
between the groups.  How the HOA fees (technically called "assessments")
are apportioned is a matter of legal record: each unit has a percentage of
"beneficial interest" in the condominium and is assessed that percentage of
the budget.  Like every condo everywhere, this is required and if someone
doesn't pay we could put a lien on their home or take other legal action.
 (Which we have never had to do, thank goodness!)

Our cohousing budget can vary as much as our members want.  The way we do
this is various teams submit requests for what they'd like to have in the
budget for next year, and the Trustees (usually me :-) ) assembles that
into a budget proposal.  This then gets discussed over the course of a
couple meetings (and in email) until we think it reflects our community
wishes and priorities.  Then we consense on it and figure out what the
average amount per month per household is to meet that budget.  THEN each
member household "pledges" a monthly amount toward it, with the minimum bid
being 5% of the average (last year the monthly average was $72, the minimum
bid was $3.50).  If the pledges don't cover the budget, we ask people to
re-bid; if they still aren't enough to cover it, we start cutting items
from the budget to bring it down to the amount of money we have.  (We
haven't actually had to do that yet, but we are prepared for it every
year...this, too, would be a consensus based process.)

To give a sense of scale, last year our annual HOA budget was $140,000
(divided over 34 units), and our annual cohousing budget was $24,000
(divided over 35ish member households).

If you want more detail, contact me offline and I'd be happy to show your
our budget.

As to your observation that coho groups spend way more money on septic
systems than conflict resolution workshops...that's true, because those
things cost more.  In my experience, "community" isn't expensive in
dollars...but  very expensive in terms of time and energy.  And those, for
better or worse, are not things we formally "budget".   Adding $40K a year
to our budget for workshops would not, I believe, make our community that
much healthier -- it would just make us sick of workshops.  (But then, I
don't have a lot of faith in formal training in "soft skills"...our
community support team and facilitation team members surely feel
differently.  I spend a lot of my time at workshops rolling my eyes.)

Diana