Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Governance & Income Inequality [ was Common house design, rooms, and room sizes?

[Emilie Parker (emilie.v.parker]

<Peter Goldstein peterhansgoldstein [at] gmail.com via
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en> cohousing.org
Have you verified that you have input on the process of filling your
county-affordable units?

I assume you'd want equal interest and participation in the community from
people no matter what their income is. If your county is like ours, though,
their standard practice is to fill affordable units without any sort of
consultation with the rest of the development. In the case of cohousing,
that means there is no mechanism for affordable-qualifying members of the
development group to get preference for those units. It has also meant the
folks chosen are not only uninterested, but *unaware* that they're moving
into cohousing. Can cause problems down the road, especially if you place
requirements on members.

This is county by county and they'll most likely be reasonable, but make
sure they know that you either have the option to prefer your own folks or
the opportunity to let those chosen by the county know what they'd be
getting into.>

Hi Peter,
i hope you don't mind, I moved your comment to the income inequality
string.  The plan is that when the county places the announcement up on
their website that they are accepting applications to the affordable rental
homes we will have our renters qualified and ready to put in their
applications.  Our members will ask for the apartments within cohousing.
That being said I know we'll have to be flexible and agile in figuring out
how to get our cohousing members into the County affordable adjacent to our
community.  The County is supportive of helping us in ways they can -- to
make it work.  They have to follow all their fairness guidelines and we
have to work with them within those guidelines.  We have to be vigilant of
their processes and timing.  After initial move in ... not sure how we will
get new renters.

We started a few months ago encouraging all our affordable rental members
to begin getting qualified.  It's not clear how it's going to work so we
are trying to map it out but know that we have to cross bridges when we
come to them.