Cohousing-L Mailing List: re income inequality

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

Jerry requested a check-in from RoseWind. I hadn't responded since our fees are 
rather low. 

We have used a moderately sliding scale for assessments at RoseWind Cohousing 
in Port Townsend. A household can request up to 20% reduction in annual 
assessment. Of our 24 households, about 5 take advantage of this. As the number 
requesting it has held steady for some years, we include the offset as a line 
item in the annual budget, so about $40 of my fee, for example, supports this 
option. It's not a huge differential for the recipients, about $200 a year 
($160 really, as we all pay for the subsidy line item). We let people claim 
financial hardship  by their own standards; we only specify that this may not 
be used as an expression of disapproval of all or part of the budget. Our 
annual assessment covers reserves and common operating expenses; people pay all 
costs of maintenance on their own homes. Our assessment is only about $1100 a 
year, in part because we do not have to pay for snow removal or leaf raking, or 
road maintenance, for example, and also because we do a lot of the work 
ourselves, with work parties pitching in on landscape tasks, common house 
cleaning, playground maintenance, and the like. 

People with less money would most likely buy one of our less-expensive homes: 
our houses are all different, and range from 800 sf to 2800sf, from pre-fab to 
very custom. Two of our homes were built with support from Habitat for 
Humanity. Our common expenses are distributed on an equal basis, by household.  
This has seemed to work. 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
www.rosewind.org