Re: The popularization of the term Co-housing
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2016 15:21:26 -0700 (PDT)
> On Oct 24, 2016, at 4:21 PM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> I think an HOA is the board for a condo.

A Home Owner’s Association is just that — an association of owners who have 
made specific legally binding agreements — usually shared costs for 
maintenance, a security force, a neighborhood pool, a community building of 
some kind, etc. But their ownership can be the same as owning a single family 
home.

Or it could be a condo in which every owner owns the (1) a percentage of the 
value of the commonly owned property, and (2) the portion of the condo that 
they own and have the right to sell, and (3) rights and obligations as members 
of the Home Owners Association.

The rights of boards and owners, and the financial arrangements and vocabulary 
vary from state to state.

In DC, the owners must have at least one meeting a year to approve the annual 
budget. They may or may not be incorporated. The Condo Act refers to them as 
Real Estate Schemes, and the Act is in a different part of the law than the 
Corporate stuff.

> Certainly my cohousing community, organized as a condo, has an HOA.

The condo is the real estate. The HOA is the people who own and govern the 
condo. A team of us just worked on Bylaws revisions and this is one thing we 
had to sort out. “The Condominium” has a specific meaning and referrs to the 
physical reality of the condominium. It is not the same as “Takoma Village 
Cohousing Homeowners Association.” Most of our references were to “Takoma 
Village” which is totally non-specific and easily confusing.

> However a group of people is legally organized, I think it still can be 
> cohousing.

Cohousing is the social style, the way people expect to relate socially. The 
social style prefers and is aided by particular physical features— new 
specially designed construction — but it doesn’t require them.

> I think that an ecovillage is a description of a way of having an 
> environmental impact. Surely there is nothing preventing an ecovillage from 
> also being cohousing.

Most ecovillages, I think, do function like cohousing. The legal structure 
could be any of the above or others. They just have other requirements and 
activities related to ecological living. Some a lot and some just an intention. 
Some have a business entity related to the “eco.”

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org





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