Re: How does your community divide up water bills?
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Sun, 21 May 2017 09:49:29 -0700 (PDT)
> On May 20, 2017, at 5:31 PM, Ken Winter <ken [at] sunward.org> wrote:
> 
> Our cohousing community (like probably many others) gets a single bill from
> the utility for all of its water usage.  There are no water meters on
> individual units.

Ours does the same. Water and gas are both included in the operating budget and 
paid as part of the monthly condo fee. The fee is charged proportionately to 
units on a formula based 50% equally per unit and 50% variable depending 
roughly on the size of the unit. 

Ken, all the information you have collected about various schemes should be 
posted somewhere for new communities to use to understand the ins and outs.

Part of the reason for not setting up individual accounts with the utilities is 
that each account then has a minimum fee and usage amount that is larger than 
many households use and certainly larger than single person households use. By 
having one bill, everyone pays less than if they had individual accounts.

We have geothermal heating so those costs are electric. We each have our own 
account for electricity. 

Water usage would be hard to balance because some people use the CH laundry and 
others have machines at home. Some participate in meals using a lot of CH 
resources and some don’t. In a community with ~100 residents, these can be 
large variables.

In the 1990s, the design of cohousing communities was a celebration of sharing 
and caring and diversity. Ordinary condos were viewed as rigid and divisive. 
They distinguished amenities by size of unit and isolated unit sizes in 
different buildings. In almost 10 years of trying to make charges for 
maintenance of limited common elements proportionate, I’ve learned that there 
is a reason why buildings are designed as all 1 bedrooms with balconies, or all 
three bedroom with a balcony and front porch. All two bathrooms or all one 
bathroom. All have garages or charge for each garage. Laundry inside all units 
or outside all units. It’s easier to apportion costs in a way that has some 
relationship to use.

We wanted it all to balance out and not be nit-piky about things. But people 
are more aware of what they are using if they can see the numbers — 
measurement. Trying to lower one big collective measurement breeds suspicion 
and blame because one person is inevitably viewed as using more than another 
person. Individually measuring is more likely to produce both individual 
awareness of usage and clear ability to reduce usage.

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





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