Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: CoHousing HOA DUES: How does your community decide how/what goes into yours?

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

[Sharon says: But everyone benefits on some level from what some people
would call extras. They increase home values by increasing building
reputation, resident satisfaction, sense of community, etc.]

Liz Replies:
Sure.
We separate them out to give households some small amount of control over
their expenses. By making around $100 per month sliding scale, some
people's finances are eased.

In our case we *do* explicitly "allow" people to live here without doing
cohousing. Our 40B (moderately low income) housing rules in the state
require that we cannot *require* membership. So anyone can opt-out of
membership in our cohousing community. (A few renters and one owner do make
this choice.)

But that is not the reason for the separation. The separation is to save
money for households that need it.

Also, we've yet to have an appraiser pay any attention to the common house,
and certainly not to good feelings. While in capitalism the price of the
home is set by what the seller will pay, you can't get a mortgage for that
price unless the appraiser agrees that the price is reasonable.

-Liz
(The Rev. Dr.) Elizabeth Mae Magill
Pastor, Ashburnham Community Church
Minister to the Affiliates, Ecclesia Ministries
www.elizabethmaemagill.com
508-450-0431


On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:24 PM Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
wrote:

> > On Sep 7, 2021, at 1:04 PM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > The difference is we can force HOA dues to be paid at the sale of the
> home if a person is in arrears. If someone doesn't pay Coho dues we up
> shi*'s creek without a paddle. That's the worry.
>
> Thank you for the very nice break down of what you consider condo fees and
> what are coho fees. I must say that in fact every thing you list is also
> part of the HOA dues in traditional condos. In fact traditional condos are
> becoming more like cohousing. #1 reason: People like it. Less turn over.
> Happier campers. Etc.
>
> But why aren’t the coho dues part of the HOA dues. At some point there
> were people trying to sell cohousing units by separating the dues so some
> units could be bought without being part of the Cohousing operations. This
> would theoretically give them lower condo fees. I don’t know if any of the
> communities did this — it was just raised as a possibility.
>
> But everyone benefits on some level from what some people would call
> extras. They increase home values by increasing building reputation,
> resident satisfaction, sense of community, etc.
>
> Sharon
> ———
> Sharon Villines, Editor & Publisher
> Affordable Housing means 30% of household income
> Cohousing means self-developed, self-governed, self-managed
> http://affordablecohousing.com
>
>