Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Limiting whole-house renting in CoHousing

[Sara Gottlieb (sara.gottlieb]

Hello all,

Thank you to those who have shared thoughts/experiences on whole-house
renting in CoHousing.  To clarify a few questions that have come up:

1. Our decision making process is by consensus. When we have one person
blocking a decision, we attempt to develop a proposal that they can live
with.  It doesn't always work, but we do try, and we agreed as a group that
getting insights from other communities might be helpful in this regard.

2. We are not talking about limiting renting a room or part of a home where
the owner is also in residence.  That is something we've always had here
and don't have a problem with it.  The main concern is avoiding a scenario
where we have non-resident owners whose primary interest in ownership is
income.

The person who objects to limitations thinks whole-house renting is a great
way to enable people who can't afford to buy a house to live in CoHousing,
and indeed it does provide that, but at what cost to the community when
budget-minded renters are looking mainly at rental rates/location and are
not in any way really "accountable" for participating in community life and
their landlords have no interest or stake in community, either?

Someone from the UK made a comment about screening potential residents.  We
do this informally only by encouraging potential residents to join us for a
meal and talking to current residents about community life; in the US our
fair housing laws prevent us from being able to deny anyone housing who is
financially able to buy or rent a home in the community.

Thanks again for the discussion.

-- 

Sara J. Gottlieb
sara.gottlieb [at] gmail.com