Cohousing-L Mailing List: Rentals in Cohousing communities?

[Jim Ratliff (jratliff]

I know that European cohousing communities sometimes have rental units as
well as owned units. But I've never heard of that being done in the U.S.

Are there any U.S. cohousing communities with rental units?

The advantage is that it could open up cohousing to a much wider range of
people.

I can see right off the bat that it would raise questions about (1)
financing and (2) governance.

I raise governance concerns because mixing renters and owners would be
mixing two groups in a consensus decision process where those two groups
have very distinct incentives:

Owners necessarily have an infinite time horizon in their concern for the
value of the community. (Either they will live there till they die, or they
will eventually sell, in which case they need to worry about resale value,
which involves potential buyers' assessment of the long-term prospects for
the community.)

Renters on the other hand can take a much shorter-term perspective when
they make decisions that affect the group.

So how to mix the two? Perhaps have decisions grouped into two classes: (1)
decisions concerning investments in the site, etc. and (2) decisions
concerning currenting operating policies, etc. Then only owners could block
consensus in type-1 decisions and both renters and owners could block
consensus for type-2 decisions.

  ___
   |
 \_|IM RATLIFF
Tucson Cohousing
jratliff [at] bpa.Arizona.edu