Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: keeping track - time as well as $

[IAN_HIG (IAN_HIG]

We at Cascade CoHousing estimated that each of our 14 households would
have to contribute 200 hours of time to the construction of our common
house in excess of any other time commitments.  This is likely to inflate to
about 300 hours in the longer term.  Each household has undertaken
to put in this amount of time, and to keep track of how much time they
have actually put in.  We decided not to formally count the hours
using chits or similar methods, and there is no agreement to pay for
hours that are not worked.

Members are putting in large numbers of hours (some have exceeded their
200 hour committment allready), others with heavey job commitments have not.
We assume that "in the fullness of time" everone will put in their hours.
There have however been some tensions over whether individuals have been
doing their fair share, but while intense for a short, they have been resolving
them selves.  We make no distinction between members living on or off the site
as the work commitment is goes with having a house site, members who
have not started building their own homes can get a lot of their common 
building work done before they have the huge time commitment of 
having their own homes built.  We have one member who after completion
of their house headed off to travel overseas for a year, he elected to
pay someone to meet his common work commitment. (In part by reducing
the rent received from his tenants in return for work done and in
part through a LETS barter network).  Paying someone to work
on ones behalf remains an option for any one in our group who
just cannot commit the time to building the common house.

Overall our system is working well enough and we are getting
the building done.

The non-building tasks such as accounting, planning, legal stuff, promotions
and the like are done without accounting for hours.  There is however,
an expectation that everyone will participate in these jobs at some time.