Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: HOA Dues - Call for Experiences

[Angie McGowan (angiem]

>The treasurer at Nyland requested input from other communities on how your
>Homeowners Association (HOA) is dealing with issues around dues and
>budgeting.  A few questions are:
>1. How are you controlling individual purchases by community members and
>committees?
Cascade Cohousing have a finance committee who prepare a fairly detailed
budget, which is then ratified by the group at a monthly meeting.  These
budget allocates certain amount to various working groups to spend eg the
gardening group, or the commonhouse building organisers.  Those groups work
out detailed expenditure for themselves  and have the authority to spend as
they see fit within the allocated budget.  Any expenditure outside of the
budget has to be agreed to a general meeting of the group, which usually
seeks advice from the Finance Committee.

>2.  How are you dealing with members who are deliquent on their HOA dues?
We have all been a bit guilty from time to time of being slow with our
Quarterly Instalments (which is what we call HOA dues) and other payments
such as rates.  We deal with it as follows: the person whose job it is to
collect and bank  these instalments gives all members a quarterly written
reminder to pay up.  When people are late he asks them personally to
remember.  So far this has worked, but its unpleasant for the member whose
job it is to collect the money and he has asked people not to put him in
this position if they can help it. 
Members of Cascade Cohousing have all signed a legal agreement which sets
out the procedure for recovering bad debts from members to the group.  We
haven't had to use this method yet.

>3. How have you dealt with the issue of dues increases or special assesments?
Cascade have recently decided to review how the amount of the quarterly
instalments are calculated for each member.  This process is causing a fair
amount of angst.  Up to now each share has paid an equal flat rate per
quarter.  We recognise that this is probably not equitable, but we're
having a bit of trouble agreeing on what would be better.  Both Hig and
Furry from Cascade Cohousing posted things on this a few weeks back on the
topic of Cost Apportionment of Infrastructure, so I won't repeat it. 
Suffice to say that how running costs and maintenance costs are distributed
can become an emotional issue with the potential to become divisive if
people aren't careful about how they deal with it.  And its likely that the
emotions will be revisited every time the dues are being reviewed.

>
>bpaiss [at] aol.com                                         "If I can't dance I
>don't want to join your revolution."  
BTW Glad to see that dancing is a priority at Nyland too. Our common house
ceiling has been designed to accommodate the needs of stick waving morris
dancers (and high passing jugglers) so you'd feel reasonably comfortable
joining this particular sidealley of the revolution.

cheers, Angie
Cascade Cohousing

_______________________________________________
Angie McGowan
Cultural Heritage Section
Parks and Wildlife Service
Tasmania Australia
Intl ph +61-02-336596
Dom ph (002) 336596