Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: affordable housing: renting apartments

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

At Sharingwood, we have curently 3 out of 11 homes which have basement 
apartments which can be used for rentals, and a house under construction 
which is building a rental unit into it.  One of the advantages of this is 
that renters can help pay mortgages and so many people share houses.  The 
key element is getting past the STUPID building codes and laws regarding 
these sorts of "mother-in-law" units.  In the lot development model of 
cohousing this is easy, you just put in a basement or other unit without a 
kitchen in the drawings, wire and plumb and kitchen, then put it in after 
the inspector goes away. Happens all the time out here where I live.  

One advice I would offer is to come to agreements about renters and their 
role and responsibilities in the community before you have any renters.  We 
started off with one renter, and she had no connection to the community 
other than she lived here.  This turned out to be unacceptable to the group, 
and so we defined our expectations for renters and she moved on and was 
replaced by someone who was a part of the community. Fortunately the people 
who owned and controlled the rental space were totally amenable to having 
the community prescribe expectations for renters.  

Our current expectation is that the rental population will not exceed 20% of 
the total population. We set this limit in order to have some control over 
the total population and this does not include situations where a person 
rents an entire home.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood