Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: advice on laundry metering?

[David Mandel (dlmandel]

Joe of Ithaca asked:

>Hi all,
>We have a laundry in our recently finished CH (none in homes). The issue of
>whether & how to pay for usage is at hand. My own preference is to keep
>life simple & not meter (i.e. charge households equally via overall
>maintenace budget).
>
>Any advice from experience launderers out there?


Do what feels comfortable for your group. Initially I proposed doing as you
suggest, but in our group, a few households have their own, plus households
range in number of people from one to six, and the group was more
comfortable imposing a user fee. We devised a simple system that works
fine. Our bookkeeper posts in the laundry room a list of all households
each month with horizontal lines and space to the right of the names. Every
time you do a load of wash or dry or use the common detergent that is kept
stocked, you make a hatch mark by your household's name. They're tallied up
at the end of the month and the debit appears on each household's monthly
statement, at 25 cents a mark. This seems to give us plenty to pay for the
water, gas and electricity used, plus cover occasional repair or
replacement of machines, cleaning vents, etc.

If you do something like this, however, be sure that the usage account is
kept separate from the regular HOA budget. Otherwise, you're asking for tax
trouble.

David Mandel, Sacramento