Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Retrofit in Toronto

[Kevin Wolf (kjwolf]

At 05:07 PM 6/13/98 +0000, Julie Busch wrote:

>HOw could the community cover you? Did you have a pool/fund of $ that is 
>added to? DOes this come out of membership monthly fees? How do you
>collect? Are fees absolute requirement (another glitch of "subsidy"!!) 

Julie
The community covers Linda and I when we take on the lease for the
community both financially and through their help in getting renters so
rent is always paid.  Word of mouth to friends is a great way to recruit
new members to the community.  Thus when we have known of a room vacancy
occuring outside of the leasing period, everyone rallies around to help the
people in the house find the right person.  It is in everyone's interest to
get good people in the community.  It also is in the community's interest
to not have to eat lost rent.  

The community covers Linda and I out of community income and savings.  So
far, we've never had to use it. 

snip
>We want to be as fair as possible about how we decide who gets into >those
first few units, since
>there is more renters than buyers, and more members than we think it
>will be possible to accomodate on a 2 or 3 property purchase (trying to
>find 4 or 5 properties adjoining and for sale within 2-3 months may be
>asking the universe for too much!!. Any thoughts? Seniority is a very
>difficult one as everyone is pretty much equal at this point in meetings
>attended, and work already "donated" to the cause. 
>
I sympathize with your situation.  I would find the three unit place and
then see about renting other units as near as possible, preferably in
adjacent properties or in the community's "sphere of influence"  (where it
hopes to eventually grow to in ten - 20 years).  We wished we had a bigger
vision when we started because we could have brought in two houses much
cheaper than we eventually did and two houses we lost - the ones now at the
very end of the community could have been bought about ten years ago but
none of us thought we'd ever get so big that we would back up to them one
day :-)   If people live near, they can come over for dinner, events etc
and then as adjacent building/units open up, they can grab them.  Good luck
and I sure hope you succeed.  We need more retrofit success stories to show
that N Street isn't just an anomally.

Kevin

Kevin Wolf & Associates    - Consensus Facilitation
724 N Street                      - Strategic and Watershed
Davis, CA 95616                       planning
kjwolf [at] dcn.davis.ca.us     - Internet development  
Phone 530-758-4211         - Stanislaus Stakeholder proccess
Fax   530-758-2338           
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/kjwolf