Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: paying for sweat equity

[Denise Meier (dmmj]

On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Ruth Chaet wrote:

> I have been surprised reading some of the letters about paying for sweat
> equity.  At Westwood, I don't think we ever considered paying members for
> sweat equity.  

It strikes me that neither of us are talking about sweat equity. I don't
remember the original question, but sweat equity is when you do some work
on either your house, or the project, instead of paying for it. Like the
people at Valley Oaks Village, in Chico, California, all put in their own
floors. We're going to be doing our own landscaping. 

One message talked about paying members of the group during the
development phase to do work that would need to be hired out, otherwise.
And that's what I responded to.

We've done this only on a cash basis (you do the work, we pay you, you pay
your capital contributions). I suppose it could also work as sweat equity,
where you earn credit towards your capital contributions, but we felt we
needed to pay and be paid for tax reasons; we paid people who did what
they do for a living, for us.

I don't expect we'll pay anyone to do community work once we move
in, unless someone is hired to do a large task that they normally do
for work anyway. I like the system you described.


Denise Meier
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, Sonoma County
Northern California