Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Mixed Income Cohousing Communities

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

Wasatch Commons, Salt Lake City, used a program called CROWN to help
finance five low-income rent-to-own units.  (We have 21 ordinary
qualify-for-a-mortgage units, mostly owner-occupied.)  I wasn't part of the
group while this was being proposed and have never worked on the
affordability committee, so I don't know details of the program.

The units are owned by Wasatch Cohousing, the company set up to develop
Wasatch Commons.

Applicants must qualify through the CROWN program.  Since cohousing isn't
everyone's cup of tea and we'd rather not have residents who would rather
not be here, Wasatch Commons persuaded the CROWN program to allow
applicants to turn down the cohousing unit without losing their place on
CROWN's waiting list.

Our affordability committee interviews applicants, explains cohousing, and
asks promising ones to attend a meeting to get a taste.

The tenants are mostly single moms who are working and going to school.

Renters are full members of the community for almost all purposes --
committee work, offering proposals, blocking, signing up to cook, etc.  I
think the tenants of the crown units even hold the voting proxy for
Homeowners Association elections.

What problems have arisen are symptomatic of our community's problems with
information flow.  For instance, the tenants have ended up paying for much
of their own landscaping, because the landscaping committee has never been
able to find out what if any funds were available; and an overdue rent
problem went on far too long because the management committee hadn't been
set up and the person collecting the checks didn't know who to go to to ask
for help dealing with it.

Two units originally intended to be owner-occupied are rented out.  Since
these renters are dealing with the home owner instead of the community,
they haven't always gotten the orientation given by the affordability
committee to crown applicants and the welcoming committee to prospective
buyers.  Orientation is greatly complicated by the fact that we have
members who "want to trust people" and refuse to codify anything, so we've
never managed to consense any community rules, and newcomers aren't told up
front they're expected to clean up after their dog and not smoke in the
common house.

In one case we lucked out -- the renters had no idea they were getting
anything but an ordinary rental and were surprised but intrigued to
discover otherwise.  In the other, the first renters claimed an interest in
cohousing but never attended meetings or meals and were unobservant of the
aforementioned unwritten community standards of behavior.  We're attempting
to get the welcoming committee involved with rentals; the newest renter
attended more community functions in the week before moving in than the
previous did in all the months they lived there.

Attempts to be sensitive to the special situations of lower-income
residents have, ironically, sometimes resulted in them feeling singled out
and treated differently, especially since each has a different point at
which they prefer to pay their own way or do without.  We're slowly
learning to balance on that tightrope, teetering between offering unwanted
help and forgetting the restrictions insufficient money imposes.

Kay Argyle
Wasatch Commons
SLC UT