Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Participation/Maintenance questions

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

We had a lengthy discussion about this not too long ago. It should be in the
archives. I'd look for "work".


--
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California

tamgoddess [at] home.com
http://members.home.net/southsideparkcohousing

----------
>From: Peter Scott <ps [at] ak.planet.gen.nz>
>To: Coho-L <cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org>
>Subject: Re: [C-L]_Participation/Maintenance questions
>Date: Tue, May 15, 2001, 10:11 PM
>

>> Are there cohousing communities that use professional property management
>> services? Why/why not?
>
> Your choice either way id have thought. Its like having a shared flat and
> decideing to get a housecleaner in once a week. It solves many arguments,
> but is an extra cost and you  need some soort of consensus on it.
>
>> Does self-management mean accepting a lower standard of cleanliness,
>> organization, and accountability?
>
> Again your call. You can agree to standards, in fact write them up somewhere.
>
>> What are the advantages and disadvantages of assessing maintenance costs
*and*
>> time commitments based on "unit entitlement" (based on square footage)? For
>> example, unit owners with larger units would be expected to put in more money
>> into maintenance and time into participation?
>
> You may also find in some states you have no choice. We HAVE to assess
> levies based on unit entitlement. I understand the sort of accpeted
> cohousng wisdom is a hybrid of 25% by unit, and 75% by unit value. There
> are complex aruments for different systems but this is basically a compromise.
>
>> Would it work to calculate maintenance costs (including heating, etc.) based
on
>> unit entitlement, but have equal participation time requirements for each
adult?
>
>> There has been a lot of focus on how to calculate time requirement for
>> participation because at least two households want to pay in lieu of
>> participating in maintenance, therefore there has to be a way of calculating
>> their monetary contribution. Is there a different way of dealing with this?
>>
>
> Work participation is also complex, see for instance the recent thread
> about common house cooking and value of other work. There appears to be no
> commonly accepted cohousing thinking on this IMO i think its still
> evolving. There are a large number of threads on work, participation etc,
> even attempts to design internal LETS type systems.
> Fundamentally there appears to me to be a conflict between trying to
> implement a fair system that keeps quibling to a tolerable level, but which
> doenst completely marketise away the gift type economy and cooperative
> nature of closer communiites. That being so I suspect that honest sharing
> and willingness to talk about it at length, as a group,  from time to time,
> may be part and parcel of closer communities. Otherwise we just go back to
> living in suburbia right?
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Peter Scott
> Auckland New Zealand
> Phone +64 9 832 4004 / 025 6240154
> * Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood  <http://www.ecohousing.pl.net/>
> * EcoVillage Association NZ <http://www.converge.org.nz/evcnz/>
>
>
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