Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Diversity in Cohousing

[Catya Belfer-Shevett (catya]

Hey all,

> Cohousing is not a commune.  It is not legally structured as a commune,
> nor does it bill itself as being a commune.  It's somewhere in between
> a condo and a commune, and exactly where depends on the people involved.
> It's not fair to assume that everyone in cohousing is a communist (in the
> pre-Marx sense) or shares communist ideals to the extent that you do.

It's also not fair to assume that there is only one way to divide things 
"fairly".

What is a "fair share"?  By person? By adult? By household/unit? By square 
footage? By usage? By percentage of income?

There are benefits and faults with any of those systems, the last of them 
not more or less than the others.

FWIW - my current mini-community (6 adults and 2 kids under one roof - 
www.homeport.org) does a fairly complex system based on 
income-after-fixed-expenses, where there are 7 owners of the house at 
different percentage levels based on what each has put in.

Mosaic Commons passed this agreement early on, the middle of three sliding 
scale proposals we considered: 
http://www.mosaic-commons.org/Official/slidingscale.html  Can't tell you 
how it is in practice, since we won't start using it until after move-in. 
(Right now all money in goes toward equity, and people work with the 
finance team to adjust to their financial situations as needed.

        - catya
                         ____
Catya Belfer-Shevett  ____\  /      Interested in
catya [at] pobox.com       \  / \/      Cohousing in MA?
www.catya.org          \/       www.mosaic-commons.org
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