Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of community property?

[Sue Pniewski (SPniewski]

Liz- 
I think this would be a much more effective discussion if you didn't
personally attack the writer's ideas/thoughts/feelings.  

That said, I don't think Key's stories prove your theory.  I think she
accurately demonstrates that different ways work for different groups.
IMHO, I don't think a sliding scale is fair.  I think a sliding scale is
socialistic.  Everybody needs to contribute equally to get the same benefit.
Otherwise, all the people out there who are working VERY hard for their
money will basically be subsidizing the people who make less.  It's fine if
the people who make less feel comfortabhle with their income level, it
doesn't have to elevate or lower their "status" in the community, but
sliding scales do just that.  SOme people are forced into subsidizing
others.  I would think that would stir up a bunch of resentment, whether or
not you realize it.  Maybe you should think about that more carefully.  
Why should I pay twice as much as Mr. Jones next door, because I work very
hard, scratched and scraped through school to get a better job, worked 2
jobs to pay off my student loans and make sure my kids go to good schools,
then pay more than Mr. Jones because he's not willing to make the same
sacrifices?  I certainly don't feel that he should, but I also don't feel he
should benefit from my HARD work and sacrifice.  This country was founded on
the ideal that we all work hard to get ahead, provide for our families, and
help your neighbor if he needs it, but not to subsidise his lifestyle.
I know those of you out there with the idea that it's ok to subsidize thy
neighbor think this is some utopian way of diversifying your communities,
and that's fine if you can live with that, but some of you are bound to feel
resentment towards those getting to slide on the assesments, whether or not
you admit it. Sorry but as a tax lawyer I have seen thousands of families
working just enough to pay the bills so they can get earned income credit
(free money from my and your pocket via taxes) and then live off that for a
few months.  The abuse is staggering!  They don't want to work.  They giggle
at my desk about getting $5,000 plus in free money.  We are moving away from
the idea that it's admirable to work hard and enjoy the fruits of your
labor, and moving into the mindset of lets see how little we can get away
with working and still have enough cash to buy those tommy hilfiger jeans.
IMHO subsidies are rewarding the people who don't choose to work as much.  I
know, perhaps some would find that offensive, sorry, I don't mean that those
who choose to teach in a school that doesn't pay much whould be less valued
than those that choose to be doctors, not at all, they are both valuable and
necessary, but I do think that we should all be treated equally.  We should
not be valued by our income at all.  TO do that, we can't make people pay
more or less according to their incomes.  If one member pays less, than
someone else has to pay more, or else the COMMUNITY as a whole makes do with
less.  So what that does is bring the whole community down to the income
level of it's least affluent member.  I can't see how that benefits anybody,
except the self righteous ones who are sure they are doing the best thing by
being charitable to the poor.  Charity is great, but it should be
volunatary.  Sliding fees are forced charity, which suddenly is not charity,
but socialism.  They also give the lower spectrum of income no incentive to
strive, for a better job, a better career, this is going to open up a whole
bunch of response I'm sure, just my opinion...  Temporary abatement in case
of need might be more fair.
Because if you assess at the lowest common denominator of income, then
hamstring the gifters by not allowing gifts, or by attaching huge
contingencies to the gifts, suddenly everybody is living in the standard of
living that the least affluent member is living in.  So why work hard?
Sounds more like a commune than a community, because it's just another way
of income pooling.  
The only way to be fair is to assess each membership stake equally.
I really feel that assessing people more or less based on INCOME is bound to
create resentment sooner or later.  How are the communities that are doing
the sliding scale getting around this? Human nature will dictate that there
is bound to be some resentment, spoken or not.
Still trying to hash out details here and need the input.
     


-------------------------------------
Susan Pniewski, Esq.

-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth Stevenson [mailto:tamgoddess [at] comcast.net]
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 10:54 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of
community property?

> 
> Some real-life examples:
> 
> The University of Utah Medical School was offered multiple millions, with
> the proviso they be renamed after the donor.  The administration accepted.
> The medical school faculty and staff's hostile reaction to the
announcement
> of the proposed name change was such that they returned the money, with
> apologies.  A year or so later, the U of U College of Business cheerfully
> renamed itself for the same donor.

THis is not cohousing, or a community, except in the broadest sense of the
term. How does this apply?
> 
> During construction, an adjoining piece of land was for sale.  The
cohousing
> group didn't have the money to purchase it, although a number of people
felt
> it would be nice to have the land for an orchard.  Several members were
> willing to put up the money, with the idea that eventually the group would
> pay them back.  During a difficult meeting, a couple of other members
> protested that if these people were willing to loan money to the group,
they
> should loan it for *whatever* the group wanted to do with it.  The
proposal
> was amended that the loan repayment would be a voluntary assessment.  The
> deal fell through when the land was taken off the market.  A year later, a
> member purchased the land herself, and regards it as her private property.

If a community decided that they needed to prepare in advance for the
purchase of a larger plot of land, they might be able to pull it off. I
still fail to see how this illustrates anything but a failure of your
process. We have similar trouble trying to make decisions quickly, when they
involve money and/or a big change for the community. THis doesn't mean that
we abandon the process. If it were really important to your community to
have that land, you'd have it.

> Several years later, another neighboring field became available.  A member
> purchased it himself (one of the ones who had been willing to front money
> for the earlier piece).  He offered the community the use of it.  The
> community said thank you.
> 
> The member who spearheaded the orchard planting, asked if members would be
> willing to donate the cost of trees instead of asking for money from the
> landscape budget.  He sponsored a couple of trees.  Other people sponsored
> trees, sometimes in somebody's name.  A couple of our low-income members
> expressed uneasiness, because they didn't feel they could afford $30 for a
> tree. The organizer reiterated that this was voluntary -- the last thing
he
> wanted was to pressure anyone. The idea was to spare the community as a
> whole the expense, leaving more for other projects.  The low-income
members
> had as much say as anyone in what types of trees were purchased with the
> funds raised.

I'm sure they were grateful for that. However, I'm also sure that they feel
much more "uneasy" than they are willing to discuss. As I said before,
nobody wants to be grateful all the time.
> 
> One member over the years has purchased an air hockey table, a pingpong
> table, and a treadmill for the community.  In the first two cases, the
teens
> used it for a while then lost interest, and it is now just cluttering up
the
> common house.  

Perhaps becasue the community didn't really need this stuff, and if they had
had a meeting about it to pay for it, they wouldn't have. Your examples keep
Illustarating to me how it could have been done better, rather than
concvincing me that expediency is everything.

>The treadmill has been well used.

One for three is not a good result, IMO.
> 
> I wanted to create a xeric perennial bed by the common house.  The other
> landscape members were agreeable, so it became part of the landscape plan.
> I dug out rocks and dug in compost; I paid for the plants myself.  Some
> members thought that it was wrong that I was asking for control -- the
right
> to plant what I wanted, or dig it up and move it if it wasn't working, or
> take it out entirely.  If I was willing to put in twenty hours a month on
my
> garden (the word "my" in that context really bugged one guy), I should be
> willing instead to put in twenty hours a month, on top of my other
community
> work, on projects other people thought were important, never mind if I
> didn't.
> 
> No dice.  Do you think I'm stupid?  Or are these people really that naive?
> Of course they aren't -- I don't see them contributing anything extra,
with
> no strings.  They play power games themselves, and assume that's what I'm
> doing.
> 
> It's fine if somebody *wants* to give money or labor to the group under
> those conditions, but for the group to *demand* those conditions?  That's
> not cohousing, that's communism-as-practised -- the sort that has
> impoverished so many countries.
> 
> You remember the horse in Animal Farm?  The one who responded to every
> setback by saying he would work harder? When he collapsed, the pigs said
> they were sending him to a spa for his health.  The goat puzzled out the
> word "Knackers" on the side of the van that came to pick him up, but he
> wasn't sure what that meant.
> 
> The year before and the first two years after move-in, I was in "I'll work
> harder" mode.  Members were unhappy about the ugly roadbase gravel along
the
> central path.  It stuck on your shoes, and smelled bad on hot days. They
> wanted it covered a.s.a.p.  While other people unpacked their boxes, I
> helped plan paving the path.  I attended meetings, researched pavement
> types, wrote for samples, did surveys, talked to the fire department, read
> about ground covers, priced bricks, attended trade shows, did cost
> calculations, located seed sources, wrote proposals, ordered sand, studied
> bids, visited nurseries, spread compost, planted.
> 
> Other people went camping on weekends; I laid sod for the common house
lawn
> in blazing sun and cold night rain.  I researched play equipment, even
> though none of the community kids is mine.  Members said they were tired
of
> looking at orange leafbags; I was one of the handful out there heaving
bags
> into the back of the pickup, driving them to the garden, slitting them
open
> and dumping out slimy smelly leaves, and when my gloves got soaked I was
> grateful for the warmth from the decomposition that kept my hands warm
> enough to keep working.
> 
> All my vacation time was spent on community work.
> 
> I accomplished a lot.  I learned a lot -- I learned about soil structure,
> the difference between masons sand and sharp sand, to drive a bobcat, and
> lay sprinkler line.  I look back on that period with pride and increased
> self-confidence, but absolutely no wish ever to live through it again.
One
> of the things I learned was that I can't keep giving and giving and giving
> without getting enough back; after a while unpleasant things come to fill
> the void it creates inside me, anger and depression and passive-aggressive
> behavior.  I learned the necessity of telling people, You want it done,
you
> do it.  If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it my way, for my reasons.
I
> learned the necessity of turning a deaf ear to bitching.  (It doesn't mean
I
> don't fall back into the trap from time to time.)
> 
> I don't do nearly as much community work now (despite which, I think I
still
> do more than average).  I pick my projects, sometimes totally ignoring
> community priorities.

Again, this sounds much more like burnout and rebellion than your process
working, or you learning how to live in community. Or anything I might
construe as a reason to abandon the consensus process. I think this post
could have been considerably shorter and to the point if you had left out
the parts where you explain your own difficulty in setting personal
boundaries.
> 
>> ... anything that is not a
>> priority for the whole community shouldn't be paid for.
> 
> !!!  By that logic, our community wouldn't have a parking lot, let alone
> subsidized childcare during meetings.  (Let people park on the street, or
> get rid of their car and take the bus like I do.  If the city insists we
> have a certain amount of paved area anyway, we can put picnic tables on
it.
> Car owners are a special interest group.)

See below.

> In longterm relationships, what goes around comes around.  I'll be honest
if
> you are.  With the government, I pay taxes, and I expect the police to
show
> up if I need them -- but it isn't a quid pro quo.  In a community, I'll
help
> work/pay for your wants and needs, even if I don't share them, on the
> understanding that you will help work/pay for mine.  I'll be generous if
> you'll be generous back.  You give in your way, and I'll give in mine --
> Recompense doesn't have to be today, it doesn't have to be in the same
> currency.

In one paragraph, you say that your community won't agree to pay for basic
things like parking and childcare, and in the next, you say that everyone is
taking care of each others' needs in your community. Or is that the
community you wish you had?
> 
> We don't have to have identical wants and needs, or identical resources,
in
> order to live together.  Just as a mixture of straw and clay are stronger
> than either alone, a community is stronger for its mingled diversity.  The
> ability to accept (or reject) gifts, to decide if the strings attached are
> acceptable, to balance civic-mindedness and self-interest, is one of the
> things that makes a community instead of a business or a religion.


> 
> All of which said, I think a voluntary donation fund to be spent as the
> community decides is an idea to hold onto.  Our monthly assessments are a
> flat fee, the same for everyone, low- or high-income, one- or
four-bedroom.
> They are held down to be affordable.  We haven't yet run through the
capital
> leftover from the construction loan being paid off, but the amount is
losing
> digits fast, and we'll soon have to think about alternative ways of
funding
> big projects.

> Kay
> Wasatch Commons
> Salt Lake City, Utah
> argyle @ mines.utah.edu

I'd say your community is in serious need of re-evaluation of your process
and how you get money for projects. You are about to run out of money and
you have no budget for projects. You haven't considered the needs of
low-income people at all. Why no sliding scale on the HOA dues? Why are you
funding so much privately? Rather than convincing me of your position, you
have convinced me in no uncertain terms that I'm right about this. You have
provided a textbook case of why gifting doesn't work, and why decisions
about money need to be made by consensus.

-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California
tamgoddess [at] comcast.net

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