Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Should individual "sponsorship" be allowed of community

[Howard Landman (howard]

> Howard, I'm struck that you assume "fair" means everyone pays the same
> amount

Not for everything.  But for paying for a capital improvement where we
each own, by legal deeds, an exactly equal share of the resulting asset,
and can sell that share (along with our unit) when we leave, then yes,
I believe we should all pay equally.  Anything else is asking some members
to directly donate wealth to other members.  I'm not particularly fond
of kleptocracy no matter how it's disguised.

> and then conclude it's inevitable that the less well off will hold
> things up.

I never claimed inevitability.  I said it was possible, because I've
seen it happen, here in my community.  And I asked whether other people
thought that was a price worth paying.  Or what other options there
might be.

> The answer for us has been to [create]
> a pool of funds available for capital improvements.

We have one of those too.  But our basement will take about $75K to
finish off and we're putting something like $1-2K per year into the
fund.  You do the math.

> We assess a monthly fee for this purpose that is steeply
> scaled according to ability to pay.

I object to this for reasons explained above.  Let's say we have 34
households and we build a capital improvement worth $34K that is equally
owned by all households.  If household A pays $2000 towards this and
household B pays nothing, and then a few years later they both sell
their units and leave, the net effect is that the value of each property
was increased by around $1000, so household A has lost $1000 and B has
gained the same amount.  This is no different in principal from just asking
household A to write a check for $1000 to household B.  (This could be made
fair by placing a lien on property B for $1000 that had to be paid when
they sold their unit, but no one except me ever proposes that or even sees
it as acceptable.)

We have members in the community whose "ability to pay" depends partly on
how much they choose to work (as a consultant, I fall in this category
as well!).  If someone chooses not to work (as much) in order to have a
more relaxed lifestyle or (say) donate more of their time to charitable
work, does that obligate others to subsidize them?  If they choose
to work more in order to gain financial security, does that obligate
them to subsidize others?  I see "ability to pay" as a somewhat squishy
concept which is often strongly influenced by voluntary personal choices
(whether to go to college, what career to choose, how frugal to be,
how many children to have, eat out or cook at home, ...).

        Howard A. Landman
        River Rock Commons
        Fort Collins, CO

        "There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite
         so important, as living within your means." - Calvin Coolidge
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