Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: You can have it both ways

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Nov 30, 2005, at 2:05 PM, Rob Sandelin wrote:

>  I realised that in my post I forget a key point, you can encourage and
> allow members to follow their bliss, and also set some kind of minimum 
> input
> requirement. That way, people who want to spend 10 hours a week in the
> garden can do so, even if the minimum is only 2 hours a week.

I think minimums works very well. It has also worked well for us  in 
financial terms. People pay the minimum but often contribute more.

The workshare policy we are discussing now would set an average minimum 
of 4 hours a week--including meal preparation, meetings, anything 
people consider a contribution to the community--and suggests 
self-regulation with a payment of $20 for any hours not "worked."

We require all workers except residents to be insured and licensed. The 
hourly rates vary from snow plowing at $42 an hour to plumbing at $90 
an hour plus travel charges so a realistic charge would be much higher.

We had to have our elevator pit drained and cleaned with cost a fortune 
with three workers at $42 an hour for about 6 hours. We now do it 
ourselves in 1 1/2 hours but it gets old. We hope to find a permanent 
fix but.....

Labor is very valuable.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org