Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Membership - Allocating Costs

[Mac Thomson (mac]

On Sep 24, 2006, Nikki Sachs wrote:

> We at North Oakland Cohousing are talking about membership and  
> dues.  We are
> a new group that is working with some developers who have land.  We  
> are
> wondering how other cohousing communities determine what categories to
> charge for as individuals and what by household.  Is membership by  
> household
> and do you charge differently for single households vs couple or  
> family
> households?  What about meal expenses?  Thanks you,  Nikki  
> Sachs [at] gmail.com

While it is not possible to ever create a completely "fair" system  
for allocating dues, we still strive for overall fairness.  To that  
end, we recognized that some of our Home Owners Association (HOA)  
costs are more variable relative to the number of people (a family of  
5 requires more garbage collection than a family of 1) while others  
are more fixed in nature, regardless of the number of people (snow  
plowing).  What we came up with is that we fund 50% of our overall  
HOA budget on a per person basis and 50% on a per household basis.   
We don't ever try to figure out if any given cost should be charged  
on a per person or per household basis, we just apply this formula to  
the overall HOA budget.

This seems to strike a pretty good overall compromise between  
fairness and simplicity of administration.

The way it works in practice is that each year we create a operating  
budget and an estimate of the number of people who will be living in  
the community (which is pretty stable now that all our homes are  
built).  Using the 50/50 formula, we set HOA dues for the following  
year.  For example, this year our monthly dues are:

Household of 1 person - $86
Household of 2 people - $108
Household of 3 people - $131
Household of 4 people - $153
Household of 5 people - $176
Household of 6 people - $199

This does require that someone on the finance team is keeping a  
census of the number of people in each household, but that's not too  
hard.  For more info, see our Budget & Assessments agreement:
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com/AGREEMENTS/BUDASS.html

For meals, if you eat a meal, you get charged for a meal.  Kids are  
half price.

Good luck with your community!

Cheers,
Mac


--
Mac Thomson

Heartwood Cohousing
Southwest Colorado
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


 "Trust in Allah, but tether your camel."
                      - Middle Eastern Proverb
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