Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Guest room policies?

[Bonnie Fergusson (fergyb2]

Dear Marty,
  Our Guest Room Policies have evolved over time and the current version is:
1.  Owners may sign up for the guest room on our main calendar for up to 10 
days in a row and not more than 6 months in advance.
2.  The owner who signs up for the guest room is the host and has the ultimate 
responsibility for orienting the guest to our rules (we have a 1 page sheet 
printed up which folk can use for that purpose), paying any applicable fees, 
and seeing that the guest room is clean and the sheets and towels which were 
used are washed, dryed, and put away before the next guest is due to arrive.
3.  The first 3 days that any owner uses the guest room in a given year are 
free and any use over that is charged at the rate of $10 per day for personal 
guests.
4.  We also host Community guests, which are generally cohousers or people 
interested in cohousing who contact us requesting to stay.  These guests are 
charged $20 per night and are hosted by the our "Concierge" who is the 
community member in charge of the guest room.  The Concierge is expected to do 
the orienting of guests, collecting of fees, and cleaning of the guest room 
after use.  This is part of their community work.
5.  We allocate the money from the guest room to pay for utilities, laundry 
use, and replacement of furnishings, sheets, towels, toilet paper, lightbulbs, 
etc. as necessary.
6. We pay taxes on that portion of guest room fees over and above what can 
justifiably be claimed for the above expenditures.

   In general these policies have worked fairly well.  We had some problems 
with unauthorized resident teen usage which resulted in a pregnancy and a 
subsequent policy of keeping the guest room locked when not occupied for a few 
years.  We've also occasionally had problems with community guests not being 
oriented well enough or communicated with well enough so that they violated our 
not well communicated rules about common space usage.  Usually other cohousers 
are not the problem but people "interested in cohousing" who come for a stay.  
We don't allow animals in our Common House or Guest room because of resident 
owners allergies and this once caused some problems with a guest room user who 
had a "companion dog" who was not a well trained service dog and caused a lot 
of ill feeling in the community when the dog appeared at common dinner and 
jumped on people.  We had to hash out the issue of service dogs and ultimately 
decided that since we are not a
 public facility we are not required to allow them in our Common House or guest 
room and don't.  In essence Resident's allergies trump non-residents needs.

                 Hope this is useful,
                 Bonnie Fergusson
                 Swan's Market Cohousing

--- On Mon, 9/20/10, Marty Roberts <MartyR [at] sonic.net> wrote:

> From: Marty Roberts <MartyR [at] sonic.net>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Guest room policies?
> To: "Coho-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Date: Monday, September 20, 2010, 8:43 AM
> 
> Hi folks,
> I haven't posted here in a long time.  After 11 years
> here at Two Acre  
> Wood, we are turning our kids playroom into a guest
> room.  I'm  
> interested in seeing guest room policies from other
> communities:
> fees for use
> reservation policies
> time limits?
> can one member use many times or does it need to rotate and
> so forth.
> 
> You can send direct to me or post to the list.
> 
> Thanks,
> Marty Roberts
> Two Acre Wood, Sebastopol, CA
> 
> 
> 
> Marty Roberts Productions
> Web, video, and event production
> Project design and management
> www.martyrobertsproductions.com
> 707.829.9191
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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