Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: guest rooms

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 21 Sep 2010, at 12:26 PM, Ken Cameron-Bell wrote:

> \We are following the same procedure here at DayBreak, but we are still a
> growing community and we wonder what will happen as more people move in and
> we have more demand for the guest rooms.

Cross your bridges when you come to them, just don't do anything that prevents 
the building of bridges. Our rooms are used much less as time goes by than they 
were in the first few years. 

I personally don't agree with using guest rooms as money-makers, unless the 
money goes to upkeep the rooms, or using money to inhibit use. Some ask for 
donations. I ask only if the guests are not my family or friends.

We set up queue system so people notified of cancellations promptly —often the 
rooms go unused. People have to make a special request for reservations longer 
than 10 days. People have to make a request to reserve the rooms longer in 
advance than 4 months.

If heavy use by some households is a problem we once discussed having a point 
system or an allotment of a certain number of days a year to balance the use 
but just pointing out that one household was using the space far in excess of 
other households, balanced the use.

Measuring and presenting the data or just discussing concerns is much more 
effective and much more quickly effective than writing policies.

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