Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: guest rooms

[Kay Argyle (Kay.Argyle]

As with setting any other community policy, you can expect, while deciding on 
guest-room policy, to expend much angst over matters that turn out to be 
misapprehensions or moot, and to have issues that it never occurred to you to 
discuss turn sticky later on.

Our original guest room policy was consensed while our common house was under 
construction. It isn't strictly adhered to. Despite the official allotment of 
two weeks per household annually, nobody tracks usage. Some households never 
ever use the guest rooms, while others have guests two or three times a year 
for a week or two at a time.

On the other hand, the discussions got people on the same page about what was 
"reasonable," which I'm sure is a factor in the fact that, for the most part, 
the policy functions well, and I don't think there's ever been friction over a 
perception that someone was using the guestrooms more than was fair.

Wasatch Commons has two guest rooms (26 units in the community). At different 
times, one or the other has gotten co-opted for other uses for a while; 
currently one doubles as a meeting room. For a while we had a box springs and 
mattress more or less permanently in an upstairs sitting area, as an overflow 
guest area. Even with two rooms, guests sometimes wind up on somebody's couch 
or in sleeping bags in the sitting room.

Someone in the community must be a guest's official host. There's no charge for 
use by family or friends of residents (originally there was supposed to be a 
charge if someone used more than their 'free' allotment). 

The host is responsible for preparation of the room, laundering sheets 
afterwards, and cleaning the bathroom (one room has an en-suite 3/4 bath; the 
other is next to the handicap-accessible bath downstairs, with grab bars, 
turn-around space, and roll-in shower).

If a guest isn't friends/family, we ask a modest donation. Our accountant 
applies part of that against our utilities, reducing our tax liability for 
"income." (It doesn't matter if you _call_ it a donation; it's still income, 
and taxable.)  When the person's whose contact info is on the website gets an 
inquiry from a traveler, he forwards it to the community listserv or announces 
it at a community meeting, and usually someone volunteers to act as host. 

Most people announce (listserv, meeting, whiteboard) when they will be having 
guests stay in the common house: who the guests are; dates of stay; make, 
model, & color of the guests' vehicle (we've had stolen cars dumped in our 
parking, so people get concerned about strange vehicles).

One resident hosts groups (college students mostly) of volunteers for local 
nonprofits once or twice a year. He always clears it in advance with the 
community; after ten years, the request is pretty pro forma, particularly since 
he often asks the visitors to put in a few hours of work around the community 
as a thank you for free housing (he knows we're not turning down free labor).

The common house committee has discussed putting a small notice-board by the 
stairs for guest info, partly to easily remind the person doing nightly lockup 
that there is a guest staying in the common house (and therefore to leave the 
heat turned up or the cooler on).

The common house has a single swamp cooler, nowhere near either guest room. The 
upstairs room in particular is frequently sweltering in summer. My household 
has had guests who said, no thanks, we'll find a motel.

The first reservation system was a paper calendar. Later, our listserv manager 
started an email calendar for meetings, chore schedules, events, birthdays etc. 
People starting making reservations on that. A guestroom got double-booked, 
with conflicting reservations on paper and email. To prevent this happening 
again, some people wanted to do away with the paper calendar. Some other people 
don't want to be coerced to use email. After discussion, it was agreed (in some 
cases grudgingly) that we shouldn't force technology on people. The paper 
calendar was designated the "official" reservation system; people are 
encouraged to get the reservation on the email system as well, but the paper 
calendar takes precedence in the event of a conflict.

The downstairs guestroom became subject to some residents' cluelessness about 
accessibility issues. Several people wanted to use it for a private meeting 
room. They regarded agreeing to a hide-a-bed (in poor condition) as a 
more-than-sufficient compromise with those whose guests couldn't make it up the 
stairs to the upstairs guest room -- and never mind that the guests also had 
bad backs, making sleeping on a hide-a-bed out of the question. A few residents 
still hold a grudge about a Murphy bed being installed. It "made the room too 
small." (These were the same people as were burning incense during their 
meetings, despite the common house no-smoking policy. Like I said: clueless. 
And possibly a reason the person responsible for the Murphy bed, who has severe 
asthma and had protested about the incense, wasn't sympathetic about them 
disliking the Murphy bed. What goes around comes around.)

Three pieces of poor design combine into a problem: (1) We have no storage to 
put away tables and chairs (that has always boggled me - what was the architect 
thinking?); (2) the upstairs guestroom has windows opening onto the downstairs 
hall; and (3) the downstairs guestroom doesn't have a door opening into the 
bathroom next to it, and we can't retrofit a door because the bathroom fixtures 
are on that wall (annoyingly, there's plenty of room on the opposite wall). We 
don't want to keep all the tables set up in the dining room all the time; they 
aren't needed for most meals, and just make extra work setting up for an event 
(twice as many tables to fold and carry away). Thus that hallway usually has 
folded tables leaning against the wall and stacks of chairs. There's no good 
place for a nightlight. As a result, a downstairs guest on their way to the 
bathroom has a choice -- wake up the folks upstairs by turning on the hall 
light, or wake them up falling over something. 

Kay
Wasatch Commons
Salt Lake

 
 

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