Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: work-or-pay system - legalities? general advice?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 19 Apr 2011, at 1:19 PM, R Philip Dowds wrote:

> Anticipating contingencies is a critical component
> of all planning and forecasting efforts.  Of necessity, contingencies are
> hypothetical; were they not, they’d be actualities.

True. However, if you look at the hypotheticals that argue against mandatory 
workshare — play or pay — they are always of the poor lowly paid, overworked 
single parent who can't pay and will be further discriminated against by the 
rich, well-paid handsome couple who can just buy themselves out of more work 
and go on vacation. 

While it is still hard, evidenced by the fact that we are still having this 
discussion, to write the policy at all, one can write for the group as it 
exists now and change it when the situation above arises. That avoids the 
hypotheticals and gives you objections you can resolve, or have a good chance 
of resolving, one way or another. 

In our case, for such a system to be mandatory, we would have to exempt at 
least two people. In these two instances, both work, one far more than could be 
expected. They are just opposed for emotional reasons — "homes shouldn't work 
on a play or pay basis."

Exceptions can also be fair resolutions if everyone agrees to them. We 
recently, after 10 years, passed a pet policy banning additional outdoor cats 
by exempting the ones we had already. It was the only way and everyone was 
reasonably comfortable with that solution.

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