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

[Kay Argyle (Kay.Argyle]

In our community, unresolved (unresolvable) concerns, including variations of 
those expressed in this thread and others, invariably have made overarching 
participation proposals bog down. 

As a result, we initially started with an entirely voluntary work system. It 
quickly became clear that, for whatever reason, that wasn't successful for our 
community.

People have said, "If you don't feel good about the amount of work you are 
doing, quit doing it," which blames people for being responsive to community 
needs and IMO actually worsens burnout.

We passed piecemeal work agreements. Few of these have had teeth, but peer 
pressure at least gums over nonparticipants in the common house work team 
system enough to have kept it going (if not entirely to our satisfaction) for 
ten years. A common meal agreement which involved a differential price for 
those who didn't cook or clean survived a few years; the failure of agreements 
regarding grounds upkeep took it down with them. 

We started hiring out increasing amounts of work. That lowered some tensions 
and certainly improved upkeep of the community's physical infrastructure, but 
has left little money for anything else.

It seems to me that, surrounded by a "free market" society, we have 
unthinkingly been operating according to its values: Capital is worthy of 
respect; labor is not. We currently regard hiring someone to clean the common 
house for you as fulfilling your work team obligations. How is that different 
from a buy-out, or less "unfair" to people who can't afford to do it? We charge 
late fees for overdue HOA payments, yet forgive inattendance at work parties 
without question. Our community specifically decided against an income 
component in the HOA fee formula; what justification is there in wanting extra 
work from residents who have more time? 

Not asking anyone to justify their reasons for not doing community work, 
because "We don't want to embarrass anyone," freely excuses not only (for 
instance) a resident caring for a disabled child or a parent with Alzheimers, 
but also (for instance) a person who would rather watch a "Gidget" rerun than 
sweep the dumpster enclosure. The wish to be sensitive because people _might_ 
have limited time or money enables freeloading by people who have plenty of 
both. (I occasionally send my fellow community members into a tizzy by saying 
that some people _should_ feel embarrassed.)

In a shift of perspective, we decided to worry less about hypothetical 
residents who might need the community's generosity, and more about real 
residents whose generosity the community needs, residents who make time for 
community work no matter what else is going on in their lives, yet stretch 
their household budgets to help pay for work other people aren't doing -- 
speaking of fairness! 

In a system with no buyouts, none of the residents with inadequate time can 
fulfill community obligations, no matter their income. With buyouts, residents 
with insufficient time yet adequate income at least can fulfill obligations 
monetarily. Buyouts actually increase fairness, by expecting the impossible of 
fewer residents.

One of many reasons for building strong community relationships is to allow 
someone who needs special accommodation for their circumstances to feel minimal 
discomfort about asking for it -- if the community isn't already well aware of 
the situation, and offering more than they need or want. Our work discussions 
have always considered physical limitations; our current work-or-pay discussion 
already touched on donation of extra hours worked.

We don't anticipate that buy-outs will throw additional work onto the remaining 
workers, because, firstly, a buy-out means extra money for the budget (people 
seem to forget that detail), potentially used to hire work done; and secondly, 
that concern assumes the people buying out were doing community work 
previously. 

If inactive residents start either paying for work currently hired out, or 
doing it themselves rather than pay the $20/hr buyout, we'll have more money in 
the budget. Either HOA fees can go down, or we can finally afford some things 
we've never been able to afford. That's a potential direct benefit to 
households who don't buy out.

My thanks to everyone who has commented -- including the ones I don't 
necessarily agree with. ;)

Kay A.
Wasatch Commons
SLC

 

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