Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: "Community guests" in CH guest rooms

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 30 Jun 2011, at 9:17 AM, Eris Weaver wrote:

> RE: "community" guests - we require that ANY guest be sponsored by someone
> in the community - that person is in charge of letting the guest know our
> rules and customs, cleaning the room after, etc. When someone who isn't a
> personal friend of a resident requests a visit, we put it out to the
> community to see if anyone is willing to sponsor. Most of the time someone
> steps up, otherwise we have to say no. We don't make the rules any different
> for any category of guest.

We do the same at Takoma Village. Someone just needs to be responsible for 
anyone visiting anywhere in the community.

We don't charge for guest rooms because _some_ of us believe, also the same as 
FrogSong, that the guest rooms are an amenity that is already paid for and we 
don't charge extra to use other amenities. We do, however, ask for a donation 
of $25 a night and many people do collect this. I collect from guests that I 
might be sponsoring but do not pay for my personal guests.

Cambridge Cohousing, I hear, has much nicer guest rooms that they do charge to 
use, but we don't have independent cleaning or a budget for upgrading 
furnishings as they do. Ours are vintage thrift store with not great 
mattresses. We have members quietly pushing for the Cambridge style.

We do have hugely unequal use of the guest rooms. A survey a few years ago 
revealed that one household (of 43) used the rooms 40+ nights a year, others 
none, with an average of 14. Some of us would like a system where each 
household has a certain number of free nights and then borrows nights from 
others or pays. We are in DC which has not only many museums (the zoo is also a 
museum) with no admission fees, is also a place for people's children to see 
your government in action, and the site of many demonstrations and civil rights 
actions. Thus we have a greater demand from "non-personal" guests.

(I rarely use the guest rooms either way because I'm the world's worst host. I 
get too engrossed in my writing or whatever and forget about them.)

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