Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Per Household or per person?

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
sharonvillines.com
> wrote:

> While some communities do have some fees assessed by person and others by
> size of unit, I think that is a hard nut to crack. It gets you into who
> really lives there, who is an adult and who is a child (as in huge 14 year
> olds who are accident prone), etc.


We briefly considered some sort of per-person fee and we ran into exactly
this problem.  Who "lives" somewhere?

- Jane buys a unit.  Her friend Pat stays with her for a couple months
every summer.  Does Pat "live" with Jane?
- Jane also has a boyfriend Paul, who stays at her house 2-4 nights a week.
 Does Paul "live" with Jane?
- Jane and Paul get married, and he lives there full-time, but only her
name is on the deed.  Does Paul live there now?
- Paul's ex-wife Janet lives in the same community, and their son lives in
both Jane's home and Janet's.  Does he count once or twice?
- Jane and Paul buy a winter home in Florida, and live there 9-10 months a
year, only coming back in the summer.  (Pat's there in the summer too,
remember).  How many people "live" in that unit?
- While they are in Florida, Paul's niece Polly, who goes to college
nearby, stays in their unit rent-free in return for watching their pets.
- etc.

We kind of knew before move in that "household" was hard to define, but
it's proved even more true than we guess it would after move in.  We have
an ever shifting set of full-time owner residents, part-time owner
residents, absentee owners with tenants, roommates, tenants, boyfriends,
girlfriends, long-term visitors and couch-crashers, shared custody, elder
parents, exchange students, minor children, adult children, foster
children.  I've been really astounded at the huge variety of "households"
represented in our 68 homes.

Right now we are discussing how to determine who is a "member" and what
obligations and rights are associated with these different type s of
members.  It's hard enough to determine who needs to help shovel snow or
who gets to use the hot tub without a fee.  If we tried to apportion our
condo fees by "membership", we'd never be able to set a budget!

Diana
(Mosaic Commons, Boston, MA)