Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How do communities deal with members who can't pay their condo fees or assessments?

[Patricia Lautner (lautnerp]

To clarify:

JPCohousing in Boston initially invested some development money from the
budget, plus private funds from individual donors to create the
Affordability program we started with.  At that time, we invested almost
$200K by co-purchasing units for 4 qualified buyers.  We have a long
history of raising money and spending money on affordability.  The initial
investors were paid back by the initial borrowers (who either sold or
refinanced to pay back) and now the fund is completely managed by the
community.  Our current difficulty is finding a mechanism for using the
money in the new bank environment post recession.  We are not allowed to do
soft-second mortgages in the way we did back in 2005.  But we're working on
this problem.

With regard to Sharon's list of 'reasons' people need the money, we don't
ever go there.  If a household needs a short term loan, they ask and they
will receive.  End of story.  For soft second mortgages, we used to define
a qualifying household as one that is considered low- or moderate- income
based on the HUD guidelines for affordability for the city of Boston.  We
don't make judgments about what a household does with their money, further
- while it is a member's 'right' to know everything about the HOAs money,
there is a culture of privacy around these loans.  The community will know
if a loan was made but most members won't know to whom.  They understand
that they don't need to know and therefore they don't ask.

Patti
JPCohousing



On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 9:08 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
sharonvillines.com>
wrote:

>
>
> > On Feb 10, 2016, at 12:39 PM, Judith Adler <judith_adler [at] hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > At Cornerstone we are once again thinking of how much money we should
> keep in reserve, and one issue that repeatedly comes up is how we deal with
> members who cannot pay increasing condo fees, either because of job loss or
> low income. We have 4 non-market rate units and those household pay the
> same condo fees according to percent ownership as we all do.
>
> I was intrigued with the response from Jamaica Plain that they had these
> funds but in the end no one used them.
>
> Not to sound too much like a Scrooge, but I’m more concerned with how to
> determine that one household needs the money more than another. People have
> wildly different ways of spending money.
>
> I can’t afford to pay my condo fee this month because
>
> 1. Both my toenail artist and my hair dresser raised their fees. I have to
> see them weekly and it adds up. (This one is real!)
>
> 2. I would have to dip into my $1 million trust fund. (She doesn’t have
> exactly $1 million but a lot.)
>
> 3. For the last two years I have been too depressed to look for work. (She
> got the message that this probably wouldn’t fly.)
>
> 4. My daughter needs to vacation in Europe for two weeks every year to
> understand The World and become a global citizen. (A big complainer about
> money generally.)
>
> There are definitely real emergencies and crises but unless they are
> temporary, the community is subsidizing someone else's lifestyle. Some
> people cut back on eating lunches out but others don’t. One complains but
> others in the same financial circumstances don’t.
>
> Does the squeaky wheel get the grease? Even if the wheel has contributed
> and continues to contribute to its ability to use the grease wisely?
>
> For this reason, I would prefer facilitating private loans between
> community members, except for communities who have taken on subsidized
> housing from the beginning.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
>
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