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

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Feb 11, 2016, at 12:37 PM, Patricia Lautner <lautnerp [at] 
> jpcohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> We are not allowed to do
> soft-second mortgages in the way we did back in 2005.  But we're working on
> this problem.

Can you do Liens? Are there negatives to doing that? Then when the loan is paid 
back, the lien can be removed.

> 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 loans I don’t think this is necessary unless the community feels it is 
being abused. (We do have one person who consistently takes personal advantage 
whenever money is involved. If this money was available at a lower interest 
rate than a bank, she would use it. But that is an isolated personality.)

We have members who would like to have a program for excusing or lowering condo 
fees for periods of time or permanently.Thus others would pay more. I know some 
communities have a process for doing this. 

I can think of one household that I would trust enough to do this. They have 
chosen not to have children, to take low paying peace work jobs, and contribute 
a lot of time and responsibility to the community. But then how do we balance 
that with another household who views themselves as equally sacrificing. A 
single parent that adopts another hard-to-place child, for example? 

But we also have almost no problems with late or unpaid dues. One person got 
behind when she lost her job, and another was behind because in error two 
months fees were not paid they were not notified that they hadn’t been paid. 
The Treasurer arranged payment plans to catch up. It is just not a problem. And 
we do have households that have taken serious financial hits, particularly 
during the Great Recession when some salaries were reduced by !0% and large 
numbers of non-profit organizations closed. 

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