Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Process for non payment of dues

[Mac Thomson (macthomson]

Our Finance team is made up of volunteers, like all of our teams, so we don’t 
want to create undue friction for them in collecting late dues. Our HOA 
invoices come out on the 1st of each month and are due on the 15th. Any late or 
non-payments of invoices are automatically assessed a $15 late fee on their 
next invoice, no questions asked. That seems to motivate members to pay their 
invoices on time for the most part and relieves the Finance team of those 
stressful collection conversations.

If a member gets behind by two or three months (I can’t remember the 
threshold), then someone on the Finance team has the job of having a 
conversation with the delinquent member to explore how to get the past due 
amount paid and stay current going forward. That’s currently my responsibility, 
but I haven’t had to have any collection conversations for many years. The 
bookkeeper alerts me when a member is delinquent by two or three months; 
otherwise, I don’t know who is paying on time or late. Every year we collect 
maybe $300 in late fees.

We also have something called the Heartwood Humanitarian Fund (HHF), which 
plays into all this to some degree. The HHF is fully funded by voluntary 
donations added to members’ monthly invoices if they choose. Any member can 
confidentially request money from the HHF in case of financial hardship, which 
is administered by our Steering team. I am not aware of any HHF request having 
ever been denied. So if a member is experiencing a financial hardship and can’t 
pay their HOA bill, or other bills, they can get money from the HHF. The 
balance of our HHF usually fluctuates from about $2K - $6K.

-- 
Mac Thomson

Heartwood Cohousing
Southwest Colorado
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


"I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure."
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> On Jun 8, 2021, at 10:25 PM, BETSY ALGIRE <betsy1945 [at] comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Our finance team at Liberty Village cohousing in Union Bridge, Maryland, has 
> asked me to get some input from Cohousing-L about an issue that has come up 
> in our community. We would like to know how other communities have handled 
> non payment of dues and other expenses by their members. We have had a 
> serious problem with this in the past year. Since the people involved have 
> made no attempt to explain why they are not paying what they owe, we are at a 
> lost on how to handle this. We have discussed creating a method to allow 
> members to ask for a short period of respite from paying but are not sure 
> what criteria we should use and how to set this up. If any other communities 
> have had this problem and have set up a process to deal with it please reply 
> on this thread. Thanks for your consideration.
> In Community
> Betsy Algire
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