Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Charging to use community facilities, especially guest rooms

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

We get 5 nights free per household (including affiliate households
that don't live here). We then pay a small amount for more nights (I
think it's $10?) and guests pay $20 per night. I think we have some
kind of exception that visitors from other cohousing groups pay less.

The fact that something is *mine* doesn't mean it's cost free.  For
example I "own" my house, but I still pay a fee for electricity.
Also, this is "all-of-us" choosing to charge "all-of-us."
I would agree with the previous posting that it makes up for the fast
that some of us use the room a great deal, others use it rarely.

For example, my family had a friend lose her housing and we put her up
for almost 3 months (she moved out of the guest room if someone else
needed it.)

It would have felt grossly unfair to use it that much if we did not
have a policy of paying for the usage.

Interestingly, our guest rooms have gotten *more* use during covid, as
we used them for health people to get away from covid-positive family
members, and for covid-positive members to quarantine away from family
members.

-Liz
(The Rev. Dr.) Elizabeth Mae Magill
Pastor, Ashburnham Community Church
Minister to the Affiliates, Ecclesia Ministries
www.elizabethmaemagill.com
508-450-0431

On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 7:10 PM Bonnie Fergusson via Cohousing-L
<cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
>
> Here at Swans Market every homeowners unit gets 3 free guest room nights a 
> year and after that we get charged $10 per night for family and friends which 
> we pay tax on and the remainder goes to pay utility and upkeep costs of the 
> guest room.  We charge more, I think it’s $20 a night for “Community guests” 
> which are mostly folks from other Cohousing communities, or occasionally 
> others.  We came to this policy a few years after move in because some 
> households never use the guest room and others use it a lot so it seemed to 
> make sense to have a usage fee while still preserving some free night 
> options.  We don’t charge for use of the rest of the common house at all, 
> ever, partly for philosophical reasons and partly because the common House is 
> used so frequently by all of us it would be a pain in the butt to administer 
> and collect fees.  Guest room fees are charged to the unit and Community 
> guests need to have a resident host who is responsible for collecting the 
> money among other things.
>    Currently we do not allow any use of the Guest room due to the pandemic as 
> part of our attempt to keep the virus at bay.  Now that the case numbers are 
> dropping we may open up again sometime in the next month or so, covid 
> willing.Bonnie FergussonSwans Market CohousingOakland, CA
>
> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad
>
>
> On Sunday, March 6, 2022, 3:10 PM, Allison Tom <allisonrtom [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
> Hello list,
>
> I am about to reengage with my community on the topic of charging guests
> (in practice, usually hosts) a nightly fee for the use of our guest room.
>
> I was gobsmacked when our working group proposed charging members to use
> the common house for private events and to host guests in our guest
> facilities.
>
> For years I'd heard about how we could choose to live in smaller homes
> because we had the facilities of the community at our disposal. I heard
> repetitive statements such as "these facilities are an extension of our
> homes."  And yet the working group proposed to charge families for events
> such as children's birthday parties and for guest accommodations.
>
> The suggestion to charge for common house use was dropped, and many members
> have hosted events in our common house. But there was no uptake on my
> arguments that charging for guest room use was contrary to the philosophy
> of sharing resources to reduce our personal costs and our footprint.
> Frankly, I don't understand how or why this one use can be separated from
> all other free uses but I feel like an outsider in holding this opinion -
> it's as if we aren't coming from the same world.
>
> The policy is up for review again and I'm looking for help.
>
> Please write to me personally at this address or respond to the list, as
> you wish.
>
> IF YOUR COMMUNITY DOES CHARGE for guest rooms or other facilities, what is
> the philosophy behind that charge? How do you make sense of it? (This is
> not a snarky question, I genuinely don't understand, especially when I ask
> for a principled reason for charging.)
>
> How much do you charge? Who is responsible for cleaning and prepping the
> room for the next guest? Where do you live (urban, rural, high cost or
> relatively low cost of living)?  What is the average size of a family
> unit?  Do you charge for the use of other facilities such as common house,
> common meeting space, workshop, bike room, kids' playroom?
>
> IF YOUR COMMUNITY DOES NOT CHARGE for the use of guest rooms or other
> facilities, what principles guided your community away from charging?
>
> Then, if you will, the questions I posed for those who do charge:  Who is
> responsible for cleaning and prepping the room for the next guest? Where do
> you live (urban, rural, high cost or relatively low cost of living)?  What
> is the average size of a family unit?  Do you charge for the use of other
> facilities such as common house, common meeting space, workshop, bike room,
> kids' playroom?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Allison Tom
> Driftwood Village Cohousing, North Vancouver, BC
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>
>
>