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

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

Mosaic Commons is very similar to Swans Market: every household gets 5 free
nights per year in the guest rooms, and $10 a night past that.  Cohousers
from other communities who want to stay pay $20 per night.

Hosts are expected to prep the room for the guests and then wash the sheets
and tidy the room when they leave. We pay professional cleaners for
semi-monthly bathroom cleanings (the guest rooms have a shared bathroom for
just them.)

We live in a suburban area. Hotels in the area I think are $120 and up?
(TBH I don't stay in hotels near my own house so that's a guess.)  So the
charges for guest room use are minimal compared to that.

Regarding your argument that the common house is an extension of our homes
-- okay. if you host someone in your home, you pay for electricity for the
heat/AC, washing the linens, etc, and of course wear and tear on the
furnishings and room. It's not free to host a visitor in your own house, so
I don't see the contradiction in it not being free to host them at the CH.

We don't charge members/owners/residents for other use of the CH but we do
ask for a donation from outside groups (e.g. boy scouts, a club meeting,
that kind of thing.)

HTH.

Diana

On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 7:20 PM Bonnie Fergusson via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> Oh, and we are very urban in an expensive area.  We have 20 units and
> family size ranges from 1 to 4 not including pets.  Hosts are responsible
> for set up, clean up, collecting money and orienting guests to our
> rules.Bonnie Fergusson Swans Market Cohousing Oakland, CA
> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad
>
>
> On Sunday, March 6, 2022, 4:10 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
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