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

[Bonnie Fergusson (fergyb2]

One reason we closed down the guest room during the pandemic has to do with 
it’s location.  You have to walk through the fitness room to get to our guest 
room and with all the gyms in the area shut down the ability to work out 
without being exposed to others was very important to many residents so the 
solution involved sign ups for the fitness room (1 at a time) and nobody 
staying in the guest room.Bonnie FergussonSwans Market Cohousingoakland, CA


Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad


On Sunday, March 6, 2022, 5:24 PM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

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
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