Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 218, Issue 9

[Wim De Saegher (wim.de]

Hi Tom,

Our community (Cohousing Waasland, Belgium) does charge for private use of
common facilities.

The reasoning is simple: yes, the common house & guest rooms are an
extension of your house.
And just as you pay for heating, water, maintenance... of your house, you
pay for the same costs in the common facilities.

It feels more fair that a family who uses the common facilities more, also
contributes more for the costs.
It would feel unfair that our 80-years old resident who only uses the common
house privately once a year, would pay for all the families hosting each 10
birthday parties per year.
And offcourse the same reasoning is also applied for cleanup, taking out the
trash, washing the towels: after you use it, you clean it. Just as you
(hopefully!) would in your own home. 

That should still reduce your personal costs and blueprint, since you only
pay when you use it and don't have to construct all these facilities in your
own private home.
If it doesn't, I think you're doing something wrong. Also, when the areas
are used for the group, no charge is applied. 

Cheers,
Wim DS
CoWaLa - Belgium



Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2022 15:09:46 -0800
From: Allison Tom <allisonrtom [at] gmail.com>
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_ Charging to use community facilities, especially guest
        rooms
Message-ID:
        <CAHdY=27jRpA5QsmaHZQFnG6H4XUNHv+YrA9vLPv9WUiOU+5uxw [at] 
mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

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