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

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Mar 7, 2022, at 12:32 AM, Allison Tom <allisonrtom [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> I have to admit that I still can't wrap my head around the general
> acceptance of charging members to use the guest rooms on the grounds that
> "it costs money" to pay for heat and light (hosts do all of the work of
> cleaning, changing bedding, etc) while it's free to use every other space
> in the building, most of which cost more to run and to clean than the guest
> rooms.
> 
> I can't figure out what value is represented by that decision.

I agree. A basic value of cohousing in my understanding is that it provides us 
with an opportunity to establish economic as well a social values that are more 
equitable than those of capitalism. Capitalism allows anything that can be 
turned into a commodity, anything that can be packaged and sold to become a 
“profit center.” If you can sell it, and sell it easily, you can sell it. The 
guest rooms are easier to sell than other resources like the workshop because 
the guestrooms are reserved on the calendar. Use can easily be tracked and 
charged for.

There is no rational for charging for guest room use unless the fee is actually 
used to clean the room after every guest or pay for other direct costs of using 
the room. If they are only heated or cooled when someone is staying there. If 
the linens are one-use items. Those are clear charges clearly related to use. 
The guest rooms were sold to us with our units as available. They were not sold 
as "extra fees.” Why don’t we have extra fees for use of the kids room or the 
Wii? How many people use the Wii? And it wears out far faster than the guest 
room furnishings, even the sheets.

We had a major reveal a number of years ago when we discovered that one unit 
was using the guest rooms 40 nights a year, others none, many for 5-7 nights a 
year. We had a meeting in which we generated various ways to balance use and 
there are many suggested from free nights for all and to charge for numbers 
over that. We ended up with a “requested donation” of $25, and promises to 
those of us who disagreed for additional discussions to explore other 
alternatives and give those who believed that this was important or fair to 
explain to others so we could understand this. It never happened.

We don’t charge for use of the washing machines, for example, and they 
frequently have to be serviced because people use too much detergent. I don’t 
mind paying for amenities that I don’t use when their use contributes to the 
joys of community. I love having people in the community enjoying things I 
don’t particularly like doing — water balloon fights, watching football, 
refinishing furniture, baking in the CH kitchen, using the exercise room 
everyday, etc. All those things cost money and are exclusive to an even smaller 
group of people than those who use the guest rooms. But I do mind paying for 
service calls required to fix things people are breaking by not paying 
attention to directions. The discussion of charging enough to pay for the 
service calls gets no traction AND without any consent or notice whatsoever the 
washers with coin slots were replaced with washers without them. 

No one can explain this to me. And no one wants to discuss it again so there 
never has been another discussion to do things differently.

My feet on the ground position has been that if the guest room charges really 
are contributions, then I’m not making them. And I haven’t. But now years 
later, we have many new residents who don’t know the history and seem to think 
it is expected if not required. People track the income and it has a line in 
the annual budget. The guestrooms have been a godsend during the pandemic so 
people can isolate there and to house relatives to come to care for new babies 
or others who are sick. I have not raised a discussion about whether these 
caregivers should be paying $25 a night. It just takes more energy than other 
issues I care about it. (I have to choose my battles — although many would say 
I take all of them on.) 

But increasingly we are losing any thought in cohousing of examining our 
economic assumptions and doing things differently. We do many things more than 
other social groups do them and do them better, but nothing that changes the 
same economic assumptions that create economic disparity. While we step up 
frequently to donate money to people who need it — we established an anonymous 
fund for pandemic emergencies, for example — the task of looking at how our 
basic funding contributes to inequality is avoided as “divisive.” Inequality is 
unifying?

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org