Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Limiting whole-house renting in CoHousing

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

Sara, my immediate reaction to your query is wanting to know what your
community's decision-making system is. If unanimous consent is required,
then it doesn't seem likely you could introduce new restrictions when at
least one member is adamantly opposed.

Are you hoping to change their mind by presenting other communities'
approaches to this?
   Muriel at Shadowlake Village

On Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 10:24 AM Sara Gottlieb <sara.gottlieb [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello CoHousers!
>
> I write from Lake Claire Community CoHousing in Atlanta, GA, USA.  We are a
> very small community (13 households) that has been in existence since
> ~1996.  Last year, one of our households, in a hurry to sell their home,
> sold to a non-resident investor whose intention was to rent the house for
> income.  While the situation has (so far) worked out well for the community
> - we were very involved in recruiting renters, and they are very involved,
> community-minded people - the situation raised a lot of concerns that this
> could become a trend with very detrimental impacts on community.  All of us
> receive multiple calls, emails, text messages, and mailings every day from
> investors looking to buy our homes.  Some of our residents are aging and
> could find themselves in a position of needing to sell quickly.
>
> We started a discussion about ways to prevent this from happening*, while
> allowing our residents to rent our homes during times of need (have to move
> temporarily to help an ill family member, have to move during a time when
> house prices are depressed and want to wait for the market to recover,
> etc.)  At least one of our residents is opposed to any limits on house
> rentals and doesn't think we have any reason to be concerned that this will
> become a trend.
>
> I was asked to put this question out to the larger CoHousing community to
> see what other communities (especially smaller ones) have done about this
> issue.  Thank you for your input!
>
> --
>
> Sara J. Gottlieb
> Lake Claire CoHousing Community, Atlanta, GA USA
> sara.gottlieb [at] gmail.com
>
>
> *Options we considered include:
>
> 1. Limit % of homes that can be rented at any one time
>
> 2. Limit whole-house rental to owners who have lived in the community for a
> minimum amount of time (e.g. 1 year)
>
> 3. Limit lease lengths to the amount of time owner has lived in community
> (lived here for 1 year?  You can only lease your house to someone else for
> a maximum of 1 year, etc.)
>
> 4. Minimum lease length (to avoid an AirBnB situation)
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