Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Unoccupied Units & the Effect on Workshare

[Kathleen Lowry (kathleenlowrylpcclmft]

Sharon, Your openness and honesty is such a gift. Thank you. Kathleen

> On Jan 22, 2023, at 1:19 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 15, 2023, at 11:59 AM, Marilyn Seiler <marilynseiler72 [at] 
>>> gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I would appreciate feedback and discussion on the increasing
>> number of members absent from the community for extended periods of time.
> 
> We have been pretty clear with each other that we don’t expect people to move 
> in planning to live part-time somewhere else. We have been lucky since we 
> don’t have it written down anywhere—we just talk about it. During the 
> Pandemic, 2-3 households at a time were living elsewhere, usually with family 
> out of the city. Some have since moved. 
> 
> We have one unit that has been rented for the maximum amount of time allowed 
> (3-4 years) and is still empty. This has led to reconsidering our rental 
> policy and the effect of non-resident sort-of-present owners — living 
> elsewhere in town but not ready to sell.
> 
> Cohousing communities in the Sunbelt and the Snowbelt have worried about 
> this. In a small community it makes a big difference to have a hole next 
> door. The unit next to me will be empty for 6 months and has been empty at 
> times for a year or more before. I feel the lack of neighbors especially 
> because I have an end unit. 
> 
>> I would like to include members who are physically and mentally incapacitated
>> and unable to participate. They have adequate paid support but the paid
>> support does not participate in any community tasks or events except to
>> occasionally assist in getting the member to the event and remaining to
>> assist as necessary.
> 
> This seems not to be as worrisome if the person has been living in the 
> community for years and contributed in many ways and becomes unable to 
> contribute. But what happens when a person wants to move in who can’t or 
> doesn’t plan to contribute from day one? Our only protection is making the 
> expectations clear. But I suppose we could also make an agreement with such a 
> person to pay a workshare fee. 
> 
>> It also adds work to the participating members in
>> many very small additional tasks we perform to assure the safety and
>> well-being of the member.
> 
> This is one of the issues with rented units. One household has rented their 
> unit for the 3 months they have summered elsewhere and another has exchanged 
> homes with a household in the Servas program. The renters have most often 
> (always?) been delightful people who did contribute but it is still extra 
> work for others to orient people and caution them about stuff.
> 
>> I know that I would like to remain in my home
>> until I die, but is it fair to the Community to have a non-participating
>> member, maybe as long as 2-3 years? How do we as a Community address this
>> ever-increasing issue?
> 
> In order to have people stay in their homes until death do us part, we need a 
> plan. A friend has her favorite cartoon posted over her desk: Two prisoners 
> are shackled hand and foot to the stone wall in a dungeon. And one says, 
> “What we need is a plan.” It feels like that some days.
> 
> I think cohousing might have a lot to learn from senior living communities 
> and continuing care facilities. They have experience with the balance of age 
> groups and identified risks in terms of debilitating conditions. They 
> carefully balance the ages and conditions of new residents so it is 
> manageable. They know how many residents are likely to need “memory care”, 
> for example. How many people it takes to staff a unit of single-room 
> residences with shared common areas.
> 
> This long trail of a message is to tie all these issues together into the 
> workshare thread. A resident with an MBA who had also been president of a 
> coop board and worked in a law firm, once said that our workforce was 1/3 the 
> number of our residents. Without actually tracking this on paper, I think 
> they were right. 
> 
> The estimate was that at any given time 1/3 would be ill or otherwise 
> overwhelmed with the demands of their personal lives and another 1/3 would be 
> people who were not highly competent or leaderly or entertaining. They 
> contribute at some level but can’t be depended on to do things as well as 
> others might want them done. I think that may be underestimating the 
> abilities of that 1/3, but it isn’t too far off. This includes people who 
> need a lot of coaxing, reminding, and supervision. Some are more hesitant 
> than incapable.
> 
> The people in each 1/3 change from one year to the next, but at any given 
> time of 60 adult residents, it might be standard that 20 will be the people 
> who are taking leadership in planning and doing activities. Another 20 will 
> participate in this or that and come to workdays sometimes. And 20 will be in 
> various conditions of unavailable. Sounds bleak but more realistic than 
> expecting everyone to do 6 hours a month.
> 
> We tend to look at one list of jobs and another list of members and try to 
> match them up. What we probably need to do more is look at the history of the 
> community and the size of the most available workforce. How many people at 
> any given time are readily available? How many people will be stressed out 
> looking for jobs? Finding daycare? Recovering from ____? Taking time out 
> because they are still angry about some decisions made last year. 
> 
> When I come up against questions like this I wish I had kept a log. Although 
> I probably wouldn’t have thought to keep track of these kinds of things.
> 
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
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