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

[Virgil Huston (virgil.huston1955]

As an older person, one reason co-housing is not an attractive option (the
main reason is price) is becoming unwelcome where I live at some point. I
can't imagine that. I own my small house and, at this point, will stay here
until forced into a nursing home or something. To be honest, I think at
times I have equated co-housing to the long dead in the US concept of
multi-generational living that is so common in many cultures. You know, the
idea that multi-generations live together or in close proximity,
grandparents take care of the young children, cook and clean, the adult
kids work, everyone is happy. At some point, the grandparents need care and
can no longer work and they figure it out. LOL. It just doesn't work that
way here, although some cultures do this very well, even in the US. This is
just an observation based on what I see and think about at my age. Getting
old in the US (and many other places) is scary as hell. At least in my
house I own, no one is mad at me for not contributing to a community. No
one yells at me because my house isn't the cleanest, and so on.

Cheers,
Virgil

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 3:02 PM Kathleen Lowry <
kathleenlowrylpcclmft [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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