Cohousing-L Mailing List: Work distribution in senior cohousing

[Melanie Mindlin (sassetta]

We are a mixed age cohousing with some residents that are in their 60’s. In my 
experience, the olders here are doing far more work than the youngers because 
we have more time. The demands of work and family make it difficult for the 
younger folks (in their 40s and 50s mostly) to carve out the time and attention 
for cohousing tasks. They’re great on workdays and really accomplish a lot of 
landscaping, gardening and house cleaning. But not so great at bookkeeping, 
tracking issues, researching problems, and so on. It’s also a lot of work to 
find, negotiate with and supervise contractors and handy people.  

We have had some folks who are very DIY oriented and don’t want to spend money. 
Then we wait for months for them to have time to do something or a repair job 
is not done well and we have to call a professional or replace it anyway.

I believe that taking care of your community is not that much different than 
taking care of your own home. If you are no longer able to clean your house, 
you hire a cleaner. If you can’t take care of your garden, you hire a gardener. 
I don’t mean that when Susan is no longer able to do her share of community 
landscaping, she should hire someone to do her hours. I mean that the community 
should assess what it is able to accomplish and hire the rest out. Older people 
should be able to make the calls, meet the workers and make sure they’ve done 
what is asked. They can shop for necessary supplies and make sure all materials 
are on hand when a job is going to be done. This kind of “management” work 
should be highly valued. Just imagine what it would cost your community to hire 
a professional manager.

I’m suggesting that older residents can replace physical work with the work of 
taking responsibility. I find that people are hesitant to take responsibility 
for making sure things get done, and our community is challenged by 
follow-through. So olders can both set clear boundaries on their physical 
capacity and step up to organize and track projects through to completion.

Melanie
Ashland Cohousing

> 
> Hello,
> 
>       We have a 70+ gathering that meets periodically to discuss 
> age-related issues.  One issues that came up at our last discussion was 
> a feeling of being pushed on to do physical work tasks that one can no 
> longer easily or even possibly do, with the implication being that the 
> old(er) residents are not doing their "fair share" (quotes are 
> deliberate), and that it would be expensive to contract out those tasks 
> because there are not enough strong bodies to do them.
> 
>       So -- how is the necessary work done in senior cohousing 
> communities, or is most or all of it contracted out as being a necessary 
> budget item in a community with many age-disabled residents?