Cohousing-L Mailing List: Guest rooms

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

I'm checking with communities about how how you deal with guest rooms
for people in crisis.
We require a member host for all guest room usage and have ended up
with a variety of people in crisis staying in rooms.

One of my friends stayed for several months, leaving if someone else
needed the room. A couple struggling with their relationship ended up
with one of the two in the common house for quite some time. A member
with hip surgery ended up in a guest room for six weeks, as all our
homes have stairs. A member invited a friend who turned out to be
homeless to stay, and she didn't want to leave.

All except the hip surgery required intervention to end the practice,
and the intervention happened long after several folk were upset about
it.

My question for ya'll--have you had this? Do you have policies that
don't allow this--if so what tod they say? How do you get someone to
move on. How much of this is the responsibility of the host? (And if
so, what if the host thinks it's fine?)

We have two rooms, mostly unused, but all of these situations
interfered with someone who wanted to use the room traditionally, as a
place for the guests. And many people who want the space for guests
won't ask the long term user to give them space.

-Liz
Elizabeth Mae Magill
www.mosaic-commons.org
In Berlin, MA.