Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Guest rooms

[KAREN A CARLSON (kcarlson2]

The questions about guest rooms.  At Arboretum Cohousing in Madison, Wisc, we 
have a 3-person guest room committee.  When a resident wants to book a room, 
they fill out a form on-line.  The committee member who gets the request 
screens it to make sure it follows our guidelines before transferring the 
request to the guest room calendar. A reservation doesn't appear on the 
calendar until any problems are resolved. I think this is the key to our 
system.  If there are questions, the person who books, consults with the other 
two members on the committee.  We have guidelines like "Two weeks total for one 
unit's request from Memorial Day to Labor Day," and "A single stay is limited 
to 2-weeks at any time of the year."  We find that those who are asking for 
more than the 2-weeks total per summer or per visit iare usually just 2 or 3 
nights more than the limit. If another room is available, the committee can 
grant the exception. If someone (btw, the guidelines mentioned are per unit—not 
per adult member in a unit) ​asks for significantly more time, the committee 
asks the community to weigh in. The guidelines do have some special 
considerations, e.g., family members visiting who live abroad, grandparents 
visiting a new grandchild, someone visiting a critically ill resident.  We have 
had residents using the guestrooms but the requests have been easily to grant, 
that is, just a few nights. I bet if someone in an inaccessible unit needed a 
longer stay, the community would easily agree. We on the committee have learned 
that asking the community is always important.
We have hosted families in need but, as expected, these were uneasy situations. 
But, as a community, we agreed to do it.

Karen Carlson
Arboretum Cohousing
Madison, Wi
________________________________
From: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l-bounces+kcarlson2=wisc.edu [at] cohousing.org> 
on behalf of Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2024 7:30 PM
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: [C-L]_ Guest rooms

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
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.mosaic-commons.org__;!!Mak6IKo!P0CPe7aJXFuc6tdO5VcBvfdLESq3goGkVZ4diq3cRkxn1yPaV5DyoNX0o3NPm71MhYHqAmilvzRglz0tbst1$
In Berlin, MA.
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