Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: dues and other expenses

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Mar 4, 2025, at 4:45 PM, R Philip Dowds via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> One theory is that square footage of a unit is a reasonable proxy for 
> household income and wealth …

In our community this is not so. I would guess there is very little 
relationship between income and size of unit.

> But fixed fees are almost regressive.  For instance, a municipal fixed fee of 
> $50 for a marriage license or birth certificate is trivial for a wealthy 
> couple, but possibly a significant strain on the budget of a poor couple.

Florida has changed its laws, it is illegal to mix the flat rate and 
proportional rate. At Takoma Village we have a 50/50 split which favors large 
units. 

> Some communities favor sub-metering of all utilities (gas, electric, water & 
> sewer) so that all households get separate bills, and nobody is seen as 
> subsidizing anyone else.  But I know of at least one community where 40-some 
> units all live off of one electric meter, which reduced construction cost and 
> provides access to a lower aggregate electric bill thanks to the “declining 
> block rate” model of billing.

This might be the “declining block rate” but we chose to do one water meter 
because each living unit is charged a flat fee plus actual usage above a 
certain usage. There was no allowance for a household with one resident who 
might never reach that threshold so would be paying more for water than a huge 
house with several residents. 

One year our water bill doubled with no increase in water rates. We discovered 
that our population had almost doubled with births, adoptions, and partners 
moving in. We hadn’t noticed.

> Some of my household dues go to maintaining an exercise room and a kids’ room 
> — neither of which are directly useful to me.  Part of my federal taxes pay 
> for bridges I’ll never see or drive on.

I made peace with this by realizing that I like living with people who do use 
those rooms. In the end, having them available means the value of all the 
facilities is higher.

>  dues for our single common water meter are proportioned according to the 
> number of people living in the unit.  This is not irrational, but it adds to 
> our accounting complexity.  Managing a precision pricing system takes time, 
> sometimes a lot of time.

I’ve always wondered how you keep track of how many people are living in a 
unit. For years I kept track of the quorum for meetings and there were times 
when it was touchey. Was that person living here or not? One quorum is based on 
the number of owners — who owns that unit? Is the unit that had a divorce this 
year still owned by 2 people or one. 

Very important to plan ahead to avoid the time and effort requirements. When a 
computation looks wiggly people will be questioning it forever! Over and over 
again.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org