Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Solar and tax breaks

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

For ventures like this, we (cohousers) need to get over the idea that
"everything we do has to be for everybody with all contributing equally and
initiated and operated by a single entity," usually the Home-owners
Association (HOA).

There is much we can learn from the rich and all sorts of businesses, which
create new organizations (sometimes, but not always, incorporated) at the
drop of a hat, to achieve specific purposes. You can think about it like a
chicken-raising club... not every community member participates, and the
club members contribute labor and get the eggs produced. The community
chooses to provide space for this to happen, and sets standards and assigns
responsibility for managing impacts.

For our solar venture at my home community here in California, ten of our
14 households went in together with the HOA to invest to install 50 panels
on the most-accessible and sunny roofs of two of our eight buildings, and
related infrastructure like underground wiring under our path and a new
meter with its own connection to the grid, to support "Virtual Net
Metering."

The investor households took responsibility for getting the project done,
with the help of a paid consultant. They all paid in for the initial cost,
and all continue to benefit from the electric-generation credits on their
electric bills, in amounts proportional to their investment, as does the
community for our Common-House electric bill. They all shared in the
initial tax credits, and the relatively-small community share of the tax
credits passed through to all community members, to claim on their
individual returns, using supporting documentation provided by the HOA.

We had some discussion as to whether this met our community value of
fairness, as some community members have income so low that they don't owe
taxes, so they receive no tax benefits from the credits.

We eventually decided that this was OK, as the project supported community
values of reducing our environmental impact and the community being part of
it had real tangible benefits in reducing our costs (and therefore dues)
over time.

Our approval process took just a couple months as we tapped the expertise
of different community members to understand and translate between the
economics, physics, tax implications, construction impacts, and time
urgency of getting a system installed before rates changed, losing the
opportunity to get full credit for what we generated if we didn't act fast.
Having lots of small-group meetings after common dinners to surface and
answer questions helped. Plus having an outside expert to handle the
contractor relations.

Based on this experience, we were able to move fast afterwards and get a
grant for four EV chargers in our parking lot, for free. Not directly
connected to the solar, but thanks to how we handled the first big project,
we had the confidence to move forward with this smaller one, and can adjust
our generation credits to offset the increased electric usage on the home
that the chargers are plugged into.

Raines, at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing

Getting excited about the East Bay Cohousing Crawl, a self-guided tour
coming up next month to kick off National Cohousing Month and Affordable
Housing Month in the East Bay:
https://www.ebcoho.org/crawl