Cohousing-L Mailing List: Paying for participation

[Melanie Mindlin (sassetta]

We have found that individuals paying someone specifically to do a job for 
which they would have been responsible feels uncomfortable to the community. It 
hasn’t happened a lot, but when someone comes to the community to do paid work 
that wasn’t contracted by the community, it seems strange and, in our 
experience, is inadequately supervised.

On the other hand, we have created a “pay or play” option for our workday 
hours. If someone can’t come to workday, they can make up the time later or pay 
a set fee. This fee used to be pretty low, but we recently more than doubled it 
to reflect the actual cost of hiring people who knew what they were doing and 
could work unsupervised. It feels best for the committees to decide how to 
deploy funds available to accomplish the tasks in their purview.

We have other kinds of work which don’t have the pay option, including chores 
and committee participation.

The shifting population of our small community (13 homes) has created a range 
of challenges. Nobody wants to do the bookkeeping now; few here now have the 
handyman skills to do repairs; people that used to do physical work now have 
limitations; newer people don’t want to take responsibility for completing 
projects, and more. 

You’re looking for suggestions, and reject a number of specific things, but 
don’t mention several important tasks: shopping (especially online), finding 
and hiring outside help, scheduling and other organizing, bookkeeping.  After 
20 years in our community, the type of work needed has shifted to the kind of 
repairs and maintenance that needs to be done by professional contractors. This 
takes effort to get recommendations, meet with potential companies, get 
estimates and bids, and so on.

In my opinion, opting out of participation due to long-term residence, may not 
sit well with the more recent residents. If you have lots of folks who were 
there when that  work occurred, maybe they want to fill in the gap as a 
personal offering of help. However, it will seem unfair to current residents to 
have someone simply claim having already done their part. If someone is too ill 
or disabled to contribute, accommodations need to be made.

Hope this helps,
Melanie

> On Sep 4, 2026, at 3:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:
> 
> Your wisdom is requested:  Paying for participation
Dear Neighbors far and near,

I know that versions of questions re: participation have come up previously??  
and I will check my archives? and appreciate any iput you have.

Specifically, I have been asked?as our community Liaison? to ask you on behalf 
of our Aging in Community Group.  While we know this may affect others, eg 
having a health issue.  

However folks who have been here for decades are on the one hand able to do 
much much less groundswork and much much less meal prep/clean up.  [And may not 
want to do Facilitation, Minute taking,  etc:  so we appreciate your thoughts 
but please skip that suggestion.]

Also, some?at least one? feel that they have done a LOT of work over the past 
many years,  and maybe they should be allowed to bow out.

The possibility of Seniors [specifically] being able and willing to pay for 
someone else ?inside the Community or not?   is a question that is currently up.

thank you all for your wisdom!