​September 10, 2019 CIT (Construction Interface Team) Meeting Update
 
We had a productive Construction Interface Team meeting today. The process seems to be in acceleration mode – lots happening!
 
Attending: Joren and Leslie from UD&P (developer), Katie (consultant), and, Jim, Abby, Molly, Mark, Doug (member representatives).
 

• Yost Gallagher (our general contractor) has submitted our plans to subs for competitive bids and will have prices based upon the re-design back to us by September 27th. This will be a significant step to finalizing pricing.
• Currently we are on schedule to begin construction by mid-November. The determining element will be hitting the membership and investment goals. We don’t have final requirements from the loan departments, but we will need in the neighborhood of 75% of the homes presold and 30% of the total cost raised. Once we get the final terms from the lenders and figure out our member investor numbers, we can begin to knock on doors so we can find those just waiting to invest in a community building project like ours.
• The order of construction was discussed.  Earthwork will occur first and may cause disruption to current renters in the Haystack building.  We discussed accommodations that may be made to keep ADA access for the third story apartment and the Yoga Shala studios. 
• The order of construction will be Buildings 1 and 2, common house, and building 3.
• Until we get an offer sheet from a bank, we will assume that we need the high end of 30% equity requirement. Twenty-four members have invested 20% and 5 members are averaging 10% down payments. To begin outreach to potential investors as it’s easier to start with a lower return and then tell them later it’s actually better than expected.  Joren will provide an investment document for review by interested members.  An invitation for investment will be made at the September LLC meeting. We should be having initial conversations with prospective investors now.
• Joren will review the Summary of Risk document as it’s out of date.
• The solar panels will be removed and stored in October.
• The garage and cement pad will be professionally removed as well.
• CIT will meet to identify small changes that can be made now that will be of long-range benefit. 
• The cost to install and maintain a community hot tub at this time appears to be prohibitive ($50,000 on the low end). Still, having a hot tub is a community decision and one with design implications. We will be present the information to the community at the September LLC meeting now that we have more information.
• On August 27 permits were submitted to the City Planning Department. Everything looked good with the exception of one hitch: in a reversal of a previous verbal assurance, the city is requiring us to treat all storm water on site. They are firm on this point. This will represent some additional cost. At this time, we are not sure what is entailed. UD&P (our developer) is working with the civil engineer to flush out options.

 
 

Property Tax Exemption Explained
By Doug Robnett
 
I wanted to take the opportunity to try and make as simple as possible the City of Spokane’s Multiple Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) as it applies to Haystack Heights. What follows is my best understanding of how the exemption applies to our project. Please keep in mind that these things can get tricky and I am not a tax lawyer or a city planner – that is my disclaimer.

The area we are building our homes in is designated a Multiple Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) zone. What this means is that new construction of dwellings with four or more units are exempt from city taxes for eight years. As such, this exemption will apply only to newly constructed homes and not the existing spaces in the Haystack Building. The exemption is based on the assessed value of the “housing portion of the property.” The city has told us that the home value includes the shared value of the common house. This means the exemption will be on the assessed value of the home. It will not apply to the land value.
​
The calculation is pretty simple: for every $120,000 of assessed value there is a $1,600 tax savings. This exemption has a life span of 8 years. So, if your home is assessed at $360,000 (round number for ease of calculation) then you tax savings will be $4,800 per year. Over an eight-year period, your savings on property tax would be $38,400.
            If you would like more information please check out the city’s web site page on the MFTE.
 

Sarah Conover, blog and newsletter editor: as we have a number of families in Haystack Heights, some with teens and some with families whose children are headed to adolescence, I thought I'd feature an article by my friend, Evelyn Messinger, who I can always count on to see any situation in unexpected ways. 

My twins Sam and Kate are teenagers now. I’m grateful that neither of them are manic or theatrical children. They are not likely to show up one day as members of a religious cult, or with tattoos on their faces. Nonetheless, at 15 years old, they tend more and more towards the classic sullen teen archetype. Dinner table conversations evaporate. Information is withheld.

It all happened very suddenly, after an early adolescent golden age during which they actually thought their parents were cool. Now they have pushed their little dinghies off from the parental cruise ship, rowing against the fearsome swells to escape. Whether we like it or not, we won’t prevent them from sliding over the waves, hell-bent on mastering adulthood.

They demand that we no longer treat them like children, even though they act like big babies. We hear less and less about their exploits, even as they venture further and further from home. Of course, they don’t drive themselves to these adventures—oh no. It is still I, mom, who spends uncountable hours driving clusters of girls or boys hither and yon. The girls mutter incomprehensibly to each other between fits of irritatingly raucous laughter. The boys play video games that we can’t comprehend, but suspect might be bad for them.

They don’t cook much, or clean up without prodding. They do come to the dinner table when called, to consume massive quantities of food that have been lovingly prepared for them. So my drudgery goes on: all that food is purchased and lugged home, cooked and consumed, the leftovers discarded and the dishes washed–mostly by us.

But here’s the surprise: this situation has led me to see the great secret of the battle between teens and parents that characterizes the modern age. Truth is, the kids are getting a bad rap. It’s the parents who rebel against their teenagers.

As the most onerous aspects of parental indenture fall away (think diapers, glitter, and broken keepsakes), parents begin to remember what life was like before the great child-raising task began. We find ourselves considering our own needs, long deferred. We hit a breaking point; we demand that our teens be more responsible for the family enterprise. “You are old enough to take some responsibility!” means: I am done being your slave!

That is when we become entrenched in a kind of domestic sectarian warfare, where retaliation can escalate to punishment. “That music is awful,” I scream. “How many times have I told you to use headphones? I need to listen to the news on NPR and it wouldn’t hurt you to start paying some attention to the real world. I said, HEADPHONES! Be careful, I am about to take that phone away…wait, wait–since when are you a fan of Lamar Kendrick—I mean, Kendrick Lamar?”

Imagine how this looks to the kids, their whole lives until now bathed in the tender love and attention of childhood. My sudden demands must feel like a form of rejection, even abandonment. And their reactions look like rebellion, but may be closer to confusion. Because after all, I’m the one who wants more now–more time to myself, more interesting food, more engaging entertainment. They just want what they have always had: unconditional praise and affection.

This is embarrassing for a parent like me to admit. How often have I imagined myself the better parent–better than my husband, my own parents, the parents of my kid’s friends, the parents of the future shoplifters, hackers and dropouts who lurk just beyond the horizon of my protection? But how can I be a good parent when the only positive outcome of parenting is that my children leave me? Does the “good” parent buckle them into their lifejackets and set the engines of the mothership in reverse? Or am I “good” when I hold the prow of their rowboats in a frantic grip and insist that they’re not going anywhere.

I’m only now groping towards understanding this problem. It has something to do with mutual respect, and with a parent’s role in maintaining civility. If I ask them to grow up as well as to continue to love me, I should be prepared to be grown up too, or more precisely, to stay grown up. At least until they graduate from high school. I have a feeling it doesn’t actually end at that, but I’ll let you know when we get there.

Eveylyn Messinger is the television producer of www.thisplanet.tv

Interview with Haystack Heights member Carol Bryan
by member Sarah Conover
 
Sarah: What does community mean to you these days?
 
Carol: Well, right now it means my neighborhood. It's taken me 17 years to feel like this is my community and it's changed because of the meditation group that I began and hold at my house every morning.
 
Sarah: Can you tell us about that? You started it how long ago?
 
Carol: About a year and ¾ ago. We meet at, theoretically, seven in the morning. We go about 40 minutes. Our plan is we have 10 minutes of a guided meditation and then 10 minutes of silence. Then we spend time afterwards going around the circle and we pass a stone. We take turns and we share what responses we had to the meditation that morning.
 
Sarah: What initiated this, why did you see the need for this? Was it a vision that a meditation group would bring your community together?
 
Carol: Oh No! My motivation was that a meditation group would help me meditate! I needed support. I needed the group support. And that's why I did it. I had thought of this for maybe six months because I was going to the Monday night meditation group at the Unitarian Church and they kept saying, “practice every day” and I just wasn't doing it. I thought about it, and was going to do it, but I didn't do it. Then I went up to Sravasti Abbey for the New Year's retreat. I came home on January 1st and went upstairs and typed out this little half sheet of paper on my computer. The weather was good, so I went outside and passed them around to my neighbors that very day and said, “It starts tomorrow.”  There wasn't any room to change my mind.
 
When I went around to my neighbors, I was astounded at how polite people were, how friendly. Many of them said, well, I can't come because I work, but I love this idea. The next day 11 people showed up and I was just flabbergasted.
 
Sarah: Did you know all of them?
 
Carol: No. No. I didn't know them at all. I’d gone to some “meet your neighbors” and I knew them to some degree, but not very much. Not the degree I do now. Some of them couldn’t keep coming to meditation because of jobs transfers—they moved away, this and that, you know. Some said, “I already have a meditation practice, so I'm not interested.” It astounded me, frankly, how many had a practice and were already committed and had their routine.

The rest of us were all floundering and just learning. It was just the start of me belonging here. I had tried various things for 17 years—I have gone to neighborhood meetings up the Yin Yang and I've been working on neighborhood projects and I still do all that. I've had a lot of adversarial situations around my shared driveway and I have 17 rentals in a circle around my house, closer than most people have to their closest neighbors. I've had every, almost (I haven't had any murders), just about every situation to deal with, more than I could have imagined.

Sarah: Do your renters come to your group?
 
Carol: They're always invited, and some come. Some don't.
 
Sarah: I'm going to ask you again, what does community mean to you now? I hear you say that it means a sense of belonging, but what else?
 
Carol: It means mutuality. I help you. You help me. And even if we don't call each other for help, we have a sense that there is someone we can call. I notice this at cohousing as well. I think people enjoy contributing when they know how to contribute. I get a lot of positive feedback for the meditation group. I'm not living in isolation. Even if some come just for Friday mornings because we do treats. We usually have a few more people on Fridays, and most people admit, eventually, that they come on Fridays for connecting with neighbors, not for the meditation.

I really never know who's going to show up. It’s taught me some trust and patience and self-acceptance. I've just gotten a lot of positive feedback and appreciation and…love. Really. I mean we have such an assorted group. I would say my best friend in the group is an ex-heroin addict who lives on disability. I was afraid of her. She was afraid of me. Now I think she might be the kindest, most sensitive person I’ve ever encountered. When I was passing out papers that January day, I just thought, well, I guess I'll give her one. And I did. I thought she’d never come. But she came and I played this “Welcome to the New Year” meditation, all our welcome here, regardless of religion, regardless or sexual orientation. She kept coming back and she invited other neighbors. And this Mormon woman, who I just love dearly, blew my stereotype of Mormonism.
 
Sarah: Has anyone had to go through some really, hard personal stuff during the time you’ve been together and talked?
 
Carol: Not yet. Not yet.
 
Sarah: Can you see how what you’ve learned might carry over to cohousing?
 
Carol: Oh, absolutely. There are people that are interested in getting together in many different ways, and I'm assuming there will be people who have their own meditation practices at cohousing but others who might like to explore it with me. I will certainly be offering it in cohousing and hopefully some of my neighbors here might come over there, and some of the neighbors around our project may also come. It won't just be co-housing, it'll be a little broader community event daily.

Sarah: Well, you have a daughter, a son-in-law and a son involved in Haystack Heights cohousing. Why did you make the jump into co-housing as well?
 
Carol: I read in the newspaper that I'm going to be living at Haystack Heights.
 
Sarah: Is that really how you ended up with us? Otherwise, your previous plan had been to age in place here? Oh, please tell us the story!
 
Carol: I was never going to leave my home. I mean, I was considering co-housing because my daughter was involved, but I really hadn't decided until I read it in the Spokesman Review and people kept coming up to me at church: “So when are you moving in with your daughter?”
 
Sarah: I’m assuming it was an article in the Spokesman that featured your daughter, Mariah!
 
Carol: Yes. So, then I decided I would try it and get to know more people. I think a turning point for me was going to Portland to the National Co-housing Conference with our group. I noticed every time I saw somebody from Spokane cohousing, I just felt elated and it was like seeing a long-lost family member. It was so fun, and I thought, wow, I am more interested in this and committed than I thought! And when I saw all the different ways that people do co-housing and all the possibilities and all the joys and all the perils and pitfalls, it just seemed like a grand new adventure. And that's when I really got hooked, thinking of it as an adventure in life, and fully living while I'm alive.