THE MAIN ECONOMIC FEATURES OF NUEVO AMANECER
Members of Nuevo Amanecer do not own their own homes: all land and buildings are collectively owned by the coop itself. Should a home become vacant it's the coop that decides who can move in.
Coop members do not pay rent per se. Rather, each household pays a monthly fee to Nuevo Amanecer and to one of its member coops.
Prior to 2001 (the year when the Nuevo Amanecer's mortgage was paid off) these fees were as follows:
- 1 bedroom - 578 pesos/month
- 2 bedrooms - 885 pesos/month
- 3 bedrooms - 1,109 pesos/month
- 4 bedrooms - 1,278 pesos/month
Each household also paid a general fee of 315 pesos per month.
Since 2001, however, each household has been paying about 750 pesos per month. This fee consists of a flat rate of 550 pesos to Nuevo Amanecer and approximately 200 pesos per month to one of the five member coops.1
As mentioned earlier, Nuevo Amanecer took responsibility for the cost and construction of internal infrastructure items back in the 1970s-items such as the installation of water mains and electrical lines. Subsequently the state agreed to distribute water and electricity to the coop and the municipality agreed to collect its garbage.
Each coop household has a meter installed to measure its own water and electricity usage, and each household is responsible for paying its own water and electricity bills. In addition, each household is responsible for taking care of any minor repairs that are needed.
Coop funds are used to cover major maintenance costs-repairs to walls, roofs, and plumbing for example (but not damage caused by personal use). They pay for common amenities such as street lighting and the maintenance of green spaces. They cover state and municipal taxes. They help support the operation of social services such as the medical clinic and the library.2 They cover the coop's administrative costs and its financial contribution to FUCVAM (the umbrella organization for housing coops in Uruguay). Coop funds are also used for emergency purposes when individual households fall on hard economic times.
In recent years the annual contribution to the coop fund has been declining. In part, this is because members are getting older; people who were in their 30s back in 1975 are now beginning to retire and their incomes are dropping accordingly. The 2002 economic crisis in Uruguay took its toll as well; people who lost their jobs have had difficulty paying their monthly fee to the coop.
Fortunately the growing proportion of elderly is not a problem in terms of labour for the coop. The heavy construction work required in the early days has been completed. Nowadays members are required to contribute just a few hours of light work each month.
1 In 2004 this monthly household payment of 750 pesos would have been equivalent to about $38 Canadian. At the time, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Montevideo was about 2,000 pesos a month (about $100 Canadian). The minimum wage was just over 1,000 pesos a month (about $50 Canadian), and the average full-time wage was about 3,000 pesos a month (about $150 Canadian). Undoubtedly the coop provided a buffer to members during the economic crisis that Uruguay was recovering from at the time.
2 By Canadian standards these social services run on far less than a shoe-string budget. For example, the coop library, which houses 6,000 very carefully preserved books, has an operating budget of a mere 200 pesos a month ($10 Canadian). The cost of books in Uruguay, however, is no cheaper than in Canada. Similarly, the medical clinic relies heavily on donated supplies including unused, left over medication and medication that is past its expiry date.
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