Theme: Housing Rights
Notes
Block Party – 1st weekend of December
Block party!
- At the Brainyard Autonomous Zone (Brainerd Rd in Allston)
- Food tables & hot drinks
- Fundraiser optional donations for workshop series materials
- More block parties in the spring!
ACTION:
- Planning meeting Monday 6pm at Diesel in Davis
- Ivy is a point person
Worker Co-op Conference
The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives is holding its annual conference in Boston next summer.
- They ask Boston co-op houses to host visiting workers.
- They’re accepting workshop proposals. Can we do a housing cooperative workshop?? Maybe host a strategy session on how worker & housing co-ops can support each other?
ACTION:
- Ivy will bottomline a workshop on Boston housing co-op history
Workshop Series
Expect a formal announcement, but for now, please go ahead and check out Meetup.BostonCoops.org and start proposing workshops or look at what’s on the way!
ACTION:
- Gabe will propose a workshop on starting new co-ops
- Nathan will propose a workshop on microlocal politics/governance
Coop Start-up Fund
Idea: Fundraising appeal to greater co-op community to contribute $5-15 on every co-oper’s monthly rent for a Boston-area co-op house startup fund, to be managed by CFNE (Co-op Fund of New England).
To do & decide:
- Loans vs. grants?
- Buy new properties or help with rental startup costs? Microloans for stuff like heating oil?
- Transparency
- Overseers of fund should give advice & support, don’t just gatekeep wealth
- How to use the fund to support building assets and wealth in communities traditionally marginalized from home ownership in the US? [see for example this and this]
Why have CFNE manage the fund (as opposed to, say, BCC)?
The Co-op Fund of New England has paid full-time staff who are super excited and supportive of this idea and radical cooperative economics in general (wooo!); the savings stored at CFNE would also allow them to expand their collateral for other co-op loans; they are a great resource.
ACTION:
- Gabe will organize a meeting.
NASCO Institute Reportback
Gabe traveled to the NASCO national co-op conference in Ann Arbor this month.
He attended a workshop track on starting and managing co-ops. 1/3 of the workshops talked about tangible steps to communal home ownership, 1/3 on running/managing co-ops (kitchen management, facilitation), and 1/3 on theory like diversity, rights, etc.
One big lesson– Putting collective houses in context:
- 98% of housing cooperatives in the US are condo associations that control which wealthy people get to move into expensive condos
- Of the remaining 2% of co-op houses…
- 98% are college student co-ops, centered in the Bay Area (with 1200 co-opers!), Austin TX, the Northern Midwest, and southern Canada
- Just 2% of the 2% are community co-ops housing people of all ages & occupations in different kinds of housing. Mixed collective houses are a minority of a minority.
ACTION:
- Gabe will write a longer reportback for the Assembly Blog.
Treasurers Meeting Reportback
The meeting of house treasurers on Wed, 9 Nov at Millstone was the biggest treasurer’s meeting ever in the Boston area! The meeting was to deal with the problem of how ‘taxing’ it is to be a co-op treasurer.
Ideas & ideals:
- Create a co-op of co-op treasurers (to work together, share skills)
- Create a standardized set of excel sheets and other forms to share between co-ops (so houses don’t have to reinvent wheels)
- Next treasurers meeting should be a computer party
- Create a mailing list for co-op treasurers
ACTION:
- Oren will write a longer reportback for the Assembly Blog.
BCC Board
Boston Community Cooperatives (BCC) is an umbrella non-profit that can purchase homes and manage finances for co-ops. Currently, they own one house, Seedpod, in Field’s Corner.
- The 9-person Board had almost total turnover at the election that just happened
- Board now composed of members of Seedpod, WhirlyBird, Cambridge Co-op, the Fort, and Millstone
- How can BCC be of use to the rest of Boston’s co-op community?
- Could they expand to incorporate or buy the homes of existing rental co-ops?
Citylife
Lots of discussion about tenant organizing, housing rights, and allyship requests/discussion from this awesome organization in various ways! Exciting.
New Co-op Idea
Austin shared his proposal/idea for a new mixed income housing co-operative with rents from wealthier co-opers subsidizing rent from low and no-income folks.
Neighborhood Assemblies
Do them! What could you talk about?
- Slumlords & mass rent strikes… what if you gathered together all the folks renting from one big corporate slumlord for collective action??
Website(s)
BostonCoops.org
Hub for Boston’s Cooperative Living Movement (under construction – will have a directory, map, and toolkit for new coop houses)
Meetup.BostonCoops.org
Boston-area co-op calendar, with assemblies, meetings, workshops, and events.
Assembly.BostonCoops.org
Home of the meeting minutes, policies, and proposals of the Boston Collective House Assembly. Like our Facebook page!
Branches.BostonCoops.org
Home of the meeting minutes, policies, and proposals for Branches, the Boston Regional Action Network for Cooperative Housing: Expansion Squad (under construction).
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