Redwood Housing Collective: Mission Statement

Our ideal living situation (this is just so far, we expect for this to change as more people join the group):

• A large house in Berkeley or Oakland, with a yard.
• 10-15 people living together.
• Ecologically sound living (organic food, recycling, solar panels or composting toilets as that becomes financially feasible).
• Shared meals several times a week
• Shared responsibility for cooking, cleaning, maintenance, and organizational needs.
• Consensus decision making.
• Involvement with the community, both through local volunteerism and by hosting events to infect people with the cooperative bug.
• A fun and social place to hang out.

So far, we've been working on setting the groundwork for this coop. Setting up a legal structure, financial plan, loans, and a vision. These were all things that we thought would be easier to do in a small group, and potentially boring for a lot of people. Now we want to find a house to live in. We envision having anyone who's interested in this project participate in our future meetings as we search for a house. Hopefully, in that process it will become clear whether we are looking for the same things, and whether we work well together as a group. If this sounds a bit fuzzy to you, it does to us too, but we wanted to try a more organic selection process and only resort to a more rigid system if the organic method didn't work.

Anyway here's what we've done so far. None of this is set in stone either, it's just what we've done so far.

• Written bylaws for a Mutual Benefit Nonprofit whose board of directors is the people living in the house, and whose membership is everyone who has ever lived in the house.
• Made a fancy excel spreadsheet where we can drop in the values relevant to a particular house (purchase price, how many people can live there) and come up with a monthly rent that includes everything from insurance to a small cooperative education budget.
• Done some research on rent control issues, and how that impacts our ability to evict problem housemates. As it turns out, tenant run housing is exempt from rent control.
• Applied to various banks and coops for loans. The Berkeley student coops, and the Madison Community Coops have approved in principle (though still pending final approval when we have an actual house to show them) a loan for around 15-20% of the value of the house. We have a somewhat tentative approval for the major loan from Mechanics Bank, which may require the corporation to demonstrate two years of successful management first. So our current financial plan involves a two-year interim period of private ownership by members of the group and/or supportive individuals.
• Decided that the board of directors will make decisions based on consensus, and the membership will make decisions based on majority rule.
• Decided on a limited equity structure. Everyone puts in their share of the 10% down payment on moving in (probably in the $4000-$5000 range, though we have some avenues for loaning people that money), and gets that back (plus some small interest) when they move out. This means that when paying rent, people are not accumulating equity in the house. This is a long story, but basically this is done to preserve the affordability of this house in the future.
• Established a rent floor. We've decided to write into the bylaws that everyone must be charged at least 60% of market rent. We've done this so that, when the mortgage is paid off, people will put money towards starting other cooperative situations, rather than simply living in the house rent free. That would particularly annoy us since those of us in the beginning will be paying slightly above market rents to get this thing off the ground.