Housing Coop

How come yr collective have decided to create one if you don't know what it is?

 

Nobody knew what a drum was until somebody created one.

There are all kinds of housing cooperatives. You can google to find out what they are, but their character depends on the characters involved.

 

What do you want this housing co-op to do?

 

Excellent.

I lived in a co-op during my brief stay at a University. It was student-owned, student-run. We all paid a very cheap rent for a room or two w/ bathroom. All the labor & organizational stuff was divided into 'hours' to be chosen by members. We listed, in order of preference, the jobs/tasks we wanted, and the current labor director would go through 'em and post everyone's shifts twice, once so every one could pick n choose n complain, and then again once everyone was cool with it. This way cooking, cleaning, organizing meetings, labor, & events all went pretty smoothly. We had a big open courtyard / basketball court / bonfire / soccer area and a big cafeteria-style kitchen where 4 days a week you could find chief sevenleaf, yer dirty kitchen manager and head cook. In meetings we voted on shit like special meals, new members, shit we wanted to build / modify / have made. (We made a pretty sick bike shed on the cheap for all us bike punx - mostly recycled). We also had an office that we paid some cool older ladies to run & take care of legal shit & mail.

It was pretty rad, would have been a lot more fun without all the college kids. Fucking dubstep...

 

"We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams."

Then you should be asking if anybody knows a way of finding cheap/free/vacant housing.

You'll need a place to have a house before using that asset to build a co-op. Have you ever stolen a house before? It's a lot easier than sticking it in your pants and running past the security guard.

Go for a walk in some industrial/recession-depressed neighbourhood Wear a jacket with elastic cuffed sleeves so you can slip a twelve-inch crowbar in the arm without the unnecessary suspicion generated by a clanking bag full of tools. Also bring torches and a friend. Break into every empty house, warehouse, building that you see and check each one for signs of habitability, recent use, necessary improvements, viability for a number of people etc. Once you find a house that meets your needs, crack the locks off the doors and replace them with your own (best to only have one or two opening-and-closing doors, barricade as many other entrances as you can identify). Readymade housing co-op.

 

That argument makes no sense. Like, absolutely no sense at all. Think about it.

 

Like derek says, but also if you see a place that looks vacant, knock on the door first, or put some tape over the locks and check it a day or so later (if someone is living there they would have removed the tape). I say this cos i know at least one occasion where a friend has thought they'd discovered a place, you know overgrown garden, letterbox overflowing with crap, etc, etc, to then knock on the door and have an elderly lady answer it. Breaking in without checking and giving a 90 yr old lady a heart attack is trouble you don't need. Oh and a quick look at local squatting laws are also useful. (Perhaps that could be something useful for the collective to do - produce a locally specific squatter's guide or something?)

 

Haha, we had a similar experience; but knocked a few times and there was no-one in; so we jumped the back wall, walked in the open back door and found what appeared to be an already-squatted vacant house. We promptly left, in case the dude came back.

I might have been a bit sleep-deprived when I wrote that. Exercise caution, buddy boy. Warehouses are a good bet, though, and usually the ones that look empty, are empty. Plus, the "negotiations" with owners generally take longer because they're not usually owned by "people" as such. Good luck!