What brings a group together
People set up housing co-operatives for lots of reasons. Sometime it is just a group of people with low incomes hoping to find secure housing by banding together.
There are often other links within such groups, for example people who have difficulty finding suitable housing because of prejudice about their age, race, religion or gender have formed co-operatives.
There are housing co-operatives for pensioners, black people, women and refugees. Sometimes a worker co-operative will want to house its members and develop a largely self-contained community, providing work and a home. A specific political movement, goal or activity could bring a group together, and they might want to live together with a secure base for action. Sometimes the bond is simply friendship.
Whatever the common aim, a co-operative can be formed to cater for the needs and ideals of a particular group.
You should be clear if you do want to be specialised before you start recruiting. Once you have a large group of people who feel involved in a project it's very hard to exclude anyone for not fitting the bill unless that has been explicit from the beginning.
Recruiting
You may already have a small group of people in mind, but you're likely to find that you need more people to fill up your future home.
Use the networks that already exist where you live to find people. Community noticeboards, social centres, and word of mouth are all ways of reaching out to people. You may want to host open days or meetings where people can drop in and find out about the project.
Depending on what brings your group together, you may already have an obvious network of people to draw on. If not, think about how you can get messages to people who are looking for what you're hoping to create.
Make clear in your adverts that this isn't like offering a room for rent in a house share. You need to find people willing to commit time and energy to setting up the co-op, running the co-op, and going through all the stress and strain of finding and buying a property. It's as much advertising a job or volunteer role as it is offering a place to live. You need someone who can see the benefits of that, of which there are plenty.
You may find you already need to start thinking about membership procedures. Even before you have official membership, you need to think about how you will decide who can join the group.
You also need to be clear with people about what they are likely to get out of the project. Will you be able to house everybody? Will some people go on a waiting list? It's really important to make sure everyone supporting the project understands the plan.
If you want to live in a household of 6-8 people you need to actively recruit until your group reaches that size – it would be a disaster to buy the house and find you couldn't fill the rooms! You need to be very clear what you would do with more members – would you put them on a waiting list or would you change what kind of properties you are looking at? Can you afford (in money and energy) to recruit yet more people and search for a second property?
Clear and honest communication and making sure the whole group is behind the decision is key to avoid disappointment and bad feelings (see section on consensus decision-making.)
The goal is always the same, to get a stable group which sticks together and is made up of people who trust each other. There is no clear recipe for this though. Each group must find its own path.
Getting to know each other
Look out for opportunities to work and spend time together as a group. Attending work weekends at other co-ops as a group is good because you get to try out working together. You can have lots of informal discussion about what you would or wouldn't like to do the same as the co-op you are visiting and support another co-op all at the same time!
If you get the chance to live together before you buy a co-op property, take it. Even with all the meetings and activities in the world you can never quite know what it's going to be like to live with someone until you do. Before you move in together talk about how you imagine living together, what are your likes and dislikes, what level of tidyness, noise, guests, etc.
Start up Admin
It can be useful to start discussing your secondary rules before you have your home. These rules decide a lot about how you live together, and could reduce conflict in the group. This gives you a chance to find out more about each other, and practice reaching consensus. It may help you figure out if you have different ideas about what the co-op should be like.
Think about how you will take minutes and record meeting decisions. This is only legally required once you have registered as a co-op, but it is good practise to do so from earlier, and you may find it useful to look back on these later to check decisions that were made early on.
Choose one place where meeting minutes can be kept that everyone can see. Whether that’s a shared google drive, dropbox, etc, it can be frustrating later if you realise you have taken minutes at every meeting, but have stored them all in different places making them hard to find.
Start up finance
Somewhere between first meeting as a group and getting a property you will find you need to spend some money. You might need money for travel to meetings and workdays or for registration fees. You could have a whip round when necessary, but for people on low incomes the possibility of being asked for money unexpectedly can be worrying. A 'subscription' system, where every member pays say, £5 per week into a kitty can be a good way of spreading costs, and it can help clarify who is committed to the group. Be clear about whether everyone paying subscription has been accepted for membership.
If you keep good records of this income, and expenditure made against it, the income can be recorded as a loan to the co-op and repaid later if the project gets off the ground.
Having a pot of money which you manage together is also a good chance to practice consensus decision making as a group.
Other things co-ops have done to raise money include:
- Asking friends and relatives for donations
- Holding fundraisers like crowdfunding appeals, jumble sales, car boot sales or benefit gigs
- Organising sponsored events in aid of your project
- Asking local companies to make a donation to your cause
- Applying to charities. You may qualify for help from charities or other grant-making bodies. If some of your members are disabled you might be able to get money from appropriate charities or social services. Get a copy of ‘A guide to the major trusts’ published by the Directory of Social Change, or ask for it at your local reference library. This may also be a route to financial support for buying a property.