From: Michael.Kwun@um.cc.umich.edu
Newsgroups: alt.co-ops
Subject: Apartments v. Group Houses (was Re: Co-op rent question and Bay area Co-ops)
Summary: World Domination through Cooperation
Keywords: apartments Santa Barbara Ann Arbor Berkeley UCSB-SHC ICC-AA USCA
Date: 21 Jul 92 09:07:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: um.W0ZA711709658
Reply-To: kwun@umich.edu
Followup-To: <35879@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>
Organization: University Of Michigan, Ann Arbor

In article  <35879@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>
,  bowdidge@cs.ucsd.edu (Robert Bowdidge) writes:
>
>Can you say "Let's create some controversy"?  I knew you could!
>
>In article <14a71dINNacq@agate.berkeley.edu>, mkarol@bigbang.berkeley.edu (Me
>redith Karol) writes:
>|> Hi.  My name's Meredith, and I work at the USCA, which is a student's
>|> housing co-op in Berkeley.  We have 14 different houses and three apartmen
>t
>|> complexes, and we have around 1250 members.
>
>I remember one of my friends from the University Students' Cooperative
>Association complaining that the apartments we ran (Northside
>Apartments, Fenwick Weavers, and Rochdale Apartments) were not a very
>co-operative way of life, and should never have been funded by the
>U.S.C.A.
>
>What does the Net think?  If you ran a student housing co-operative in
>a college town, and had the chance to build a large number of
>apartments instead of funding co-operative housing, would you build
>the apartments?
>
>Why?
>
>-- Robert
>bowdidge@cs.ucsd.edu
 
first of all, I take issue with the implicit assumption that there is 
"co-operative housing" and there are "apartments" and the two cannot be
the same.  Most housing co-ops in the world are apartments, not group
houses.  
   My own experience with apartment houses as student housing co-ops is
limited; I have only seen them first hand in Ann Arbor, the USCA (Berkeley)
and in Santa Barbara (Isla Vista, to be more exact).  That said, I'd like
to point to the UCSB-SHC apartment house (Newman... or is it Manley?) as a 
shining example of a student housing APARTMENT co-op with massive amounts
of community--far more community than in a lot of group houses I've seen.
 
   One big issue about creating student housing co-ops is finding properties.
From discussions with CCDC (Campus Cooperative Development Corporation)
staff and my own experiences looking at potential properties in Ann Arbor, 
it's become obvious to me that there are a lot more apartment properties
available than group houses--group house co-ops can be developed from
existing group houses (fraternities and sororities, mostly, which means 
waiting for Greek houses to fail), rooming houses (pretty rare these days on
most campuses), new construction (which requires an empty lot and may still
be infeasible financially), or by conversion of existing houses (single
family, which generally means small houses only, or apartment houses, where
conversion is often impossible or at least costly).  So developing student
apartment co-ops is often a lot easier, from an aquisition/rehab point of 
view.
    What is a student housing co-op?  To me, it means user control, democracy,
community, ownership (hopefully), and no profits for landlords (which 
hopefully translates into lower rates--in the long term if not always in the
short term).  I don't see that apartment co-ops are incompatible with any
of this.  So if our goal is to provide quality co-op housing for as many
as possible, I think apartments have to be part of our strategy.
   Part of making co-ops available to all, to me, means providing options--
group houses for those who want the intense community that group housing 
leans toward, apartments for those who want more privacy, flat-rate 
structures for some, split rate structures for others... Large rooms for 
some (perhaps with higher costs) that can't/won't live in small rooms,
splaces close to campus, or farther away for those who want to get away from
the hustle and bustle of campus.  And on and on and on....
   Instead of assuming that apartments mean a lack of community, we should 
be focusing on ways to create community in apartments.  Ways to mix the
group house model and the apartment model.  
 
One development strategy that has been discussed in Ann Arbor on and off (
informally, generally) goes something like this:  buy, buy, buy.  If we can
run it at market rate such that it breaks even, buy it.  Run it at 
whatever rate lets us break even, and the assumption is that as the years 
pass, the rates will go down relative to market; our mortgage rates remain
flat, and our overhead is lower than a landlords.  The idea is to remove 
as much of the housing from the "for profit" market as possible.....  The
model needs some tweaking (what does it mean to "break even"--do you base
that on the marginal cost of the new properties, or do you assume that 
a lot of overhead costs will eventually increase as more properties are
purchased?  Is there a strain on the membership when many are paying 10-25%
below market while others are paying market?  What is the impact of the 
additional membership on co-op ideals/education?  What are those ideals,
anyway?), but I think it has some (maybe a lot of) merit.
 
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