Housing Co-Op Looking For New Members

Housing co-operative looking for additional members!

We are looking for additional members for our housing co-op. 5 years since a couple of us have started talking about setting up a housing co-op near Glasgow, we have now finally been able to buy a property and would like to meet other people that would like to join in building our wee community together. The house we managed to buy is a huge old school with a little bit of land just outside Irvine and further away than originally planned and it needs a fair bit of work, but we think it's a pretty incredible opportunity to forge an amazing home and community asset. We will explain a little bit about us, the house and who we are looking for to join us.
The group:
We are a group of 6 people aged 29-35 and a wee baby of 6 months. Some of us know each other well, some of us are still quite new to one another. In the constellation that we are in now, we have been working together on the co-op project for just about a year and have now finally been able to get a bid on a property accepted. We are all interested in living together in a way that is not purely functional but built on the expectation that we want to share quite a bit of our lives with one another. For us living in a co-op together will mean actively working out our living arrangements together, sharing all house related tasks fairly, having open conversations about needs and conflicts and striving to make this new place a proper wee home for all of us together. Being involved in our co-op so far has meant a lot of meetings online due to the lockdown, so we are all very chuffed about being able to finally live together and organise ourselves together without having to all sit in front of a screen. Living together will mean weekly meetings to organise tasks, lives, sharing cooking and shopping etc. We believe that it is important to have agreed sets of rules that members are OK to stick with when living in such a big group in such a close network. We especially think that it is important to have an ability to reflect, take on and give feedback and communicate well with one another and would like to make sure that new members are up for learning with us together how we can all function as such a big group.
There is also one wee puppy in the household and potentially a cat. We will have agreed pet free spaces in the house.
We think that living together in more creative units will mean a less resource-intensive living and a way to create networks of support and understanding beyond small family structures. We hope that we can find more sustainable ways of living together and to provide an alternative to predominant living structures promoted in the current system.
If you would like to know a little bit more about us and how co-ops work, please have a look at this: WWWradicalroutesORGUK (insert dots, as you cannot post a full link here)
You can also read about co-ops in general on radical routes. Radical Routes is a network of co-ops in the UK that we are part of. Radical Routes has an expectation that members and member co-ops work towards radical social change. We will discuss what that means for us as a co-op with all our members. Most of us are organising politically in community projects and it is important for us that we can offer the space that we are creating for other groups to use as a resource when appropriate.
The house:
The house is an old school near Irvine (WWWDOTrightmove. co. uk/properties/108620696#/). It is about 15-20 min cycle to either Irvine or Kilwinning train station and then around 30 min on the train to Glasgow. Many of us will still be working in or near Glasgow, so there will be ride shares and hopefully a shared co-op vehicle for these journeys. One part of the house is currently in need of some work, so we are not able to fill all spaces immediately. In total, there will be 10 rooms, as well as at least 4 big communal spaces. We want to share all our living spaces apart from individual (bed) rooms and keep all these communal spaces clean and organised together. All rooms are quite big and there are some en-suites and many communal bathrooms.
The garden is a wee bit bigger than 2 acres and we want to plant quite a lot of vegetables and fruit, as well as create a nice outside space that can be used by us and for example by groups to have meetings or gatherings in. The house will be quite empty when we move in and it will require some initial work to build up and organise our communal spaces. We honestly cannot wait until we can get started on that. We want to renovate the building in a way that reduces its ecological impact, in fact that is part of our mortgage agreement with the Ecological Building Society and an expectation of Radical Routes who are our two main funders.
Who are we looking for?
We are looking for somebody who is very enthusiastic about building a proper community with us and our co-op. Ideally, you would have a lot of experience of living and organising in a big group and we would love to hear from you what it means to you to live communally?
You would need to enjoy living together, negotiating together, cooking and eating at least dinners together and be able to bring yourself and your skills into our collective. We would consider ourselves politically left and are trying to make our skills and time useful. We know that being politically active comes in various shapes and forms and are not looking for people to have masses of experience, but we would like people to join that have a similar mindset, are comfortable discussing the impacts of their behaviours and views on others. We want the house to not simply be a resource for ourselves, but want to share the space and also share accrued resources (rent payments, skills, knowledge, gadgets) with other groups. We want to highlight that decisions about pets, kids and other changes that will impact the living space and community for all of the co-op is something that we would like to discuss all together as a group and make sure that everybody’s needs are met and considered. Our minimum rent is set at LHA rate, so we can live with anybody on housing benefits. The rent will be progressive after that based on income, ability etc. If you have average earning that would mean a room around £290- 380 a month, including council tax and excluding bills.
You do not need to have your own savings in order to put them into the project, we communally fundraise for loanstock for the property, which is a model that has been used a lot before and is successful. But we would expect people to put money towards the project if they have substantial savings.
Setting up the co-op and now getting the house fixed and everything ready has been a lot of work, so we are also looking for somebody who can appreciate that and is willing to take on a fair share of work going forward once they are a part of the group. We are hoping to be able to fix some of the minor bits in the house ourselves and are looking forward to sharing this project together.
We are hoping that we can expand the co-op by getting a small flat in Glasgow as a shared base, but we are not sure how and when that will happen, as the housing market is totally bonkers at the moment.

We are looking for someone to move in from September with more spaces opening up as we make more rooms habitable. If you are interested, please write us a message here saying a little bit about:
Who you are (also dependants, etc)
Why you want to live in a co-op and what it means to you
What your experience living and organising in groups is
What your time-scale of moving and also time commitment of living in the co-op would be (of course life can change)
And your email address and ideally phone number and we will get in touch with more info and make sure we can arrange to meet.

Looking forward to getting the chance to meet some of yous!

All the best,
Clydeside Housing Co-op (which will need a wee rename now we are a wee bit out of the way)