We are a group of Ipswich residents who got together to buy a property in which to live communally, in an ecologically sustainable way so we can take action for positive social change. We are Ipswich's first housing co-operative!
THIS BLOG HAS BEEN ARCHIVED, PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE
Monday, 23 April 2012
Shocked to hear of progress
Doing our accounts is fun!
Yes it's the cellar...there is no ground floor anymore
'Cause these guys dug it up!
The room next door fares little better
Houseplants wait anxiously for the work to be complete
That heap was a partition wall
A mini-giant yellow machine squats in the garden
Meanwhile, members of the co-op organise a wicked pro-biking event 23rd June at the Brewery Tap http://www.bicycleball.com/
Flowers! They're not edible...
But they ain't half pretty
Down on our allotment...
Where the vegetables grow themselves! Wherever they want!
You may have guessed from the photos that the subsidence remediation work started on time, and Week 2 commences in 6 hours. We're scampering around hiring 'leccies, chimney sweeps and insulation experts, notifying insurers, solicitors and lenders, and reeling from the speed of progress!
Lookie here; we got ourselves in the local press. Because things are moving! We're having workdays to remove plaster in the houses we've been in the process of buying for TWO YEARS, the subsidence remediation work will be commencing shortly, and exchange of contracts will follow thereafter. Phew - wow! We welcome our new member Adam, bringing our number of adults up to 8 with 2 part-time children. Drop us an email if you want an invite to our moving in party!
Hey! We're getting in touch about the possibility of you being involved in a co-operative housing project in Ipswich. And to ask you to spread this message amongst your contacts, news bulletins and put us in the Forming Groups section of D&D. Thanks.
Incredible news; Random Camel Housing Co-op of Ipswich, Suffolk, have had an offer accepted on a house! No.s 23-27 Foundation St. It's actually 3 terraced 2-up 2-down properties next to one another, 2 of which have been knocked through, 1 remaining as a self contained entity. I attach photos for your delectation. In all, it can house up to 9 tenants.
We are only able to actually buy it if there are at least 7 of us living there, and there are currently only 4 of us on the books; myself, John and Helen who i currently rent a house with, and Frankie, a recent new member who's just come back from touring housing co-ops in Canada.
We would like you to join us! (Investing info below)
The house is versatile, spacious - big rooms and lots of storage spaces - rather worn in terms of decoration (flowery and geometric wallpapers and carpets of multiple generations!!), structurally sound and a prime opportunity for a group of people to create a base of community action and live as an intentional community. It's the most appropriate building we've come across because the end house that stands alone would suit 2 or 3 people who wanted to be involved in the co-op but would need a little more privacy from the main area.
The family who are selling it told us all about the history of the place - all 7 siblings grew up there, their mother lived there for 75 years, until this January! The house has a calm, cheery, homey atmosphere, which we'd be proud to inherit.
There are 3 separate kitchens which is a godsend, because there can be vegan, veggie and omnivore kitchens! Also 3 bathrooms. It's in the middle of town but standing in the rose and honeysuckle back gardens it feels like a secluded oasis. The other buildings on that street are offices which don't generate traffic after 5pm and some almshouses for the elderly. There is no reason for anybody driving into town at night to use the road, its not a shortcut to anywhere. So no excessive noise.
Our aims for the 'Transition Terrace':
We want to live sustainably, in as low impact fashion as possible in an urban environment.
We'd like to link up with the Energy Co-op that the Transition Town group is starting, which can mean them bulk buying solar panels and installing them on our roof so we use the electricity generated, but they sell the surplus back to the grid using the new Feed In Tariff scheme.
We'd like to build a compost loo or modify the existing toilet facilities to be compost loo-able.
The humongous 29' by 7' garage could be used to permanently house the Ripple Food Co-op, enabling it to be open weekly, if not twice weekly - evenings and weekends - and expand into offering local fresh fruit n veg. It can also be used for workshops, classes, training courses on the eco-renovations that we'll do to the building as well as old skills like preserving and brewing.
The 2 cellars can be used as band practice spaces and there are enough drummers involved in the project to ensure they are well used! You can stand up fully in one of the cellars and they both have electricity.
A room within the house can be turned into a community resource centre and info hub, putting to good use all the experience we've had in voluntary projects in our town. This could be used as meeting space for local groups.
We'd like to demonstrate what can be done with a small urban garden to turn it into a permacultural food unit And recreational space!
And lastly, we'd like to paint beautiful murals describing co-operative projects on the garage door :-)
If any of that floats your boat, please call me asap and we can talk about options, we can go view the place with you.
Investing We need to raise around 50,000 pounds of finance ourselves, so we're looking for investments of anything between 500 and several thousand pounds from friends, family, organisations and the wider community. We have already got 18,000 pledged to us which is over a third of our target. If you have money that you're looking to invest in an ethical entreprise please consider us; we can offer up to 4% interest on sums invested for 5, 10, 15 20 or 25 years. Investments are made as repayable loans, not donations, but those are gratefully received also! Investing in this project will mean supporting the provision of affordable, tenant controlled co-operative housing in Ipswich. The building itself will be bought by the legal entity that is the co-op and cannot be sold on, so members can move in and out without being tied financially to the project - all they have to do is pay rent. It will develop into a hub of community activities and a haven for co-operative learning accessible to the entire population, not just it's tenants.
We can send you our business plan to peruse
Speak soon, wish us luck and get in touch! We want you!
Gemma
Random Camel Housing Co-operative An Industrial & Provident Society Reg'd Feb 2007 No. IP030185
As a follow up to the evening we hosted in November last autumn at the Spinney (which has now been listed Grade 2!) Random Camel Housing Co-op has organised another evening of information and discussion:. Room W115, Waterfront Building, University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich. 7pm ending no later than 9:30pm
We'll be talking about creating a communal, environmentally-sound living space for those in and around Ipswich, using a tried and tested financial model: buying a property without any need for personal wealth, as a housing co-operative.
So what would be your ideal home? (best Lloyd Grossman voices now)
Possibilities include: a roomy house with shared facilities, an urban transition terrace, a peri-urban or completely rural land project, eco-village, eco-forest-dwellings, yurt community, barges at Pin Mill...?
Please come and proffer your dream! Random Camel Housing Co-op needs more members for our own plan to work, but if the plan isn't appealing then we want to know what would be! We want to know how you all want to live. So we'll introduce ourselves, there'll be an interactive ideal-home-mapping activity, sharing of ideas, and information from the Radical Routes network on how to make our dreams happen in the real world.
And cake.
If you can, forward and print and display the attached poster. Thanks.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
What we got up to on International Day of Climate Action!
Members of our co-op were involved in organizing a mass bike ride through our town to publicize 350.org, an international campaign drawing attention to the fatal levels of carbon in our atmosphere as well as generally highlighting climate change and our transition group. We had a fantastic day which was really well attended (even with bucket loads of new faces - shock horror!). We finished the bike ride at the People Community Garden, a fantastic local project which some friends of ours are involved in. Look them up. This picture is on the 350.org website and will go up in times square as part of a photo montage of people around the world fighting climate change.
What have the Camels been up to? Radical Rumours Report Oct 09
Helen's done mediation for CSG and making final touches to Member's Pack, Gem's joined Secretarial Group and is trying to do a finance visit for the Liverpool community.
We put on a talk entitled Introduction to Housing Co-ops and Communal Living at a rented commune in north Ipswich, called the Spinney. It was designed by Birkin Haward as his family home, and the idiot who now owns it wants to demolish it and build a sheltered housing complex. So they're in the process of getting it listed by the twentieth century society, and we're goading them into coming to a gathering so that if the landlords planning gets rejected, they can buy the place off him and be a proper co-op!
The talk wasn't hugely attended but it boosted our confidence in holding such events, we drew spider diagrams and sold booklets, and enthused the strangers-yes complete strangers!- who did come along. Thanks to co-ops who sent us notes and display material at short notice.
We plan to put on a follow up talk at the new university within the month, to nab unwitting students.
Our web presence: randomcamelcoop.blogspot.co.uk has been updated, we've put adverts for members and loanstock on the RR website and Diggers & Dreamers – where else is good?
The Ipswich food co-op is moving so we're rewriting leases/ helper instructions, shifting thousands of pounds of wholefood in bizarre vehicles, building cupboards & shelves, damp-proofing basement walls, sewing bunting, ordering signatory forms. Our membership have finally agreed on a system of individual work commitment to the co-op! Yes!
Organising a critical mass for the day of climate action coinciding with the community garden's open day.
Helen's working looaads at libraries, belly-dancing, and has made a fab poster for a new women's comic book group. John's drumming in his punk band, and dealt the mercy blow to our plum tree, which had fallen in two during the summer. Not before giving us many plums to eat. We're starting a programme of works on the allotment, at least we've written down what we must do.
Gemma's on a Clothing Alterations night course and going delirious and bug-eyed at the wild stitches a modern electric sewing machine can do. She cooked at EF! Set-up. She also drove halfway each way to the Halfway House-warming party in Derbyshire in the van, only stalling twice. And she attended the first night of the tour of End of the Line in Aldeburgh cinema, how quaint. The film about the fishing industry and global fish stocks crashing by 2048.
Made rosehips into syrup, haws into leather and haw brandy, sloes into sloe gin, elderberries into pie and wine, acorns into 'coffee' (and hopefully soon tempeh) apples into turnover, chestnuts into sweet spread.
Kate, who came to her first gathering this summer, moved into and out of Burrell Rd in just 3 weeks. This experience was painful for all of us. It was due to a lack of communication, exaggerated by low levels of mental wellbeing, and we've learnt how difficult it is to be a nuclear-family sized group of people in a communal space with differing -unvocalised- expectations of what communal means. Sometimes what one thinks might be sticking to process can seem like ganging up on the member you have issues with. Anyone with experience of intense bust-ups with a backdrop of mental 'dysfunction' for want of a better/more accurate term, please talk to us.
So the co-op is reevaluating; very definitely want to live as part of a larger group and potentially more rurally than before. Stopped looking for houses on market, concentrating on promotion for recruiting purposes.
Last week we got another thousand quid in loanstock, from our food coops apple juicer. We need fifteen more thousands.
We're not bothering submitting another model loan application but the business plan is re-jigged, not due to a visit from FG though.
Up with the pencil & pen, down with the programme!
Gemma's hand drawn front cover for Radical Rumours, Radical Routes internal newsletter that she also collates and formats. I say, what a talented slip of a girl! Bravo.
If you want to know what Radical Routes co-ops and associates get up to look for copies of rumours on the radical routes website or ask us!
Monday, 5 October 2009
'Introduction to Housing Co-ops and Communal Living' at the Spinney, 108 Westerfield Rd, Ipswich this Thursday, 8th October 7 - 9pm
Presentations, information and pretty displays on how to set up a community and buy a property together without requiring huge personal savings, and about Radical Routes the national co-operative support network.
Hosted by Random Camel Housing Co-op based in Ipswich - we're looking to buy our first house very soon and need several more members to make the project happen! Are you looking to join a radical community and work for social change here in Suffolk? The Spinney; an eight-person capacity rented space, also seeks new residents - what a great opportunity to meet us and see if we're perfect housemate material.
Canapes provided!
randomcamel@phonecoop.coop This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
A housing co-op is formed when a group of people buy property together wanting to live communally. The purchased building is not owned by any individual; it is a legal entity in its own right - tenants pay £1 to join and this is the extent of their liability. Tenants pay rent to the co-op, managing the place themselves. A housing co-op has legal safeguards to ensure it remains open for future generations to move in. Why are they so good? As tenants of privately owned accomodation, we have no control over our length of stay, how much we pay in rent, or the physical conditions of our homes. Removing the profit cut landlords take makes rents cheaper. Owning our own home means we can install facilities to reduce the impact our lives have on the environment; like greywater systems for baths and sinks, as well as simple home improvements impossible under normal tenancies.
We will buy a property partly with a mortgage from an ethical bank, and loan from a community finance organisation. We need to raise 10% of the total cost ourselves, and we’re asking you to help. Being an Industrial & Provident Society we can set periods when we issue 'loanstock': offering individuals and organisations the opportunity to invest money in the housing co-op. Loans of this type are usually between £500 and £5000. You can set the interest rate at 3% or 5%, or choose to waiver interest to further benefit the project. Point of repayment is also your choice - usually five or ten years, or less for smaller loans. You can also re-invest your money after that time. You get your money back - whilst donations of cash, skills or time are accepted gratefully, money you lend us will be repaid. Radical Routes member housing co-ops haven't had any bad debts since we started operating fifteen years ago. This is not a guarantee they’ll never occur but is an indication of a robust financial model.
Why invest? Ipswich needs more affordable housing, not ‘stunning, luxurious penthouses’. Your money would be helping others take control of their housing situation, and create a permanent haven for those working for social and environmental change - not only for the co-op tenants but all members of the community. It’s an opportunity to kickstart a long-term project you can see the benefits of on your doorstep, not a band-wagon fad that sends you irritating junk mail. Members’ rents and hire of space will provide income for the project once up and running; we are only asking for start-up funding. It’s redistribution of wealth, with a return!
Ipswich has a high proportion of low-income earners and claimants, who are taken advantage of by letting agents offering precarious tenancies. How can tenants take control of their lives or focus on global political issues when we are constantly worrying about scraping together a deposit, paying the rent, bills, and for food. It's going to get harder to find accomodation to rent as more University Campus Suffolk students move into town, as there's already limited and low quality housing stock. ‘Waterfront’ apartment developments have no gardens, are unaffordable, poorly designed, energy wasting, and ugly. They are meant for City commuters, and promote an unsustainable nuclear-unit lifestyle. Everyone in tiny boxes using the same appliances as next door, with no common space or bond.
Ipswich River Defences are insufficient to protect us all from extreme floods, and yet our low-lying region is predicted to be severely affected by climate change-related flooding. East Anglia was once called the Bread Basket of Britain and yet most of the population now are alienated from their food supply. The essential art of growing vegetables is not on the school curriculum. Is it any wonder our young people leave town, saying it’s rubbish, that nothing happens? Ipswich needs better facilities and a re-focus on community regeneration and empowerment. We believe a prerequisite in the fight for these demands is having a stable homebase shared with likeminded people. Living in a housing co-operative could inspire people to create other autonomous spaces in town - social centres, community farms and neighbourhood natural power schemes.
We're Ipswich’s first housing co-op. Our core aim is to house those who find it hard to access decent accomodation. This town used to be known as 'Red Ipswich’; prominent as a site of protest. By providing much needed meeting space and resources we seek to rejuvenate this culture of civilian resistance to unwanted and harmful development. We plan to respond and adapt to climate change, whose affect on this region will be massive. Any property we buy will be above worst-case scenario projected sea level. We intend to grow our own organic food, encourage wildlife, and replenish the fertility of our traditionally bountiful soil. We want to install professional sound-proofing in the property so local bands may hire space cheaply to practise their music. We are regulated by the FSA, and are members of Radical Routes, a national organisation which promotes and supports new housing co-ops.
