Hi folks,

We would like to invite you to join us for an organizing meeting for a new Oregon Cooperative Housing Network (OR CO-OP), with representatives from SquareOne Villages and Portland's Park Place co-op, and OR Co-Op organizers Garlynn Woodsong and myself.

When:
Thursday, October 14th

What time:
6-7:30pm

What:
The topic of the meeting will be multi-stakeholder cooperatives for housing and equitable development.

This meeting is not intended to be just a summit or a policy discussion..

Instead, it’s meant to build participation in a federated cooperative and/or local cooperatives within that federation, in order to bring real solutions to market for our housing and inequality crisis.

Why:
We think the time for navel-gazing has passed, and it’s now time for action.

 Over the past two years, a number of us have identified cooperatives as one of the most promising paths forward, and one that has very little current housing market penetration in Oregon, especially within the Portland region. 

For the urbanists and developers especially, this is a critical point: currently, it basically does not pencil to bring a new-construction multifamily rental building to market as a profit-dependent endeavor in most areas of Portland (not to mention most of the balance of the west coast of the United States, and perhaps even more broadly than that); while such a development might pencil as a condominium (for-sale multifamily), the fear of construction defect liability has scared basically the entire local development industry away from this exit strategy.

If you can’t build multifamily to rent, and you can’t built it to sell, then why would you build it? 

Yet, we’ve pinned the future of our region, here in Portland at least, on developing multifamily, essentially, so that we can grow up rather than out (and really, this should be the policy challenge for every city, everywhere).

Cooperatives thus provide a path forward to continue the work towards achieving our regional vision (or the vision for every region), one with multiple co-benefits, including the opportunity of multi-stakeholder cooperatives to provide not just housing, but also economic opportunity with reduced risk.

Where:
We will meet virtually, to reduce barriers to participation, and to allow the meeting to be recorded.
Join the Zoom Meeting here:

https://dpz.zoom.us/j/96921960976?pwd=L0x4UFdtK1FrZmY3eTg4VzRYNUQ2Zz09

Meeting ID: 969 2196 0976
Passcode: 785636

One tap mobile:
+13017158592,,96921960976#,,,,*785636# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,96921960976#,,,,*785636# US (Chicago)

Who:
This email is going / went out to multiple groups:

• The Portland subchapter of the Cascadia chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism

• The Portland Small Developers Alliance

• Oregon Cooperative Housing Network mailing list

• PDX Shelter Forum

• Village Collaborative

It is being cc’d to:

• The Cascadia chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism

Agenda:

6pm - 6:15pm: Introductions

6:15 - 6:45pm: Presentations

6:45 - 7:10pm: Breakout/topical discussions (we will decide in-meeting if we choose to break into small groups or remain in one group):

Types of co-ops:

    • Existing (Park Place, C Street, etc)

    • Construction of new physical future

    • Conversion of existing multi family into co-ops

    • Incremental: tiny home villages, etc

7:10 - 7:25pm: Reconvene, group discussion

7:25 - 7:30pm: Wrap-up & next steps

For more information:
Orcoop.org

We look forward to seeing you next Thursday!

Signed,

OCHN co-organizers: 

Tim McCormick
Housing Alternatives Network
https://tmccormick.org

Garlynn Woodsong
Woodsong Associates
https://www.woodsongassociates.com/