I was a member, and later board member, of the housing co-ops in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Inter-Cooperative Council (icc.coop). In many ways, it was an incredible institution (and maybe still is; I'm long out of touch): Highly democratic and very successful. It's continued to exist and grow since the 1930s, with almost complete turnover in membership every two years. They owned at the time around 20 properties, housed around 600 people affordably - their primary mission - and had assets and budget well into the millions.
I still don't understand quite how they did it. They did have a small permanent staff of an executive director, financial director, and a couple maintenance people. Everything else was done by mainly college-age membership that, as I said, turned over almost completely every two years; they were the board of directors, maintenance, collected membership dues (the equivalent of rent), made major investment decisions (buy a new house?), etc. etc. One contributing factor may have been that it was a bunch of intelligent people, self-selected for their commitment, who had little long-term vested interest (they'd be gone in a couple of years). I might expect the latter to be a disaster, but it also eliminated a lot of politics - nobody had a career, a future, a promotion, a reputation, or much ego depending on the outcomes.
Based on your links, I'm pretty sure you know about the ICC. Any thoughts on how it, and similar organizations work, where others that require community commitment, like the bookstore in the article, fail?
I still don't understand quite how they did it. They did have a small permanent staff of an executive director, financial director, and a couple maintenance people. Everything else was done by mainly college-age membership that, as I said, turned over almost completely every two years; they were the board of directors, maintenance, collected membership dues (the equivalent of rent), made major investment decisions (buy a new house?), etc. etc. One contributing factor may have been that it was a bunch of intelligent people, self-selected for their commitment, who had little long-term vested interest (they'd be gone in a couple of years). I might expect the latter to be a disaster, but it also eliminated a lot of politics - nobody had a career, a future, a promotion, a reputation, or much ego depending on the outcomes.
Based on your links, I'm pretty sure you know about the ICC. Any thoughts on how it, and similar organizations work, where others that require community commitment, like the bookstore in the article, fail?