House Viewing: Boat House and The Dinghy

This is why it is called Boat House.

So, we went to see Boat House again. A week ago. I suck.

We also went to see the house opposite. It's for sale by the same vendor, and would address the fact that Boat House isn't big enough for us. We would need to expand the co-op, which is a whole can o' worms, but we're generally open to the idea. Hence our nosing at this intriguing property.

Aren't they all intriguing?

The Dinghy is technically down as a 3 bedroom house, with 3 reception rooms. I don't know how estate agents decide this stuff, it's fascinating. It's been previously let as a 5 bedroom HMO, with the large basement reception room as a lounge, presumably. This takes up the whole lower ground/basement floor, and has a small bathroom and garden off of it, as you do. The garden was so overgrown we have no idea how bit it is, but the answer is likely to be "not very".




There's another garden which is totally paved (see left) which is at lower ground level but inaccessible from the lower ground floor. Why of course! This makes perfect sense! So to get from the living room to the main (for which read, bigger) garden, you have to get up the stairs and then down the outside stairs again. Hm. The paved garden was nice though, if seriously overlooked. No naked sunbathing here, then. (With a co-op like ours we need to consider these things.)


The bedrooms were suitably non-descript, the kitchen was pretty tiny, and there's a garage. There's not a lot more to be said really, although that is coming from me as the least keen member of the co-op. I do see the benefits of having two houses, and this house is OK, but I like Boat House much, much better.

After looking around The Dinghy, we had another quick peruse around Boat House. Bless the estate agent, he didn't seem to mind our epic nosiness. It did help consolidate the layout in our minds, and also allowed us to answer a few questions we couldn't resolve from memory. I still like it, and everyone else seems keen too.

There are obviously things which wouldn't be ideal with a two-house setup: one house would have a bigger kitchen, dining room and living room, and would be better suited to communal eating. It also has ALL the garden. Does this matter? I don't know, but we need to think about these things. Having the two houses would create a wider range of possibilities, but also a lot more roof to maintain.

We need to cogitate.

To aid both myself, and anyone else who might need it, with their cogitations, I leave you with this picture of Mattie looking uncomfortable sexay.

 - Hannah

House Viewing: Boat House

 Finally, another house viewing! It's been quiet over the summer with no new sitings of potential houses, but this one has been sitting on the market for a while. We actually got the particulars the same day as those for Labyrinth and The Tardis, but the excitement of those two meant this one got lost, quite literally, down the side of a chair. A massive toddler-proofing clearout of the living room at Golem HQ led to it being rediscovered, and we trundled along for a look this morning.

Boat House resides at the top of a rather steep and well-known hill, and has epic views to prove it.  It also has possibly the nicest garden we've seen on a house yet - terraced but sizeable to both front and back. You can see the sea from just about everywhere. J'approve.  Incidentally, it's called Boat House because the terraces at the back have awesome rope hand rails. My bad that I forgot to take a picture, but take my word for it that it feels sufficiently deck-like to warrant the name.

 The awesome garden-ness was a lovely surprise, and provided an interesting contrast with the outside space at The Tardis. It's funny how seeing one house really makes you re-evaluate others, and for me it was interesting to realise how unhappy I am with the the outside space at The Tardis, and how important it feels for Finn to have a lovely garden to grow up in, even if it does have ALL THE STEPS. Our fitness levels would greatly benefit from living here, though, it must be said. Either that or we'd soon be installing a stairlift. Joking aside, we were hoping to have an accessible property to those with mobility issues, and this will never be that. We're doomed to constantly be trading one thing off against another; such is househunting.

We knew from the particulars that this house does not have enough rooms, no matter how we rejig things internally. Without extending, there is no way to fit in all of our basic list of requirements, but we went to look because the whole thing is within budget.  That potentially gives us the option to extend/modify a house to suit a little better, so it seemed worth a look. 

The interior was a total surprise. This house has another huge hallway, and a big sweeping staircase which I am dying to swoosh down. Much to everyone's astonishment, few of the rooms matched the sizes on the particulars, and the interior space is generally lovely. It helps that it's light, with a tonne of south-facing windows. Win all round. Everyone liked the bedrooms, which is a pretty rare moment in our house-viewing history. Cause for celebration there, methinks. There is space for a co-op office in the hallway, and a lean-to utility room/pantry in the generous side-return, if only to reduce the amount of stuff that would have to live in the kitchen.

Because unfortunately, the communal rooms are another story. To be fair, there are two great sized bathrooms, so no problem there. But the kitchen is small and surprisingly triangular - less than ideal for mass-cooking, storage and dining. There are three rooms on the ground floor, two of which would have to be bedrooms, which leaves only one communal/spare room. Although technically this could work, discussions following viewings of similarly under-endowed houses have led us to believe that it would be anything but ideal to only have one communal room. Some of us felt that this was possibly mitigated slightly by the large garden, but that feels slightly tenuous and I'm not sure any of us were totally convinced. As always, pros and cons.

 There is some extension potential (the house is already extended quite radically on one side) but at the moment we can't quite see a way to make ourselves fit. Also, it has some interesting smells/cracks which might account for it's intriguingly affordable price. Still, we all have a good feeling about it, and it has led to some interesting re-evaluation about The Tardis (more on that below). We've decided to let this house sit on the backburner for now, and to re-visit it at a later date if it still doesn't seem like a write-off. Sven has a slightly bonkers plan regarding how we could make this house work, but I am saving it for a later blog-post as we need to get more information. Mysterious!


In related news, we tried to book another viewing for The Tardis, but were heartily put off by the estate agent. It looks like it is not going to be on the market for a while, and so he is reluctant to show us around. Doom biscuits all round. We're still considering it though, and at the very least, it does provide a good contrast property for anything else we look at.


Secondary Rules Progress

We've been working on these for quite some time. I don't know how long, it feels like forever. We are making progress though, yes indeedy. It's just the slow, consensual type of progress which we are becoming accustomed to on our journey as a co-op. I meant to type up a list of all the things we are aiming to have secondary rules for, but Finn has just woken up, so I shall instead give you some quick examples: income, children, bills, visitors, joining/leaving and grievance procedures, rents, bills, decorating, pets - the list goes on. We even have Rule 7 (disappointingly our particular Rule 7 is only the third definition on Urban Dictionary) to cover pretty much all eventualities that we don't manage to cover in the myriad of other rules.

This might seem like dramatic overkill, but we think it's an important way to shape the culture of the co-op. Radical Routes thinks that they are important too, and having a set of secondary rules, however simple or complex, is a requirement of membership. Respect and common sense come from peoples' behaviour, but it doesn't hurt to have something to point at when something doesn't quite feel right to the rest of the co-op. Agreeing these things while we are all on great terms with each other is also better than trying to thrash them out when there's a emotive issue on the table.

The secondary rules also serve as a good way of outlining what living in our co-op will be like, both for ourselves and for future potential members. When they're done, we will also post them on the blog so that you can have a nosey at them in all their verbose glory. For now, have a gander at these from Mary Ann Johnson Housing Co-op and Rhizome Housing Co-op to get an idea of what we're up to.

- Hannah 

We're back. Sort of.

Hello lovely people!

As Lotte so brilliantly told you in their prior post, we have been away in fields in various places across the country. This has included adventures to Earth First camp, Dance Camp Wales, Women In Tune and the Radical Routes Summer gathering, to plug but a few. We're all glad to be back in our own beds.

And they're still the same beds, because we still don't have a new house yet. Sad times indeed. The search continues, and so do various other machinations of the co-op process. We have another secondary rules workshop (click here to see the secondary rules of an established housing co-op) planned for next week. We also have a repeat viewing of The Tardis and a viewing of another interesting property on the cards next week, so we're not just sitting here twiddling our thumbs. Well, we're managing to squeeze that in too.

We had our first meeting in quite a while this evening, and although it was slightly fraught (tense issues were discussed), we slipped back into consensus decision-making and honest discussion in a way which felt affirming and brilliantly familiar. For those of you with a dread of meetings, I cannot recommend consensus techniques enough. I miss them when I'm in meetings where they're not used. Go and have a read about them, and see if they could make your meetings less arduous.

Right, I'm off to be a Viking for the weekend with this shady lot. Although I'd like to think that swapping modern society for a societal structure from a thousand years ago counts as radical social change, I have to admit that really, I just like dressing up.

We'll post soon about our house viewings and progress on the secondary rules. Fun times, even if we don't have new beds yet.

- Hannah 

*honkshu* (by Lotte)

Our co-op is slightly on hold a little bit. Due to festival season (commonly known as Summer in colloquial language), and therefore many of our members being in fields in far distant lands, sometimes as far as England, it is difficult to be looking around houses. Especially Tardis houses that are technically not at all for sale.

I can assure you that we are not completely asleep, though. I don't feel able to speak for the others, but for me, I am mostly banging on with the gender activism. My latest exciting thing is convincing the UK Deed Poll Service to offer a gender-neutral title on their documents, thus convincing hopefully many more organisations and companies that genderqueer people do exist and won't accept Miss or Mr or whatever.

I also somehow ended up in Lesbilicious.

Leave a comment if you want a signed photo, people.

Starting as we mean to go on...

We have already written the bulk of our secondary rules, and the gist of most of them is that it is the co-op's responsibility to help and encourage it's members to be socially aware and responsible people. Part of this means finding ways to help each other to get involved in things we may find challenging - whether that be doing the co-op's accounts or attending a demonstration - rather than admonishing people for not taking part.

Today this manifested as us going on a picnic in order to discuss the concept of social change. A tricky subject, and thus best accompanied by a tasty lunch and a nice view. As members of Radical Routes (RR) we have promised to be involved in radical social change, but what this really means is a hot topic of debate both within RR and our own co-op. Personally I feel like I have an understanding of the concept of social change, but one person's radicalism is another person's every day, and arriving at a working definition is fraught with difficulty.

To try to work out what radical social change means to us, and how we can help each other to do more of it, we took ourselves up to Rosehill Quarry, assembled lunch on a bench and tried to get our heads around the matter. We used one of our favourite meeting tools - the go-round - to find out what it is that interests us as a group. Queer issues were at the forefront, closely followed by environmental ones. Parenting also got a look-in. We pondered whether our aims involving these things were radical, how we might support each other in campaigning on these fronts, and what we could work on as a group to provide a focus to our activities.

What struck me about these discussions was that they come from a solid foundation of wanting to support each other in our own interests. We thought through ways to use the co-op structure as a basis for forming a wider group, and devised ways in which to lend weight to each others' plans.

Predictably, some of these plans involve cake.

What we end up doing is still open to discussion, but we have ideas, and know that we will have others to help us. We each stated what we were prepared to do, and we have a full spectrum from letter-writers to those keen on more direct action. Change takes all sorts.

Sometimes I think about the notion of the housing co-op, and it seems like a lot of work for somewhere to live. I already have somewhere to live, and so does everyone else in the co-op. We could stay where we are and save a lot of time spent in meetings. But in the short time we have existed, and without us at any point owning a house or even all living in one place, we have already become much more than just a group of housemates. We cook and buy food together, share childcare, help each other with all manner of projects. We are learning about consensus decision-making, non-violent communication, and the compromises and strength that co-operation brings.

Having the co-op as a focus enables us to do far more than just dream of living in a non-landlord-controlled property. I don't know if any of this counts as radical, but our society would certainly be changed for the better if we were more able to share, work together and resolve issues peacefully.

As a rather over-used, but still true, Gandhi quote goes: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world".


Hannah

House Viewing: The Tardis and Labyrinth

Since Mould Mansion we have not had a house to view which in any way fitted our size/price criteria. We've been to look at some nonetheless, but always with the knowledge of their inappropriateness in the backs of our minds. Sad times, indeed.

The other day Finn and I had a borrowed baby sling to try out, and so we went on a trawl of the estate agents to see if there was anything interesting about. We drew a blank, but a few hours later one of the agents rang saying he had a house that had just come on that would suit, and that the owners lived in the same street and were thinking of selling their house too, and did we want the particulars?

Er, yes!

When they came through they were incomplete, but very intriguing. Both houses are within our price range, and have enough rooms and random bits of space for communal good times as well. In fact, there seemed to be far too many rooms for what look, from the front, like quite narrow terraced houses. Oh yes, and one of them has a first floor conservatory, too. Random.

And so, today we embarked on a very exciting house viewing of these two properties; the Tardis, and Labyrinth.

First, The Tardis*.  This house looks a little different to others on the street, both inside and out. The owner has had great fun moving walls about inside, creating an awesomely wide and light hallway. There are 7 bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen, 3 bathrooms and an awesome basement with two windows. It also has a small garden, conservatory, a sun terrace on the second floor, and a large study area on the landing. The basement is enormous, and gets extra points for being the only one I've ever been in that doesn't stink of damp. In fact, it didn't smell at all - and neither did the rest of the house. A house in Swansea with no visible/smellable damp? You can imagine how impressed we were.

This house is different to others we've looked at on many levels. For one, it appears to have been reasonably well-loved and looked after. The owner seemed quite proud of it, and he didn't seem like a blagger, which made a nice change. The house felt; well, it felt like a home, and that is something I know our house will feel like. It was hard not to like it. It doesn't have any massive bedrooms or any teeny tiny ones. We'd all get an OK-ish amount of personal space, and lots and lots of varied communal space. Whether this suits everyone is still up for discussion.

We next went down the road to Labyrinth. Despite their similar size and location, the two houses couldn't have felt more different. Labyrinth has been HMOdified**, which is to say that every door is a fire door and thus shut all the time, that there are numerous extra internal walls making even large spaces feel small and boxy, and that the kitchen smelt weird. Such is the way of the HMO. 

It's currently split into two flats, with the bottom flat having a huge living room, small kitchen and bathroom in the basement, and then 3 bedrooms on the ground floor. The top flat has 3 bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, and a living room. The room sizes are more varied here, but there weren't any absurdly small rooms, just some a little smaller than we'd like. There was a bigger garden here, but no other extraneous areas.

Were we to live here, we'd have the whole ground floor as communal space, which would be awesome. In The Tardis the space is more split up into different areas, but there's also more of it. It's so hard to work out which is more important sometimes, but such is the way of buying houses. We are always trying to think of what will work best for the long-term of the co-op, and that does mean making tricky judgements.

After the viewing we went back to Cassian's for a debrief/squeebrief***. This involved, amongst other things, deciding the houses' names (for bloggity purposes) and determining that choosing between them was somewhat akin to a fight between David Tennant and David Bowie. Cue rubbish artwork.

Less importantly, rough floor plans were drawn and pros and cons debated, and it turns out that we see merit in them both. We're going to go for second viewings, and try to get more detailed measurements for The Tardis, which had some hilariously inaccurate ones in the particulars. We're going to do some investigating of market values, and re-work the business plan to see how it goes with both houses. We're going to have a meeting; the first of many, if we decide to go for one or the other.

As Joe so pointedly said, here we go again.

Hannah




* It's not only named for the TARDIS because it's bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, but also that if you painted it blue, it would have a slight similarity. Honest.
** I made this word up today, and had to use it :)
*** Another word I made up today. Clearly I'm on a roll.

MOVING HOUSE MAKE HULK SMASH ANGRY

So, I am moving house again, for will be the 4th time in just over 2 years. This makes me sad.

Artists impression of the Author.

Mattie! I hear you cry, what does this have to do with us? We are here to read whimsical exposition on mould and Babies, not hear you whinge about your personal housing situation! Well PAH! I tell you. This is about social inequality, unstable housing and the benefits of stable, mutually organised housing managed by tennants. So there. Listen to my whinging, oh invisible audience.


The situation is this.

Well, are you?

My current landlord has issued myself and my 2 housemates 2 months notice to scarper and find somewhere new. In a way this is nice, because in all my 8 months of living there I have <ILLEGALITY WARNING> not been on the contract. While partly because of disorganisation, mostly this is because I cannot find £160 of non refundable 'going on the contract' money.  The only housing security I have had is that my housemate is awesome and not some form of baddie.

My housemate - Not Skeletor

Swansea has very odd HMO rules that mean that should you want to live anywhere near anything ever you have to be less than two households. Otherwise HMO housing. Lovely, expensive student housing, in short. So far, the estate agents that we have spoken to have either said 'no, we don't do small HMO properties', 'we have houses but they're filthy' or 'we have a good house, but you'll have to pretend that there are less of you than there are'.

Due to being on 16 hours a week I will have to claim housing benefit. This means that upon moving into the next house I will need to pay contract fees and a bond. For living in a house.  How demanding am I.

Not this demanding though, God kids!

Now, this may just be me, but as a bond round here can be up to and beyond £300, contract fees £160 and a months rent around £180-250 before bill seems a bit steep for somewhere to live. You know, living, that thing that people do.

Start a housing co-op, take over the rental market. Make sure that I am part of the last generation that haemorrhages money it doesn't have into private pockets for the privilage of a roof and 4 walls.

But of course, private rental landlords, follow the advice below.

.

Bad Advice Chimps