This week, David Lidz talks about his work with West Baltimore's innovative Waterbottle Cooperative. The co-op buys and renovates severely distressed row homes, then places them on the rental market at affordable rates, keeping the property ownership with the cooperative.Â
Then Deyanira Del Rio, Roberto Garcia Ceballos, and Chris Brown join Shelterforce to discuss the progress they've made and the challenges they've faced in creating new models of community ownership in New York City, Los Angeles, and the Hudson Valley.Â
And finally, as it is giving Tuesday, why not consider making a contribution to GEO to help us keep covering the worker co-op and solidarity economy movements?Â
Own The Hell Out Of It
David Lidz On Co-ops, Recovery And Rebuilding Baltimore
by David Lidz & Jack Clarke
"Often it’s folks coming back from prison, or coming up from addiction, or trying to escape street violence, or coming from another country and trying to get a fresh start. We hire those folks into our construction jobs and into other jobs within the co-op. And then once we finish a row home, we present it to the world as fully renovated homes at affordable rates. And the final piece is that we keep all these homes that we are renovating in a portfolio that is owned by those same workers. And now that we are starting to gather a significant tenant pool, we’re having a conversation about how we invite tenants into ownership of the portfolio."
Fueling the Future of Community Ownership
by Shelterforce
Learn about the power of Los Angeles’s Measure ULA, New York City’s take on a shared services model, cooperation between conservationists and affordable housing development in New York’s Hudson Valley, and more.Â
Co-op Cincy is Hiring a Business Developer
Co-op Cincy (Google Docs) — Co-op Cincy (formerly Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative) is seeking a full-time Co-op Culture and Business Developer to join our growing team. Co-op Cincy works to overcome inequality of opportunity, mobility, and income by building a network of unionized worker-owned cooperative businesses...
The Social Care Playbook
Equal Care Co-op — This playbook is a roadmap - developed to support local authorities, health services, grassroots groups and individuals who want to bring about a step change in social care. Although it is available for anyone to read, it is primarily aimed at three groups of people and in the following order: Directors, commissioners or policymakers for social care services...Community groups and collectives wishing to start their own co-operatives...Homecare and residential organisations wanting to shift to a relationship-centred, co-operative model of support...
Union Worker Cooperatives: Stronger Together
Lisabeth Ryder (YouTube) — Collective leadership is a process. It is dependent on the relationships among the parts in the system, whether that system is two people working together; a classroom, team, board, or organization; or a system initiative. In collective leadership, the way the group works together makes it different from a more traditional model of leadership. How the group works together and the unique results that are possible only when this happens differentiate a group that is sharing leadership from one that is not...
Co-operatives make their voices heard at Cop30 in Brazil
Co-op News — The sector’s main message was that co-operatives are already contributing to the climate agenda, in Brazil and around the world, but need more support to implement more climate-friendly initiatives. “Brazilian co-operatives are already protagonists in the climate agenda,” said Márcio Lopes de Freitas, president of the Organisation of Brazilian Co-operatives (OCB), during one of the sessions. “They represent the link between the real economy and major global commitments, bringing innovation, sustainability, and inclusion to those at the production base.”...
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