[Sfcevents] SfC fringe event at Co-operative congress on capital for student housing co-ops.

[Anna Key]

Hi All,

I'm really sorry but I will be taking Paternal Leave and won't be at 
congress.

I think finding a long term solution ot the financing issue is really 
important and have propbably spoke to people about this before.

A couple of very important points from my experience.

1) The Corporation Tax exemption is only available to Fully Mutual 
Housing co-ops and is only available to profits aquired from rental 
income from members.

2) A reducing capital balance.  The RR model of debt based finance, 
means that the Co-op owes less money each year and eventually will 
become outright owners.  A lot of current student housing co-op models 
are for other people to purchase the property and the co-op pay an 
equivalant amount as a mortgage but not end up owniong anything.  This 
is only fair if the organisation owning it is using the income to 
purchase more student housing, otherwise the need of a roof over ones 
head is being used as a way of generating profits for someone else.

I wish I could help you but good luck with the meeting

andy








On 26/05/14 14:52, Martin Meteyard wrote:
> Sean,
>
> I broadly agree with your approach as you know, but unfortunately the 
> last train back to Edinburgh on Saturday is at 1803. Not sure I 
> necessarily need to be there though.
>
> Martin
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean Farmelo" <sean at students.coop>
> To: "'Mike Shaw'" <mike.james.shaw at gmail.com>; "Carl Taylor" 
> <carltaylor at bchs.coop>
> Cc: "Vivian Woodell" <vivian at thephone.coop>; "Cornerstone Cath" 
> <leedscath at fastmail.co.uk>; "Rosie Evered" <rsevered at googlemail.com>; 
> "Anna Key" <mycocktaildress at aktivix.org>; "Ian Rothwell" 
> <ian.rothwell at co-opandcommunityfinance.coop>; "Corrigan Nadon-Nichols" 
> <corrigan at nasco.coop>; <sfcevents at email-lists.org>; "Martin Meteyard" 
> <martin.m at pop3.poptel.org.uk>
> Sent: Monday, May 26, 2014 2:20 PM
> Subject: SfC fringe event at Co-operative congress on capital for 
> student housing co-ops.
>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm getting in touch with you to suggest a round table discussion fringe
>> event at Co-operative congress next month on the subject of a more
>> organised approach to funding the new wave of student housing
>> co-operative in the U.K.
>>
>> The plan is for the meeting to be held as a fringe event beginning at
>> around 5.15pm on Saturday after the conclusion of Congress. I am going
>> to provisionally booked an accessible meeting room venue in the nearby
>> Briar Rose Hotel. If the timing is bad and people would rather it was at
>> another point during the weekend then please flag it up and I can re-jig
>> the booking.
>>
>> At present it looks like we are on track to get three co-operatives open
>> for September 2014 Edinburgh have managed it through good connections
>> with the local council and a friendly housing association. Birmingham
>> and Sheffield will be managing it with support from the Phone Co-op. All
>> though it may well work out well in these individual cases, I think it
>> is obvious that we need some sort of a generic solution that will enable
>> student groups across the country who aren't lucky enough to have those
>> connections to access capital to buy their houses.
>>
>> I've been having quite a few conversations with groups across the
>> country in the past month and there are active group in Aberdeen,
>> Nottingham, Bradford, Sussex and London all looking to set up housing
>> co-ops for September 2015. It would be a shame/a failure of the
>> co-operative movement for all of the momentum to fizzle out because of a
>> lack of access to capital.
>>
>> I will be putting my ideas down before the meeting but I'm sure people
>> will have their own much better ideas to throw into the mix, however I'm
>> keen have the session as a relatively productive one in which the
>> discussion mainly focusses on the idea of having a single revolving loan
>> fund or instead something similar to NASCO Properties in the U.S
>> or the mega co-ops which have begun being discussed by Radical Routes.
>> I.E a body owned by student co-ops which in turn owns the freeholds on
>> the properties allowing it to in future leverage capital a lot easier
>> than individual co-ops could alone. Whatever it is I think it needs to
>> be up and running before the next set of housing co-ops get going in
>> order to access the capital which will be created by them in the long
>> term/ help them start up in the first place. It would be good if we went
>> into the meeting with a coherent idea of what we want and then used the
>> opportunity to work out how to actually make it happen - as opposed to
>> discussing a whole raft of ideas and not achieving anything.
>>
>> Please hit reply all, rather than just sending me an email as I think it
>> would be good for everyone to be on the same page before the meeting.
>>
>> For reference,
>>
>> people in this email (I haven't included everyone it's relevant to, eg
>> just rosie from sheffield, just me from birmingham, so as not to confuse
>> matters)-
>>
>> Mike  - SfC network Co-ordinator
>> Vivian  - Phone Co-op
>> Cath - SfC hub support
>> Carl  - Birmingham Co-operative Housing Services
>> Rosie - Sheffield Student Housing Co-operative
>> Andy - Radical Routes
>> SfC events - events planning group
>> Ian Rothwell - Co-op and Community Finance
>> Corrigan - NASCO (presumably only able to participate via email!)
>> Martin - SfC hub support
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Sean.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>