Hi @reeflings
Recruitment and onboarding created a proposal to create a (limite) reserve of full members.
Could somebody review it?
The link to the proposal: Team Reef/Proposals/2026/Creating a limited reserve of FMs
Hi,
Here are my two cents …
I understand that this proposal tries to find a solution for a possible situation in which a Full Member decides to step out before the construction starts, which would cause a situation in which we would need to recruit somebody new in a very short period of time.
While I understand that we would want to anticipate a situation like that, I’m afraid that I have a concern (objection) that this will take up time and energy that would be better spent on other things. The situation is already presenting itself at the FM meeting this Thursday, where it looks like we are short in time to discuss all the topics that cannot be postponed to a later meeting.
For me there is too much uncertainty:
- We don’t know whether we will need to recruit a new household, and if yes, for which type of unit,
- We don’t know whether the current Associate Members will have moved on with their lives.
Spending time and energy getting to meet them and spending Full Member meeting time on it in light of so much uncertainty really doesn’t do it for me. On top of that I am really looking forward to having a stable group of people, i.e. the complete group that is going to build The Reef together, without having people coming in and going out all the time. This is important to me, because I believe this will make it easier for us to do some group-building, which I think will benefit us all when things will get difficult.
So I think I would like to invite you to look at the problem again and see whether there are other strategies that we can think of to solve the potential last-minute recruitment problem. I personally see two options:
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If we need to recruit a household at the last moment, we’ll contact the Associate Members who couldn’t stay, and we let them finish their onboarding where they left it (i.e. a shorter term).
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We re-design the recruitment process for a last-minute situation and make sure that we plan for the consensus meeting within 4-6 weeks.
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No, this is not it. It’s a situation where I fear we might arrive at where we go to the bank to get our mortgages, and it turns out that FM X cannot have a mortgage after all. It’s not a voluntary decision to step out, but because of circumstances.
I know we have the confesseur, and I know he puts a lot of time and effort into it, and thanks to him he pointed already out possible issues. But I fear that we will still have surprises at the moment we need to get the mortgages: interest rates further going up, things that weren’t brought up with the confesseur but having an impact, …
I agree that this will take up some extra time, and maybe this time will be wasted.
But after losing a year because of the previous plans not being accepted (something that I personally didn’t think would happen), after the review of the budget&price calculators with a check by the confesseur that lead to two FM being in trouble (one stepping out, maybe a second one following), I prefer to avoid any possible extra delays.
This is also based on the following observations:
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R&O has already contacted people on our waiting list twice with no result. We are going to do it a third time and I wonder if anybody on our long list of people on our waiting list will register for a presentation. Our waiting list creates – according to me – a false hope on having a safety net.
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We paused the outreach when we were busy with the reworking of the plans/reassignment of the units. Restart up outreach doesn’t go in a couple of weeks.
So this proposal aims at having a waiting list of people who really got a chance to get the know The Reef and who fall for the project. A waiting list with 3 of such a people is for me more valuable than to have a waiting list of 200 people who didn’t yet go to a presentation.
This is the case right now, in the weeks before the summer holidays we cancelled several PM’s because of not having enough topics. And ok, the coming months might be more busy than before the summer holidays.
We are not talking about 10 extra meetings. The proposal is not suggesting to organize extra presentation to constitute a waiting list, but just let the current members who want to continue, continue. We have now in total 5 members who might be considered for this. No guarantee that they all want to continue the journey, knowing there is no available unit any more.
So time investment for me is quite limited, for the gain it might have.
And to be completely fair: the situation of coming Thursday could have been prevented:
Dave got a B- more than a year ago. This was something that could have been taken up far sooner. I am not blaming anyone for this. I am part of the board and didn’t insist on it.
The landsurveyor topic could have started up before the summer holidays, but we in the board agreed to wait. Something I personally regret, viewing the possible consequences.
The current members are for a 1 BR and 3 BR. So 2 different types of units.
E&L have indicated they want to be put on a waiting list for 2 Br. If their FM gets a consensus and there would be a 2 BR become available, they might want to shift to a 2 BR and thus making a 1 BR available instead of a 2 BR.
So this leaves only a problem for the studios, for which we might recruit people soon.
Agreed. We have contacted ex-AM or ex – EM when the new 3 BR were created because of the change of plans. And yes, a lot of them had moved on.
We are in a different situation here: for me the risk period that I would like to attack is the ‘signing of the mortgage period’, which will happen in 6 à 9 months (guessing). This is not so far away any more, and we can pass this message to the reeflings who don’t have a choice of unit any more.
The reworking of the plans was something that we didn’t see coming so we couldn’t/didn’t pass a message to those interested in a 3 BR but in need of a cheaper 3 BR.
I have the same desire, but the desire to avoid any possible further delays is bigger than this.
Like mentioned above, it would stop with the current EM and AM members, so no extra people coming in. I understand this is important to you. It is also important to me to not have any extra delays and to start construction asap, move in asap and live in a cohousing asap.
I don’t know if my answers gave any clarity.
I have the impression it is about ‘some extra time investment’ over ‘judging the risk of having surprises when taking up mortgages’.
Why relooking at the problem now? I would then just drop the proposal and look at the options we have when the problem arises.
As explained above, to really have a waiting list we can count on, I would like to offer the current members a 2 à 3 months AM phase so they have time to completely fall in love with this project.
We’ve postponed the deadline of some of the AM whose am phase went over the summer period because we want to have enough time to get to meet/know them, as these are the people we will be living with. A reason for not letting Astrid apply for FM is because her time with us is too short.
This suggestion is in contradiction with the above.
I can accept I am the only one sitting with this fear and maybe I am wrong on the risk of some people not getting a mortgage in the end.
If that is the case, no problem to drop this proposal. I will not feel absolutely comfortable, but I am not going to fight for this. The goal with this is to put all the info on the table, that might not be clear to every one and to make people think a bit more consciously now at this time, than in 6 – 9 months where our choices and time will be more limited.
How would you like to proceed? See reactions of others on this topic on ER, and if there are no others that are clearly in favour to bring this to a PM, drop it?
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Hi all, for the sake of clarity, I have nothing to add in particular, but I would like to say that I agree with Els’ idea. (Especially also thinking about Astrid whom I know the best because I am her buddy, but also about the others that are already in the pipeline, not thinking about new recruitments).
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Hi @els,
Thanks for your elaborate response.
I think a point where we are not aligned is about what risk it is that we are talking about. We know from the architects that the first payment to be made will be the deposit, which is expected between June and September and which will account for 3-5% of the casco price. That is not an amount that we can’t front for one household while we are recruiting somebody else (ideally the outgoing household should front it themselves). I also don’t think someone is going to find out that they can’t get a mortgage in the very last minute before the deposit. I am therefore not super worried that this would lead to a delay.
And so my point still stands. If we would be in the unfortunate case that somebody needs to step out (for whatever reason), we’ll call in the people who are Associate Members now, and we’ll let them continue their membership phase, a bit like Alin and Lucia did. Investing time and mindspace now just to make them fall in love with the project to me is not worth it.
Another point where we are possibly not aligned is that the way I pictured it - based on what other cohousings told me, I don’t remember - is that the last household that will be recruited will inevitably be vetted a bit less profoundly, and that’s ok. We take the time to thoroughly vet the members who are joining now, so that we have a sufficiently resilient group that can work with a household that’s maybe a bit more difficult to handle. This is why I think it should be possible to shorten the term for a last-minute household, especially if we change our process a bit and we organise some interviews, small group dinners and/or any other activity to get to know people faster than usual.
So yes, I’m fully on board with having a contingency plan. And I think I have a desire for more precision on what the problem will look like, and a bit of out-of-the-box thinking about how we could address that problem when it arises. Right now my main concern is about investing time and emotional energy into a mitigation plan that might or might not work out. Giving consensus to somebody now and not seeing them for 9 months also won’t work for me.
How is that for you?
It doesn’t feel comfortable to me. And I don’t agree this will take so much time.
But as I said above, I am not going to fight for this.
I want to trust that this is just a difference of opinion, and that there are other options besides fighting or giving up?
Would you be open for a talk? I’m sure that if we hold dear to our needs and remain flexible around strategies to meet them, we’ll manage to find something that works for everybody?
i agree this is a difference of opinion.
Let me rephrase what i meant with ‘not fighting for this’:
The most important thing for me was that the group realizes that now we are at a crucial point and maybe it’s worth giving it some thought about how to proceed.
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normally we should have 4 AMs for the 2 maisonettes next week, which means we will have reached our maximum number of households when it comes down to the 3 BRs, so if we won’t need to recruit for a studio, we will cancel the two foreseen presentations
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the above also means that normally (
) we should sell our left over units soon (again still waiting on the outcome for the studio), and so possibly saying goodbye to some of our AM and EM. -
the remarks i made above: R&O’s experience with contacting ex-EM, ex-Am and people on the waiting list and the remark about outreach.
Personally it is within my comfort zone to drop the proposal and contact the AM’s who had to drop out, at the moment a unit would become available.
And I prefer to spend my energy on something else than further discussing this.
I leave it to @mieke to react if she wants, because i was not the only one in favour of this proposal.
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