Hi Els,
Thanks a lot for that. To be honest the part on the private storage space is not at all what I expected though.
6 m² as the minimum, and as a result sharing as a default?
One of the points I have been trying to make in the past is that sharing a storage space makes incredible sense, because it creates more space to get in between shelves. Next time there’s a plenary at my place I should show my storage space in the basement just to demonstrate how much space is going to waste because I need to maintain access to the back.
The way it is drawn now, in the corridor on the right, both the storage spaces on the left and on the right are about the width of a door (a bit wider). That makes it easy to compare it to the toilet space in my apartment. So both on the left and on the right, you should imagine that 50% of your space will be left unused if you want to maintain access to what is stored in the back.
So if it were up to me, I would have said: the minimum space for a storage space is 6 m². If you want less, you’ll have to share it with another household.
A visual example would be the spaces that are labelled as “Alberto”. You could imagine a door in the middle. Then there are several options: either you draw lines on the floor to designate what belongs to whom, or - if two households can agree to that - you put three shelves on wheels in it (to save space for manoeuvering) and you indicate which space belongs to whom.
Moving the right corridor to the right?
Making all the spaces 6 m² is not sufficient though, as you can see from the spaces to the right of the right corridor. They are still not much wider than a door, so pretty daft IMHO: how are you going to reach what is stored in the back?
Therefore my proposal for a change would be to move the right corridor to the right, so that the storage spaces on the left become wider, and those on the right become less wide.
Leaving sufficient choice to the new households => divide it into squares and don’t attribute them yet?
It would be so much nicer if the last household that is joining could still express their wishes, and we could see collectively how we can come to a solution that finds the right middle for everybody. The only way to leave enough choice to the new households that I see, is to not yet attribute the cellar spaces.
The way I would do it, is to divide the 6 m² spaces that I described above into slots of 1,5 m² or 3 m². Then we can attribute these when the group is complete, finding a right middle between “first come first served” and meeting everybody’s wishes.
Shared storage space: leaving it open and making it voluntary?
To get even more flexibility, we could not define the surface of the shared storage space yet, but rather let it depend on what is left after everybody has expressed their wishes.
If that would be more than 6 m² (or even in any case), I imagine that this could be a thing that could be subject to solidarity funding? Given that some households want to limit price increases at all cost, why not divide the bottom square in bits of 0,75 m², and ask whether there are volunteers who want to buy one and leave it free for common use?