Project check-in
Mark started the meeting by asking, in general, where we are. He remarked that this phase of the project can be frustrating, as people want to know the exact price and characteristics of available units. Mark recommends to
- Set the price fork (which we did)
- Let the architects propose an evaluation method and approve it.
- Swear to never question the evaluation method, or we will never see the end of it.
- Get the founding group to make its choice of units.
- Keep out “consumers”, people who are just looking for an investment opportunity and show no intention of engaging with the group as a cohousing group.
Action point: push on with Le Programme and finish it already.
Financial pipeline
How, in practice, to collect the money needed for the purchase of the site? Mark’s advice is:
- Give ourselves ample time to remediate a glitch. The money should be ready to go three months before the deed.
- Collect it in a bank account we control, and transfer it to the notary in one go. There are several ways to do this:
- We could ask the notary if it is OK to use the bank account of the ASBL.
- Or we could use the SoSim’s, if we already have one.
Many cohousing groups create some kind of vehicle (SoSim or ASBL), open a bank account, and then ask the bank to open one savings account for each household in the group. Every contribution by, say, household Alice goes into a savings account called “Alice”. If Alice has taken a loan, she instructs her bank to credit that account with tranches of the loan. Whenever the SoSim makes a payment, it takes Alice’s share of the payment from that savings account.
This systems has two advantages:
- It is very transparent: when looking at the movements in the “Alice” bank account, Alice herself can see what she has put in and what the SoSim has paid on her behalf, and when.
- It is very secure. Since these accounts are nested under the SoSim main account, it is only the users of the SoSim’s account that can access them. This system, in other words, operationalizes the idea of the “locked accounts” mentioned in Spiegel’s statute.
This suggests that our best course of action is to set up the SoSim ASAP. We will also use it as a legal and financial interface with the architects.
Action point: @reef-finance to make a proposal for (a) finishing the statutes, (b) incorporating the SoSim in such a way that it is easy for new members to join it and (c) opening the relevant current and savings accounts. This means a final revision of the SoSim statutes. @ugne to verify with Triodos that this is possible.
SoSim + Copropriété
This is the discussion started here. There is a rather mysterious reference to a new law that imposes that the SoSim would pay for the construction of units, whereas a copropriété, a different entity with separate accounting, would pay for the common spaces. Mark has never seen this and no idea what it is about. We do know that, in other cohousings, construction companies did not invoice the SoSim at all: it invoiced each individual member of the group, pro quota of the surface bought. So, in this case, construction companies would have to issue two invoices to each household, one for the units and one for the common, and then the same people would pay them, but through two separate vehicles? Here we need help. @RichardB to approach our lawyer with a request to explain to us how this would work in practice. Also we could maybe ask Habitat participation and/or Samenhuizen. Could this be the first task for @Hannah in team finance?
Inclusive units
Mark is not interested in being himself an investor in The Reef. He knows several organizations that does what we want from inclusive units, and is happy to connect us with them. One for @Sophie_B if she feels it is worth it.