No. These are essentially running costs; they need to be incurred continuously. The idea is:
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Acquire a free or cheap space. This will make it much easier to “do stuff” in Brussels.
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Focus on generating positive externalities for the city. Example: launch a series of talks given by our guests at The Reef, piggybacking on trips they make anyway. Open them to the city and our neighborhood. This is practically free to do, because we have the space.
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Look in the community for people who enjoy this kind of work, support them in fundraising for it and offer the space and infrastructure. My metaphor for this is @HadeerGhareeb. I am impressed by her work with the children of Sidi Kaouki, in difficult circumstances. Maybe she, or others like her, would be interested in dreaming up a project for Molenbeek… then it’s a matter of finding some money, but with that kind of experience and the infrastructure (free) provided by The Reef it would be a strong proposal.
That said, I have factored in my spreadsheet a running cost of 1K EUR/month for a “house spirit”, to borrow another idea from Walkaway. This would be a person who would ideally live in the house and be paid to make sure things are running smoothly, talk to people, report problems, suggest improvements etc. It’s far from a full time job – maybe a couple of hours a day on average. You could think of someone like Hadeer cumulating the functions of project leader and house spirit. She moves in; we give her a room (value: 400 EUR per month) + a bit of cash (1,000 + 400 = 600 EUR per month) and buy two hours of her time a day. Plus, we help her roll out an educational project in town, or whatever she wants to do. This will have its own source of funding, and she can pay herself from that source. Result: full time employment + house spirit + social project in town. Neat, huh? 