Associate Membership, Anyone?

Last month, we posted an item about impending vacancies at uRth HAUS. Those have been filled. Actually, one of them never became a vacancy. As of this writing, we have two full houses. But we are still looking for some associate members.

The Associate Membership program has never become as popular as we envisioned. For the most part, people want to live with us or just be our non-resident friends. So at the HAUS Project Annual General Meeting at Sky Farm on 28 February, some HAUSers put their heads together and came up with some tentative plans for revising the program.

Most of us at HAUS Project still think that Associate Membership is a helluva deal. However, we understand that not everyone can pay $100 a month and contribute 4-5 hours of labor every week, as we currently request. Some can do more labor, others can pay more money. (Residential members commit to about five hours per week in addition to their monthly rent.) We’re looking to establish a sliding scale, perhaps from $150 and no labor obligation down to $50 and 10 hours. Whichever formula they select, Associates would still have access to our kitchen and laundry facilities.

Standard labor would include one two-hour kitchen shift, either cooking or cleaning, plus at least one other responsibility: housekeeping, groundskeeping, gardening, maintenance, grocery shopping, or recycling.

We have not formally adopted a proposal yet. If you are interested in the program and can commit either the time or the money but not both, join us for dinner, and we’ll talk. Just send a message to membership@hausproject.org to begin your co-op odyssey.