How to Live in a Housing Co-Op

McKenzie Jones: Being a part of a housing co-op was a safety net for me because the co-op could continue as an entity to pay its bills and give me grace as a tenant and a board member to catch up and to restructure my payments to the co-op for things like insurance and taxes. If I had been renting somewhere, I might have been evicted. I could have defaulted on a mortgage over the course of those months, but instead. I was part of a housing co-op that has some commitment to supporting me and to working with me. And so I got to stay in my house with my kids. that's no small story,

Dia: Today on the Ithaca Local Economy Lab, we're talking about the nitty-gritty of living, creating, and expanding in a housing co-op with the dynamic and multi-talented Mckenzie Jones. Mckenzie is one of the founding owners of the Aurora Pocket Neighborhood Cooperative in Ithaca's Fall Creek neighborhood. She also spent a decade on the City of Ithaca's planning board and is the founder of the Worker Place and Launch dot Co-op. where she is building a new solidarity economy and providing an online platform for entrepreneurs to get assistance in starting and growing worker co-ops in the United States.

Mckenzie is also an accomplished musician, singer, and songwriter, the frontwoman of Strange Heavy, and co-founding member of Mama Look. Her latest project, Ancestors, explores identity, lineage, liberation, and belonging through collaborative and movement-driven songs. She is a true expert who lives what she teaches and helps others navigate their way into the cooperative lifestyle. I'm so delighted to welcome her. So let's just start at the beginning because you live in one of Ithaca's co-housing communities. I think maybe

McKenzie Jones: Yes.

Dia: I don't want to say the first one because I think that Eco Village was the first one. Maybe the first one within the city limits.

McKenzie Jones: That's possi that's not true either. There's Stewart Little is a housing cooperative on Stewart Avenue. It used to be a school. And it might be

Dia: okay.

McKenzie Jones: specifically like elder apartments. I'm not sure. It's got some contingencies, but yeah, that is within the city limits. But yes, the Aurora Pocket neighborhood is a unique co housing community in Ithaca.

Dia: Right, well let's let's talk a little bit about what makes it special. were you part of building Aurora? Were you a in it from the from the very beginning?

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, as as close to the beginning as I could have been, I'd say, I moved to Ithaca in two thousand eight and I had my first child with me who was eleven months old and my at the time husband. And we had a car that ran on vegetable oil and we were living in Pennsylvania collecting waste oil from restaurants and filtering it and putting it into this tank.

And when we moved to Ithaca, we found a group of people, Ithaca Biodiesel Cooperative, six or so people who were doing that work collectively of collecting waste oil from restaurants, filtering it, putting it in their tanks, or making actual biodiesel to sell to anyone with a diesel engine. And I thought it was so cool. It was so radical, so environmental, you know, it was a an amazing response to climate, an amazing response to fuel prices, an amazing response to like the big oil industry in general. And that was the beginning of my love affair with co-ops.

And I had been in Pennsylvania in state college after being a Penn State student and having my child. I had been living on an off-grid farm for a little while. I had been part of a grocery store collective. I was getting really into the tangible structures, the infrastructure and the businesses that I felt were responding to what I was feeling as As a child I always felt a little on the fringe of society, didn't totally have language for these things. And now as an adult I can say, I'm someone who's a little bit more socialist leaning. I'm someone who's a little bit more radical in my politics.

And and so Ithaca Biot is a cooperative gave me a lot of language for that. And I was able to then say, okay, I know I want to live alternatively, I know I want my housing to be alternative. Now I have this idea of co-ops as a pathway for that. And so I was looking on Craigslist and I saw an ad from Sue Cosantini, who lived in a house on Aurora Street, saying, I want to build a housing co-op out of my house. I want to build other houses. I'm looking for people who want to invest with me and who wanna build this with me.

And I raised my hands and we had meals with her and meetings with her, and then other families raised their hands, and then there were enough of us to start moving forward with creating the actual entity and we spent enough time getting buy-in from each other and then fit you know financially figuring out all the details. We worked with Alternatives Federal Credit Union, who I to this day am a member of. I bank with them professionally, personally. The co-op still has our accounts there. and they really went to great lengths to help us form the co-op.

It was a model that they were not at all accustomed to, but they worked with us essentially to collect personal investments into a company and that company then being able to get a construction loan to build new houses, each house which then was separated off into an individual mortgage. I think it was really complicated for them, but they did it and I love them for it and I recommend that anyone bank with them. Credit unions are cooperative financial institutions. If you are a member of Alternative Federal Credit Union, you're actually a member of a financial cooperative.

And you have some decision-making rights as a member of that financial cooperative. And there are lots of benefits that you have as a member of that financial cooperative. So, and that was one of the principles that we wanted to abide by was working with a financial co-op. so yeah, we were really in the weeds for many years, four years, I think, from that time I saw the Craigslist ad to when I moved into my house. It was four years. and now from my seat I probably could help others get through that process a lot quicker.

but I certainly don't regret or begrudge the time it took because there was a lot of really important building that we did. It was really valuable and those conversations we had then for those of us who are still here, you know, are still really present for us as we embody the co-op.

Dia: So housing is such a central concern people are are struggling to meet their rent and they're looking at new ways and interesting ways to do that. And also I think the pandemic shutdown where people were so isolated kind of made people start to rethink and look backwards a little bit and start thinking about living together. And joining together with their neighbors more or even sharing the same roof.

And then of course there's the whole move to more like a cooperative instead of co-living where you're all under one roof, you've got a cooperative neighborhood where people are sharing resources within a neighborhood together, probably like your situation is. So can you talk a little bit about what the differences are between those and what what they're called, what the terminology is, so we can get all get on the same page about that.

McKenzie Jones: I think a lot of the words are really interchangeable, and then you get into sort of the legalese. And so co-living, cohabitating, intentional living, co-housing, even those all fall in this realm of sharing the day-to-day living with people. And I'm an Aurora Pocket Neighborhood Cooperative Incorporated. So we are an actual business entity recognized by the state of New York. And so there are several owners of that business being the board of directors of the co-op. And so the owners of the land also lease to the tenants. So we are both of those parties. Aurora Pocket neighborhood is small. There are four households.

We don't have any common buildings. And we're in downtown Ithaca in the Fall Creek neighborhood. that's our structure. Our structure is as a recognized cooperative entity that has owners and a board that makes decisions on behalf of those owners and leases to tenants and as part of a proprietary lease is what it's called. We as the tenants live in the co-op. I've certainly lived in other co housing scenarios, multiple people having agreements under the same roof. this is the first I'd say. Cooperative legal entity that I've lived within.

But I think what the thread that ties all of them together is that we are agreeing to share in the rights and responsibilities of living within this house. And so we all benefit from certain things in the house and we all have to maintain things in the house. And I do think that there's an idealized vision of co housing in that people. often imagined the end goal of living happily, sharing resources, feeling a lighter burden perhaps, spending a little less money, having extended family be nearby, right? People idealize co-ops thinking about that.

And also I think that is the reality, but what a lot of people just don't know about or think about is the importance of the structures and the agreements that have to be put into place for people to actually practice living together, practice making decisions together. It's one thing to want to do those things and it's another thing to put in the effort and to study the frameworks that allow us to do that. Because there is not a reality in which most people who live together on land or under the same roof agree on everything. So how do we navigate disagreements? How do we navigate our own agency with the collective need?

That is ideally something that all co-ops are doing, all housing co-ops are doing. There will be a a default way of living together, whether or not people are intentional. and so I always try to encourage people to be intentional about those ways that they live together instead of defaulting to certain structures and dynamics that might be comfortable but not totally healthy.

Dia: I imagine that the structures that you're talking about are by necessity highly flexible and very individualized to each group that's doing it, but is there a place or like how would you get started? it feels like a massive undertaking to try to think about creating documentation or rules for all these different kind of situations. So if somebody was just starting out and wanting to say rent a big house with their friends, that seems like a really easy entry into this kind of a situation, what would be a good thing for them to start with?

McKenzie Jones: It might seem a little meta, but I would say starting with how will we make decisions together and what decisions will we make together before figuring out who's gonna wash the dishes on Tuesdays, are the dishes something that we're gonna decide together? Are we gonna decide together who who does that? Are we gonna share that load? there's a bigger discussion here around work and chores, etc. So before we decide who's mowing the lawn, let's decide is lawn mowing one of those decisions that we share and that we make together about who does.

And so in co-op spaces, whether it be a worker or a housing cooperative or other type, there's a tool called a decision-making matrix. and it there's usually a pretty standard outline I'd say based upon the legal requirements of a board, which tends to have fiduciary or financial responsibility over a co-op. you know, it it might outline what the members can can discuss or not discuss with the board. It might outline how big decisions like If we're gonna move the housing co-op, if we're gonna buy another house together, who's part of that decision?

so a matrix like that that sort of outlines the types of decisions that we anticipate will need to be made based on best practices, evidence from other housing co-ops, and what we as this cooperative group decide together. You know, what are those decisions that we're gonna make together and then who's gonna make them? And so even there you can see that there's a need to have some decision-making framework. to decide how to make decisions together.

and so I do think that co-ops can feel a little stuck like in the mud when they're getting started because there's this cyclical need to govern each other and decide how to govern each other. So yeah, that's why there are tools like a decision making matrix that can be customized for each co-op. So I would say if a bunch of people are want to rent a house together I'd get to the basics of like what does it take to live in this house? and we might even take it a step further. What does success look like to live in this house together? Do we all agree that we want it to be clean?

Because if we don't all need it to be clean, then we don't need to have a chore list at all. Right? We might focus on other things in the house. I wouldn't recommend that, but it is the choice, it you know, right? Like it is the self determined choice of each collective. So yeah, I would start there with just like what are the things that we want to ha all have shared governance over? And what are the things that we don't have shared governance over? Like the state of my personal bedroom is is my own, right? But the common spaces we might decide that we want to have some shared governance over.

Dia: what kind of resources are there available for people to start looking at those kind of matrixes?

McKenzie Jones: Well there's there are a couple of housing cooperative specific organizations in the US. One is called NASCO. the National Association of Student Cooperatives organization, something like that. and so at schools and in college towns, etc., where a bunch of young people through some higher education system are living together, that's a body that supports them and they have resources not only for students, but for anyone who's living cooperatively. and then there's an International Housing Association that also provides a lot of data on where there are housing cooperatives and if they offer educational resources.

A lot of housing co-ops offer tours. A lot of people who live in housing co-ops are very inherently drawn to cooperative principles around sharing. So if you come across someone who lives in the housing co-op they're probably very likely to share some of their organizing documents with you like bylaws or operating agreements or leases, those kinds of things. I'm one of those people. I'm happy to share those documents on behalf of my co-op.

Dia: Wonderful. that's that's that's great to know. Thank you. So one of the sort of fantasies that I hear a lot of from people is, especially in this area 'cause there's a lot of land around, right? There's like, I've got an acre or I've got five acres or I've got twenty acres. come and put your tiny house or your camper or something on my land, you know, and we'll we'll all work together and live in harmony for the rest of our days. which sounds very idyllic, especially in the Finger Lakes region here. But

McKenzie Jones: Mm-hmm.

Dia: it also sounds really fraught because of who owns the land and what might be done on it. And when we look at the housing cooperatives that are just in the Ithaca here. the difference between say Eco Village, which actually has three separate cooperative entities on the land, and White Hawk? cooperative. They have a long term lease that they lease to people who then build their own homes on there. So that would be sort of like I've got this land, come and put your camper on it, but with an actual house.

McKenzie Jones: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dia: Or your situation, is is a little bit different yet, where you you purchased the house So does who owns the land matter a lot and how you deal with that structure, or is it more or less the same in the end?

McKenzie Jones: Well one one point of clarification I'll say, or just s something I'm not totally aware of, is if the White Hawk Eco Village and Danby, if they have a long-term lease as an entity and they're leasing to folks, that almost sounds like a land trust also. and so there are lots of different ways to set it up and and in our co-op it's like I I co-own the land with business partners is one way to think about it. And as business partners we rent the houses. And I'm a tenant of the house. So that's not very dissimilar from how Eco Village has it set up. It's a similar process.

but what I'll say is that I think the agreements are really what matter, and what to do if someone acts outside of that agreement. So that's the first thing. So if you're renting a house with friends, you might have a landowner who's not part of. the cooperative living. They might not even be local. They might just manage the property from somewhere else and they're not involved. You're gonna have a lease that sort of has to always be met. No matter what the cooperative decides, it has to fulfill its lease or it cannot exist. Right.

So like in that situation there's a hierarchy in some ways because of who owns the land and the structures has to have to have to match that. In other scenarios where the co op itself or the members of the co op are owners of the land, they might be able to offer themselves a little bit more leeway with the structure, but there still has to be a structure around who's maintaining the land, who's paying for the land, you know, like the taxes have to get paid. No matter what. So is it individuals who reside there? Is it an entity on behalf of those individuals? How is that entity making its money?

those are the things that I think people really need to think a lot about. and I think it's p it's all possible. I I definitely want to give the impression today and always that these structures are possible to figure out, they are possible to customize, sometimes it can be hard to find the information and it's really important to have a professional, a co-op expert or a cooperative lawyer or a real estate lawyer, someone like that to guide you through the process.

I definitely recommend having expert support with the caveat that I know that resources are often tight for people who are looking to live cooperatively and that's part of why they want to live cooperatively. But I think that this the structures can yeah the structures can be created To serve the population in need. And I think that's something that's really important to remember in a cooperative structure is that access to resources or capital do not grant someone greater power or decision making. One of the principles or a big tenet, a kind of a rule of co-ops is one person, one vote.

We are managing this land, we're managing this house, we're managing this business democratically, truly. So I might own the land and I lease it to everyone and we should have really clear legal agreements and financial agreements about that. But when we come to the table where we're discussing the gardening, I don't have any more or less power than anyone else. And I think that that's a super important characteristic of cooperatives. It's what makes them really just oriented. And I think it's one of the hardest things for people to put into practice when they're coming from structures of ownership.

Where power and money go hand in hand. In co-ops, we're trying to decouple power from money. We know that people are gonna have to get creative about money, but we want everyone to have equal power coming to the decision-making table. So that's why those structures are really, really helpful. However, whatever they are, whatever agreements they are. and yeah, land ownership matters because there might be some overarching lease that has to be fulfilled, but but ultimately the people who are making decisions together. should be should be approaching those decisions equitably regardless of how much money or land they have access to.

Dia: let's talk about the money a little bit because as you said, that is why people are thinking that cooperative living is is the way to go. It's not something that is advisable, it sounds like, to just walk into thoughtlessly. You need to be thoughtful about. who you're going to be living with and and how you're going to be structuring this living arrangement and also I guess the costs, this the startup costs around it. So if you're gonna buy land or buy housing is that actually less expensive than just buying a house in a neighborhood somewhere?

McKenzie Jones: I think that the answer is not necessarily that it's less expensive, but that there are more avenues for raising capital when people are pooling their resources together. So if a lot of people are gonna go in on land, that just makes it more feasible when you're dividing, you know, you've you need an eighty thousand dollar down payment. four families paying twenty thousand is a little bit more feasible for those families, right? And then paying a thirty or forty thousand dollar tax bill divided ten ways that makes it more feasible. So I think there is that clear math.

But then of course on the other side of it is like, well, you have twenty acres and you're dividing that by four as well. So you have a little less space. I mean I I think unfortunately the costs of land and housing and as they increase that's part of the market and that's not necess like the style of ownership isn't gonna necessarily change the cost. What it does change though is that There's more possibility for people to pay in unconventional ways for housing.

because lumber costs lumber no matter it's cost it's cost the same, no matter who's if someone's building it for a conventional house or if they're building it for an unconventional house, the lumber cost is the same. but who's paying for it can change. And so the example that I have is with the Aurora Pocket neighborhood. Because we were a co op and not an individual, because we were an actual entity, we ha and we were building three new houses.

Where there was one existing, we were eligible for this class of developer funding that doesn't exist to regular people who are getting a loan for a house that they're gonna build on their own. And Better Housing of Tompkins County had a grant at the time for to make housing more affordable to developers who could commit to making 25% of their housing below market rate. Our co-op was going to have four houses and we committed to making one of those houses affordable, which was the house that my family was going to be living in, because my family was the house that needed for there to be some kind of financial incentive.

On our own, as individuals with gifts and savings and even down payment assistance from Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services, we needed there to be additional funding to be able to secure our house. We couldn't make it cost less. But we could get money from unconventional places. So the co-op itself got a grant from Better Housing of Tompkins County to go to one of its houses being affordable. And the co-op decided with that grant to use it for construction costs for one of the houses. So it fulfilled the grant. It served my family's purpose.

The co-op was not on the hook for that funding, but was able to leverage that funding for one of its members. And so everybody won in that scenario and it only really worked because we were a co-op. We didn't have to be a co-op. We could have been a conventional business getting into real estate and still had access to that money if we were making one of the units affordable. You know, so it wasn't like being a co-op was the only way to get that funding, but it was a way that us as individuals could access funding. because we had a development company, more or less.

It's like a house might cost three hundred thousand dollars to build no matter what, but can you get unconventional funding to support it is really like the question with an unconventional structure like a co op.

Dia: So could you have structured your organization as a nonprofit and then gotten nonprofit grants to fund it?

McKenzie Jones: yes, that's possible. And why that's separate from this conversation, or not necessarily an angle we went to, is that nonprofits don't guarantee any kind of democratic management. also nonprofits have a requirement to have a board made up of people from outside of it that have a lot of determining governance around what happens as opposed to the people on the inside. Do you the the workers or the or the owners. So I mean nonprofits are a valuable structure for that charitable giving aspect, but actually co-ops are eligible for grant funding as well.

and I actually listened to a presentation by the Sustainable Economies Law Center. They're another resource that I encourage anyone to go to if they're interested in co-ops in general. they're based in California and offer really cool legal cafes. They provide information about cooperative ownership. I learned from them that that co-ops are eligible to apply for and receive a lot of the same money that nonprofits are. so that's just an interesting structural benefit to co-ops also, is that you can have you can get financial support and you can still maintain the integrity of the governance structure.

Dia: are there any benefits to a developer who wants to come in and develop a co-op? I know that the the person who developed your co-op, Aurora, went on to try to do another one in town and it got stalled around the pandemic, I guess, sort of stalled that out and and then it ended up just sort of being a I think, as far as I can tell, just sort of a basic new development. and not really functioning as a co op, I think. so are there any benefits that you're aware of just to to a developer who would who might be thinking that they want to do that?

McKenzie Jones: I'll add because of my relationship with that developer, it's my understanding that Amabel, that neighborhood, was never intended to be a legal co-op. forming the Aurora Pocket neighborhood was a complex process and it was something very new for the financial institutions that we sought support from. we did have legal support. It took four years from ideation and formation of the group. to us having houses that we could move into and a lot of legal work to set the co-op up in that time. So it was just not the intention to go through that process again for like seven times the amount of houses.

and I'll I'll push back a little on its not functioning as a co-op because I do want to say that co-ops and collectives, while there is a legal structure under which they can fall, people can determine themselves to be cooperatively minded and manage themselves cooperatively with the same type of agreements without being an actual like incorporated co-op. So I do think that there is cooperative functioning in that neighborhood. It wasn't intended to be a legal cooperative because of the red tape that we had to go through.

And I don't want to sugarcoat that process, but I will say that in the 14 15 years since we were forming this co-op, New York State and other states and financial entities have gotten a lot wiser to co-ops and have realized the importance of them and that people are interested in them. So that's a benefit at least that we did a little bit of groundbreaking. and people I think are just exploring a lot of different models too. You know, I think that they're because co-ops are new.

There is some hesitation around buying from some people and they might want to live in a nice circle but not have to co-own the circle with the people next to them. there's a lot of education about co-ops that is yet to be done for most people. So incentives for developers to get to your question. There's the like the funding, you know, if you're a developer who's committed to affordability and co-ops, you know, sort of by proxy are committed to affordability and and justice and sometimes go so far as being even anti capitalist in that regard. Co-ops might really want to focus on mutual aid and self sustenance.

I think that the structures for that kind of ownership have, like I was saying, become more sophisticated. And so developers, I think. Can can tap into some funding streams. I think it opens up the door to community buy-in. I know that a lot of community members in Ithaca have a lot of mistrust of developers in Ithaca. Some of them who are local and some of them who come from other cities and build things in Ithaca. The landscape of the city has changed in my time here. We have a lot taller buildings, there's more density. We've been dealing countywide with a housing shortage for several years.

there's tension between owners and renters in college neighborhoods and a lot of buildings have gone up to try to combat that by offering student housing. Tons of dynamics And so I think that to form a cooperative where there's a structure where the tenants are actually getting to have some kind of ownership for some democratic power, I think the community would respond well to that. It feels very antithetical to the type of housing development ownership that we've been experiencing in Ithaca, where tenants and community members have no say about the affordability.

They have no impact on whether or not this building feels totally welcome or needed. So I think that's a big benefit. And it might not be like immediately financial or tangible, but that's a big benefit for developers to have community buy-in and support. and there are

Dia: Definitely.

McKenzie Jones: also there's some tax implications too that I think sometimes when land is consolidated, sometimes that can make the assessment value more user friendly when it comes to tax time. but I can't say that I have seen a super clear pattern of that. That's just kind of experientially something that I that I've seen.

Dia: I wanna call it back a little bit to what you said just a couple of minutes ago about the idea of cooperatively working together, even though you might not be in an actual legal entity that that is known as a cooperative, because I think that's really important. you're in something called a pocket neighborhood and many of us actually live in neighborhoods, you know, they're that have houses close by.

McKenzie Jones: Okay. Okay.

Dia: And there so I think it's important for people to sort of realize that they can have some sort of cooperative relationship with their neighbors where they're at right now. you know,

McKenzie Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Dia: it takes a little bit of building. it's a little bit scary because you gotta reach out to your neighbors and you gotta get to know them.

McKenzie Jones: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dia: what kind of advice would you give to s to people who wanted to do that, but it it also it is kind of scary? You know, I mean I I feel like

McKenzie Jones: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dia: every time we I and I'm doing a lot of talking to people over this podcast about the different ways that we come together as community and how important it is. And everybody agrees it's very important to come together as community. except that that involves people and sometimes people, you know, are scary. So w what what kind of advice would you give to somebody who's open to it, who wants to start, but You know, especially in a college town like this where maybe your neighbors aren't around for that long or there's

McKenzie Jones: Yeah.

Dia: ideologies that are differing you know, or different sort of goals, where would you start with something like that?

McKenzie Jones: Mm-hmm. It's a great question and and I have a couple things popping up immediately. One is that while I'm speaking very seriously about co-ops because I take them very seriously, I do think it's really great to enter any kind of shared agreements with a spirit of playfulness and experimentation. What can we accomplish together? How can we hold each other accountable to accomplishing that goal together? And what happens if we don't accomplish it or we decide that there's a new goal? You know, that's that's kind of the spirit of it underneath all of the legal structures and agreements and stuff.

It's just like how can we how can we have this shared goal, right? Of being in community together. So how do we do it? and I think when you say that people are scary, I think underneath that what we're getting at is that people are unpredictable. And so I think we're looking at like how do we create a little bit more predictability for each other? So maybe that means a neighbor putting a note in everyone's mailbox saying, on Sunday at noon, I'm gonna leave you a vegetable in your mailbox. If you're not gonna be home, leave a note in your mailbox that lets me know so it doesn't go to waste.

those kinds of small gestures, efforts, and predictable patterns develop trust. Co-ops aren't possible without trust. Collective living isn't possible without trust. That's so core to all of what we're trying to build when we say we want to build community. so how are ways that we can show up predictably for our neighbors such that they might begin to ask us for things, you know, that or offer things on their own? I feel like starting with something that's a little not totally personal can be a good way to.

Let's experiment with can we all meet at the park for dinner on Wednesday nights and just talk about life in the neighborhood? Let's start there. It's a third space. It's a gathering space that none of us have to feel responsible for. Before we start talking about how we might be responsible with our own spaces together, let's see how we engage in public spaces together. That's one way of getting started. in my early days in Ithaca, I co-founded a group called Share Tompkins, and we used to host a lot of backyard and neighborhood, really, really free markets. Like everything here is free.

We're giving stuff away. let's all come together. Or bartering events where people might trade instruments for clothing or services for services. I'll paint your house if you help me garden, that kind of thing. and there are definitely organizations that can help people, right? I can imagine someone listening thinking, well that's a great idea, but how do we actually get started? Mutual Aid Tompkins is a great group that might want to help you get started. Share Tompkins is still active sometimes. Ithaca Free School is active sometimes.

a lot of churches, a lot of daycares, those are places that are happy to host or help organize community building events like that. And then once you get to know your neighbors a little bit more and you're building that trust, then you can start thinking about what is it that we want to have responsibility over together? Maybe it's a lawnmower or a snowblower. I know that there are some elderly people on the block. Not everyone is always clearing their sidewalks in the winter. That's a hazard. You might get fined.

Instead of getting upset at your neighbor about it, maybe consider asking them what they might need to fulfill that community agreement of keeping the sidewalks clear. And if they can't do it physically, maybe that means that the neighbors chip in for it. the spirit of playfulness, curiosity about our neighbors, really stepping away from. from judgment or that fear and trying to develop systems where we can be predictable to each other, I think that's where it starts. Food is a great way to bring people together. Having a neighborhood potluck is a great way to start.

And then once you actually get into some of it, into some of the weeds of wanting to own things, there are templates and people and websites to go to where you can s sort of start to get a sense of what these agreements might look like. What do co-housing bylaws look like if we really want to own property together? What would it mean? What is the what are the details, you know? maybe we can tour Whitehawk and Eco Village and Ithaca and the Aurora Pocket neighborhood and Amabel and get a sense for all these different ways that people are living together.

I think those are great places to start too, is to just find other people who are doing what you're doing. Listening to this podcast is a great step towards that. So anyone who's already listening, I'm sure, is tapped into some of those options, but They're there. Sometimes they feel a little hidden, but but they're there and I think that there's a chain of people in this community specifically who would help any block or group of houses try to get there.

Dia: I love the idea of going to a shared third space somewhere and then there's no pressure on anybody just to, you know, you bring a dish to share and when you've when you've had enough you can leave and you don't have to clean your house or anything. It's all good. We all

McKenzie Jones: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Dia: all live in fear of having people coming over and like judging our dust bunnies. Can't do that.

McKenzie Jones: Right, right, right. Yeah.

Dia: You said that there's a lot of education that's required around co-housing. hopefully this is doing some of that educating. But is there anything that you think is important for people to know that we haven't touched on yet that might make a difference?

McKenzie Jones: Sure. Yeah. I'll say something kind of high level that hopefully lands with people, which is that each cooperative has its own mission. So like Gimme Coffee Cooperative has a mission of good employment and being good stewards in the cycle of the coffee economy, that kind of thing. There's a mission broadly to co-ops, which is that they improve the lives of their members. And they do that in different ways based on what type of co-op they are. So if we're talking about a worker co-op, that means that like I want working in this co-op to improve my life because it offers me benefits and a a living wage, right?

If I'm in a producer co-op like handwork in Ithaca, being a member of this co-op is gonna improve my life because I as an artist. get to be in community with other artists and have my goods displayed in a highly visible place and I get to meet the customers. and I get good rates for my artwork, you know, that kind of thing. So in a housing co-op, how does being a member of living in this cooperative improve my life? If I want to start a housing cooperative, how is it going to improve the lives of the people living here?

It's not just that I'm going to have a bunch of people to mow the lawn for me or more people to help me share the dishes. That is part of it. But it doesn't end there, right? It's like, how am I bet how is this entity, how is this group, how is this collective feeding back into the members that are feeding into it? And I would really encourage anyone who's considering co-housing to reflect upon that deeply and over time and in conversation with people that they want to be in community with. what are we gonna do together? How are we gonna make it better for us as individuals?

And there are lots and lots of ways that housing co-ops do that. And financially is one of them. I mean, there was a time to be totally transparent when I was going through a divorce. I had two young children. I had been in the housing co-op in a double income household splitting bills and went to being a single income household, paying for all the bills on my own. And there was a time when it was infeasible to to cover all of the costs.

And Being a part of a housing co-op was a safety net for me because the co-op could continue as an entity to pay its bills and give me grace as a tenant and a board member to catch up and to restructure my payments to the co-op for things like insurance and taxes. If I had been renting somewhere, I might have been evicted. I could have defaulted on a mortgage over the course of those months, but instead. I was part of a housing co-op that has some commitment to supporting me and to working with me. And so I got to stay in my house with my kids. that's no small story, right? I mean, I see mothers

Dia: No. Yeah.

McKenzie Jones: and children getting evicted in Ithaca. I see that happening. It's a travesty, it's very real for a lot of people. And the fact that I got to stay housed in a home that I loved that my children grew up in is really huge. And maybe I could have had a a gracious landlord, right? Maybe I could have fallen upon family for gifts. But what I had was a cooperative structure that created a safety net for me. And so I do want people to know that the that the benefits can be very real and very, very tangible. And they have to be really clear if you're gonna be in agreements with people about the day-to-day living together.

I just can't underestimate how clear those agreements have to be. And from those clear agreements, people can really thrive and grow and evolve as humans, as community members, as stewards of land and space. there's a lot of possibility if we can come to those agreements.

Dia: That's such a that's such a great story and it does really hit home because we do see a lot of people struggling to make their rent and and being evicted, unfortunately. it would be good for us to have community that would support each other through the hard times like that.

McKenzie Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Dia: you mentioned Gimme Coffee and we've we've had a show with Gimme Coffee on here. It's how actually we got to meet you through your work with Gimme.

McKenzie Jones: Yeah. Great. Yeah.

Dia: and you said something really interesting to me when we were speaking earlier about the intersection and how they're intertwined with worker co ops and housing co ops. So can you speak a little bit about that?

McKenzie Jones: Sure. Well, I'll say that the some of those ways that they're intertwined are a little bit broad in the sense that all co-ops adhere to and abide by the seven cooperative principles, the Rochdale principles. and so Gimme follows those principles as much as the Aurora Pocket Neighborhood does. And those principles are things like democratic member control, financial transparency, and economic participation among members, money in and money out. care for community, concern for community, cooperating with other cooperatives, those are some of the principles that all co-ops abide by.

And so in that regard, there's that intertwine where like if my housing co-op is having a party and I want to have coffee there, I'm gonna go to Gimme because they're a co-op. And so there's that being in community with each other. But also I think there's under the surface a a thread of self-determination that makes them similar to where in a worker co-op we're talking about bringing the potential of ownership to a working class of people who do not have access to ownership.

And in a housing co-op I think we're talking about bringing access to property and housing ownership to a class of people who might not otherwise have the potential of owning property. And again that theme of improving members' lives and so that, you know, that looks like financial benefits through taxes in both worker and housing co ops, that looks like financial benefits through safety nets or through building savings funds or through pooling resources. There's certainly that similarity between them. And I also am just someone who's really entrenched in co-ops and so I kind of see the principles everywhere.

And as someone who has been a member of worker co-ops and consults with worker co-ops and lives in a housing co-op, I also just know that so many of the tools and so many of the challenges and so many of the successes feel really similar. Like those decision making matrix documents, I use them kind of all over the place in all of the types of co-ops that I work in. so those are some of the some of the practical tools that we use in co-ops are very similar because no matter what type of structure or industry or project you're working on, people coming together will create the same opportunities and create the same challenges.

Being a member of a housing co op and being someone in the worker co op spaces, it has brought out the same things in me, right? The opportunities for growth, the learnings, the opportunities to use the skills. There's a lot of interplay there, for sure.

Dia: You said that it's always hard being the first one, You're kind of doing a lot of groundbreaking, asking people to stretch themselves in ways that they haven't done before, both individually

McKenzie Jones: Yeah.

Dia: and probably the government entities as well. And one

McKenzie Jones: Yeah.

Dia: of the things that you have also done was you sat on the planning board. in Ithaca. So you kind of got a little bit of an insight into the government aspect as well and what that whole thing entails. can you speak a little bit about how things have changed over the years since since your neighborhood got started and and how things might be a little bit easier for folks who want to start something like that now?

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, sure. there's just more of a model up for it now. Like locally and nationally, internationally, there's just a little bit more of a model for collective living. So that's a plus. depending on your scale, you've got choices right here within Tompkins County to go explore. I served on the planning and development board for 10 years and I saw a lot of things happen there. And some of it has to do with zoning and rezoning. And I know that you're curious about accessory dwelling units. And

Dia: Mm-hmm.

McKenzie Jones: I think that's a big win. I think accessory dwelling units is a big win for Ithaca because people want to be living cooperatively. And if they're not, they at least wanna be able to share the resources and share the expenses of living. Homeowners want to be able to stay in their homes and renting something on their property makes it financially feasible for a lot of homeowners. I think having small rental properties allows people to age in place and for families to stay together and for properties to stay within families as opposed to being sold to outside developers.

I think it sets a precedent for developers that we want things at a human scale. We want things that are shareable. We want things that still are beautiful and fit within the neighborhood. I think there are a lot of great things about that that zoning change. I was part of a lot of rezoning of the waterfront district as well. And I think time will tell how successful the buildings in places along the waterfront are. But I will say that increasing density in already dense places and development in brown zones like, you know, abandoned parking lots and grocery stores. I think those have been great successes.

And I think adding mixed use development has been really great too. And I think that's another potential key for housing co-ops is if there's an institutional partner like a retail operation or a suite of professionals who are taking the first floor of something and can do some subsidizing of the building costs, either of the building or the building's maintenance. I think that can really make cooperative living a little bit more possible for people. and I know that one of the apartment buildings on the waterfront. property that's between Green Star and Aldi back by the farmer's market.

One of those buildings is exclusively affordable housing. And there are multiple buildings going there that are mixed use. And it would have been great for the affordable housing to have been mixed throughout. that's a change that I don't know I haven't seen. I didn't see it in my time on the planning board. It's like how to make it more possible to integrate affordability into a project overall as opposed to having it be this own siloed thing. I'm sure there's been work on that. There are tons of great partnerships between developers and municipalities and affordability experts out there.

Dia: So the changes in in zoning and specifically you mentioned the ADUs which are which was kind of a big deal. It took took a long time to allow folks to do that. And I think it's just within the city of Ithaca that's not the town of Ithaca. am I remembering correctly, that it took took seven years for that to get on?

McKenzie Jones: I would I would believe it. Yeah, I'd believe it. what were the what was the dissent? What were the greatest challenges to it?

Dia: What was the problem? like if we were gonna expand that to the town of Ithaca, for instance, or

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Dia: or to some of the villages around, what were some of the major objections,

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, that's interesting. And I bet that there are some really fun public meetings on records to go through. because the pu yeah,

Dia: I imagine.

McKenzie Jones: the public certainly spoke about this. And I wasn't I was never a Board of Zoning appeals member, so that process wasn't always something that came right across my desk. But I think that a lot of the dissent comes from something you said earlier, which is that people are scary. And so proposing increased density for a lot of folks means increased risk, traffic, noise, et cetera. Also, there is an unfortunate association with making housing more affordable and people's perception of an increase in crime.

I was very vocal in my days on the planning board about People's perception of affordability and density, and particularly populations that benefit the most from more dense living and the people who the populations and their makeup who don't want dense living and the tension that exists across classes and across races. so I think people had some of those fears that they couldn't even recognize, but they were deeply embedded. prejudices maybe around increased living and density and what it means to have more renters in the neighborhood. I think people worry about how additional houses will also increase the tax base.

And we obviously have tension with Cornell as a large institution that is partially endowed and partially state funded and so therefore not required to pay its entire tax liability. All of the homeowners experience that and so I think everyone has a concern. Yeah, anything that might trigger a greater tax base and greater density often does that. So those are some of the main fears or concerns, and I think that there's justification for a lot of it, and I think some of it is also just like yeah, difficult social dynamics.

And so I would say if another place, if a village or a town We're also thinking about legalizing accessory dwelling units. I would invite them to look at examples, to have a clear understanding of where there might be pitfalls, but to not inflate their fears or concerns. I would also recommend them to look at what kind of legislation can go hand in hand with accessory dwelling units that can make them feel more comfortable or safe. So limiting the ability for short-term rentals is one thing.

making sure that accessory dwelling units are for family use or long-term rentals so that we're keeping rental properties on the market for people who live here, for families who are who are gonna benefit from and engage with the local economy. I think that's something that could help people get a little bit more on board with it. I can certainly appreciate not wanting to see a bunch of apartments pop up that are just gonna go to the short term rental market that then reduce, housing for local people and skyrocket a lot of housing costs.

there might be other decisions that need to be made at the same time as accessory dwelling units to make them really work for the community, for the neighborhood, as opposed to for developers as who might be big and not local. I don't want to use the word developer as like a blanket term because You know, technically I was a developer building the Aurora Pocket neighborhood. so I think that we're talking about some different different groups of people who are building. And I personally want to make sure that Ithaca stays affordable for people who live here.

I would love for it to be more affordable for people who work here and can't afford to live here. I would love for it to be more possible for there to be infrastructure for people to share the costs of living and the joys of living, and ADUs are definitely a great way to do that.

Dia: you've lived in you've lived in co housing for many, many years now.

McKenzie Jones: Yeah.

Dia: what is the of it that you love the most?

McKenzie Jones: I love feeling like there are parts of my life that are really integrated because of living in a housing co-op. It's like cooperatives aren't just my day job, it's kind of a way of life and I get that I I love that I get to actually practice a lot of the skills and tools of cooperative living in my own personal life. I think it makes me better at my job and I think my job makes me better at living in community and so that's a cool thing. And maybe I'm supposed to pick just one favorite thing, but another favorite thing of mine is that safety net and feeling like I've got extended family.

There are neighbors on the block that I don't know and I've never spoken to, but because of intentionally living with other people, I know those people and I support those people and they support me. And we keep an eye on each other's houses and we feed each other's pets and we share food from the garden and Those feel like mundane things, that they're actually the foundation of a life well lived, I guess I could say. if you're really fortunate to get to live in community with other people, even if we don't agree on everything, which we don't because people don't always.

You know, we can be in integrity with our disagreements and we can know that we're safe in disagreements and that we have the same goals together and that we're working towards the same things and that we're building something. And I think that a lot of the problems that we experience in this day and age have to do with not having control over our own lives and things as important as housing and food and work. And I think A lot of the problems also come from feeling like detached from those around us and unsupported by our communities. And living cooperatively really addresses both of those huge topics for me.

I do have some control over how I live and where I live and what happens. And I do feel in community with people who also like take that control seriously, you know, we don't take it for granted.

Dia: It's so interesting to me how you're talking about the difference between people having community and not community and freed well, you didn't use the word freedom, but you use the word control. And I think that when people are living by themselves, in their own houses or their own little apartments and they don't know their neighbors, they feel very much in control. Like I lived in a big high rise in the middle of a city and corporate landlords and I didn't know any of my neighbors. And, you know, we lived there for like three years and I literally didn't know any of my neighbors during that time. I don't

McKenzie Jones: Yeah.

Dia: I think I've never even saw them once. But I felt in control. You know, I like, as long as I'm paying my rent, which of course kept going up and all the you know, everything kept going up.

McKenzie Jones: Sure. Yeah.

Dia: but I think what's there's that hollowing out that happens, right? There's like Am I really in control? No, because the landlord could have raised the rent, out of out of reach, like at literally any time. And so it's interesting to me that by giving up what sort of the illusion of control that we have in this disconnected, unsustainable sort of society, and giving into the control the control of the community, you know, the social structure

McKenzie Jones: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dia: that is basically what what we've been for all of humanity, right? The thousands of years of humankind, 80,000 years or humans have been around.

McKenzie Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dia: We've been community minded and it's only the last maybe fifty years or sixty years, that our community has really fallen apart. And that's where the control actually comes in. You know, we take back control by becoming more integrated. It seems kinda counterintuitive,

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Dia: but I think, from what you're saying, that's really where it's where it's stemming from.

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, I think that's really insightful. Isolation is not control, for sure, even though it can feel like it. I think you're right about that. And I do think that there is it's the autonomy, right? And it's it's like this like I said, one of the threads between housing and worker co-ops is this idea of self-determination. And I think that's what we all long for, and that's what is deprived of us in most of our housing and food and job choices. We are going to work because we have to pay for food and we have to pay for food because of XYZ. We can't it it grows on its own.

We can keep the seeds and it could be free, but we have to pay for it, right? And so there are all of these like there are all of these societal agreements that we're buying into because we don't feel like we have many other options and in many cases we don't unless we want to make huge sacrifices. And so I do think cooperative living is a way to take back some of that autonomy without making the huge sacrifices. Or we're sacrificing the part of control that doesn't actually serve us, right? The part of us that is isolated.

if people are willing to give up that sense of control that comes from aloneness and, you know, I'm making all the decisions, but only in this little box, right? If you're willing to share the decisions, then it opens up a much bigger orbit and world for you. I mean Technically, I own four houses in Ithaca because I'm I'm an owner of this co-op, right? Like there's no scenario up until now in which I would own four houses. that's cool. It's a cool

Dia: Right.

McKenzie Jones: way of restructuring things, right? It's a cool way, and I'm still the same person. I still make as much money as I would if I owned my own house, right? But I have access to more resources because of ways that I'm opening up my resources. To be shared. So yeah, there is something really freeing about it. And I won't pretend that I that it also doesn't come with constraints. You know, we can't do whatever we want to our house because it's because we're living in community with people who are also impacted by it. And we care. We care how people are impacted, right?

There's there's a system to hold us accountable to how people are impacted to decisions we make. So we can't just do whatever we want. It's not that kind of freedom. But there is a freedom in being able to like trust and have community and to know that if I leave town someone's gonna take care of my cat. to know that my child will be safe if he spends time with the neighbor, to know, that all these things are in place for me, by me, with me, to benefit me, you know. Yeah, it's special.

Dia: Thank you so much, Mckenzie. I really appreciate your time and insight coming forward with this. This is such an important topic. I mean, it's just so basic to our survival and our our world and our humanity. And there's always, so many questions. It's it's so weird that there's so many questions around something so basic now that we've gotten so far away from it.

McKenzie Jones: Right. Right.

Dia: And so we have to be intentional about it and hence the intentional communities. But they're, like we said, easy to start and you don't have to be an Ithaca. You can start them anywhere you are. If you live in an

McKenzie Jones: Yep.

Dia: apartment building, right, find a third space that

McKenzie Jones: Yep.

Dia: you can meet people and and have a little potluck once a month or something like that or once a week, you know, however

McKenzie Jones: Yeah.

Dia: however much you want really. Like you get to set the rules, right? Yeah.

McKenzie Jones: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dia: So it's this is excellent. I love it. And really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

McKenzie Jones: Thank you for uplifting these important conversations too. It's really a great resource and asset for the community here and beyond. So I'm honored to participate. Thank you for inviting me.

Dia: Thanks for listening to the Ithaca Local Economy Lab. If you liked us and want to hear more, please be sure to share, rate, review, and subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. It's noisy in the podcast world and we need you to help us find more listeners. You can find links to all the resources mentioned, peruse our recommended books, get on our mailing list, and download your own free field guide to Ithaca's new economy at Ithaca Localeconomy Lab.com. And if you know of a local business, nonprofit, or program that you'd like to hear on the show, please send them my way.

The Ithaca Local Economy Lab is produced by Practically Real Enterprises LLC and brought to life by an amazing team, including technical advisor Jake Gribschaw, Associate Producer Stacey Cornelius, content strategist Sonia Simone, and creative advisor Erin O'Shaughnessy. Yen Ospina is our artist, and the music is by Carsie Blanton. Until next time, take good care.