Have you heard about Common Roots? If you follow Autumn Vogel and her work, then you're probably well aware of "missi0n" of Common Roots. So lets take a look at the handy flow chart explaining their idea for Meadville.
Step 1: Take donations and investments from outside sources, cool. If that's how those folks choose to donate their money, that's their choice.
Step 2: Purchase a blighted property with the donated funds.
Step 3: Transform the property. That's great, rehab a property in disrepair. All for it.
Step 4: This home they purchased with donations generates rent. We're going to get into this in a moment.
Step 5: Rent used to purchase and rehab another property. Ok, that's great but... there's a little bit of an issue when you look at their website. Another thing to dive into more in a moment here.
Step 6: Another property, more revenue. Ok, but wait a minute. You did this on donations, then you rented to folks and made money off of them to do the same thing again. Aren't the people supposed to cooperatively own this? Oh wait, we forgot we put that on our website......
Let's go ahead and look at that website?
See the bit about "residents will own their housing together, democratically maintaining control and ownership rather than having their homes be owned by a landlord". So, if we the people "own" this house, why would we pay rent? Which is what you state would occur, according to the flow chart. So common roots would be my landlord? I mean, if they're the ones collecting rent to use to re-invest, that means they're the landlord. So how can they collect rent off a property that the residents collectively own? If we own it, we would just be paying the mortgage, taxes, insurance, etc. that comes with home ownership. How would common roots get money to re-invest? Their whole business model makes no sense, just based on their website and flow chart alone.
So now, I'd like to visit the timeline a bit. Whenever a business, or landlord invests in a property they typically have a timeframe of when they may complete the project. The longer a property sits vacant, the more out of pocket cost. Which, I suppose if you're just getting donations you wouldn't mind. Since, you're not actually paying for these costs out of your own pocket. Although, that hurts the bank as to what's left to re-invest because all the funds raised have to go to paying for an empty building. How long should we have to wait to get into affordable housing? 1 year, 2 years, 3 years..... longer?!
It's already been almost 3 years since Common Roots has acquired this property, and there hasn't been any updated timeline of when this might even be ready.
Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the current candidates? Well, aside from their platform being for Safe, Affordable housing, which is what Common Roots is trying to maybe achieve, at some point. Common Roots hosted a block party, which no big deal, right? Well, this block party hosted by Common Roots was actually a campaigning event for Jaime, Gretchen and Jack. Crawford County United made us aware that these block parties would indeed discuss housing and local government. At the block party hosted by Common Roots, they even had a table where you could register to vote. So, why would Common Roots care if folks registered to vote if this wasn't a politically motivated event?
Oh and if you're thinking that Crawford County United is trying to actually unite people and make them aware of all political candidates, they're not. They clearly endorse the Vote for Meadville Campaign.
So, this whole idea of affordable housing, through the Common Roots model, is proving to be a very long endeavor. Who knows how long we'll have to wait to reap the supposed benefits of this project. Lest we forget the part where they don't actually know who owns the property. Oh, and how about the bit where the Vote for Meadville and Common Roots groups condemn Landlords for being Landlords, but they sort of want to be a Landlord themselves. You see, it's okay if it benefits them.
I'm sure you can see the confusion here.
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