Pat Conaty 'Commons Sense Report Launch' Dec '13
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This document discusses ideas for building a cooperative economy through democratizing and localizing ownership of basic needs like food, energy, and shelter. It proposes reclaiming finance and the commons through cooperative networks and by establishing things like community land trusts, cooperative hydro and wind power schemes, solar energy coops, and community development finance mutuals. Examples from Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland and LILAC eco-village in Leeds are provided. The document argues that cooperatives globally have transformative power and are providing services to billions of people.
Pat Conaty 'Commons Sense Report Launch' Dec '13
- 1. Commons Sense: What might be a shared vision? Pat Conaty Co-operatives UK 5 December 2013
- 2. Commons Sense Building a Co-operative Economy Closer to Home BASIC NEEDS: Food Energy Shelter Reclaiming the Commons Democratizing & Localizing Ownership KEY FUNCTIONS Reclaiming Finance 2
- 3. Fair Trading and the Co-operative Capital Gap ‘The Roman arena was technically a level playing field. But on the one side there were the lions with all the weapons and on the other side the Christians with all the blood…… That’s a slaughter. And so is putting people into the economy without equipping them with capital, while equipping a tiny handful of people with hundreds of thousands of times more than they can use.’ Louis Kelso
- 4. The Commons and co-operative networks offer a a democratic way of working and living • Commonwealth is wealth beyond measure – when times get hard co-operative solutions are always unearthed • Micro-change agents need to think of how to connect mutually • History and struggles to build co-operative commonwealth provides guidance on the How question
- 5. Back to the Future: Associative Democracy Guild socialist movement in Great Britain: 1907 to 1949 (i) Co-operative strategy to organise industry democratically – national guilds (railways, mines and construction) and local guilds – active work 1919 to 1929 (ii) Agricultural guilds for farming and the food sector (iii)Garden cities and towns – for regional self-reliance (iv)Social credit proposals for monetary reform (Clifford Douglas) (v) Agricultural guilds, Garden City movement advanced and National Construction Guild established that built affordable housing in many big cities (vi)Access to low-cost finance was a problem in the 1920s and 1930s (vii)Movement leaders led work to create the Welfare State and the NHS in the 1940s: Keynes provided ‘cheap money’
- 6. What do these current images from across the UK have in common?
- 7. Community Co-operative Shares Market: Registrations
- 8. Co-operative Place Making and the Potential for Cross-fertilisation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Community land trusts and Cohousing Co-operative hydro-power schemes Co-operative wind power Solar Energy Co-ops for Community Buildings Community Development Finance Mutuals for housing repairs and green loans 6. Care co-operatives for social and health services
- 9. Evergreen Co-operatives (USA) – The Democracy Collaborative ‘Green Economy’ Co-operative Partnership • Cleveland, Ohio: a city that has lost half its population through deindustrialisation over recent decades • Partnership backed by anchor institutions including the City, universities, hospitals, the Ohio Co-op movement and the Cleveland Foundation • $200 million social investment fund set up to invest at 1% to capitalise worker ownership co-ops using a Mondragon model • Co-ops created for solar energy installation, local food enterprises and a low-carbon laundry for hospitals • Largest urban farm in the USA set up with a wind power heated greenhouse (3.5 acres) and growing annually 3 million heads of lettuce and 500 tons of herbs
- 11. Mutual Home Ownership Society Co-operative CLT model – researched by nef: Urban Model 1. Housing Co-op owns the dwellings – rent to equity system 2. Separate CLT company owns the land • New members make a 5% deposit • Mortgage is corporate, not individual, leases assigned • Full repairing lease based on 35% of net household income • Lease payments convert to equity shares to purchase home • Co-op pays members that leave, their equity earned less 10%
- 12. Mutual Home Ownership CLT – CDS Co-ops 12
- 13. LILAC – Leeds Eco-village 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. LILAC (Low-carbon Living affordable community) First Mutual Home Ownership project – urban CLT 20 Co-housing homes – on former school site Pre-fabricated strawbale housing, renewable energy Investment from social bank, Triodos. National partnership in Wales to develop 500 Mutual Homes on CLT land by 2015 – 8 projects underway
- 14. CDS Co-operatives - MHOS Limited equity return at Year 10 projected LEEDS Project - Lilac •71 shares = £13,314 •86 shares = £16,271 •100 shares = £18,919 •128 shares = £24,217 •149 shares = £28,190 •191 shares = £36,136 14
- 15. Co-operative Land Bank 1. Extension of London Jubilee line (11 tube stations) finished in 1999. 2. Cost of public investment by taxpayers: £3.5 billion 3. Urban land value uplift: £13.5 billion 4. Co-operative Land Bank is a CLT for an urban district 5. CLB can self-finance affordable housing on a big scale and for an Eco-town or city and new Garden suburbs 6. Precedents: Letchworth Garden City (33,000) and Irvine CLT (USA) – similar size for the master plan – see also Japan and Hong Kong
- 16. Co-operatives globally – Transformative Power below the radar screen • • • • • • I billion members worldwide - 15 million in the UK Providing services every week to 3 billion people globally More employees than the multinational corporations Involved in every single sector of the economy Two-thirds of farmers in Scotland are in agricultural co-ops 6000 co-operative enterprises operate in the UK and one new co-op is setting up every day • Co-operative sector expansion of 20% in the UK 2008 -2012
Editor's Notes
- #3: Note that in every Chapter we end our examination of proven innovations and identify the key factors in transition that are