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Happy May and Asian American Pacific Islander History/Futures Month! We want to highlight an article New Economy Coalition is revisiting. This beautiful 2018 piece by Yvonne Yen Liu about how Asian American immigrants have long survived and persevered by practicing cooperation and mutual aid. We highly recommend reading For Asian Immigrants, Cooperatives Came From the Home Country!

The City Council is discussing eliminating family-based occupancy limits next Thursday! This is huge because occupancy limits have been very limiting for housing co-ops. Occupancy limits limit single family homes, duplex/ triplex/ quadplex units, and other properties to no more than 4 to 6 unrelated people living together. As you can imagine, that gets in the way of how housing co-ops work and many different peoples trying to live together. There are a few ways you can help!

You can email city council about your thoughts on Item 48 of the 6/1/23 city council meeting about family-based occupancy.

You can sign up to speak on item 48 at the June 1st Meeting. Sign ups open have opened. The deadline to sign up is Wednesday at 12pm, but they often allow additional speakers who show up in person and request to be added. Sign ups are here.

Testimony is taken at 10 am on June 1st. Remote testimony is an option. There will be some housing co-op people at city hall so we can meet up!

If you provide a testimony, you talk about how this has affected you, your co-op, or people you know.

Volunteers Needed for Food Co-op Project!!!

The Eastern Crescent Food Co-op Project now has a steering committee being trained and planning the new co-op, but they need notetakers for their meetings. They meet once or twice a month for a couple of hours. The more volunteers we have, the less frequently each volunteer needs to go to take minutes. Please email drew.delossantos@acba.coop if you are interested in volunteering.

Musicians, Artists, and Allies Housing Co-op Mixer
June 10th 2023 - 12pm to 2pm CT
In-person at Rosewood Co -op 's Berm House (address sent to attendees who RSVP)

Musicians, Artists, and Allies Housing Co-op Mixer is to connect musicians and artists to affordable housing through the co-op model. Our intention is for artists to come to the event and leave with a group to potentially start a co-op and have support from our housing co-op coaches. We know how much creatives need affordable housing, community, and space to practice their art, and housing co-ops have been a great solution to many artists.

See more details here.

Discover the Benefits of Housing Co-ops
Wednesday, June 21 · 6pm - 8pm CDT
Este webinar es gratuito y se presentará en inglés con interpretación al español. This webinar is free and will be presented in English with Spanish language interpretation.

The class will include:

Models of ownership
Building typology for co-ops
Keys to co-op affordability
A 4-factor framework for developing housing cooperatives

Class attendees will have the opportunity to schedule FREE coaching and consulting with the instructor and other co-op experts. Event Brite Link.

Cooperating from Farm to Table: Co-ops and the Food System
Wednesday, July 19 · 6 - 8pm CDT
Este webinar es gratuito y se presentará en inglés con interpretación al español. This webinar is free and will be presented in English with Spanish language interpretation.

This webinar will cover:

Short intro to the cooperative movement and economy
Deep dive into food system co-op success stories
Practical tools to make even traditional food businesses more fair, democratic, and just
Basics to starting a food system co-op

Class attendees will have the opportunity to schedule FREE coaching and consulting with the instructor and other co-op experts. Event Brite Link

Spring time has been busy and bursting with activity here at the ACBA. We have been working to get several projects off the ground, and learning a lot along the way. We've been working on a City co-op census, the Eastern crescent food co-op project, community and leadership development at ARNL Resident Owned Community, maintaining our ongoing coaching efforts, and attending orientation for an exciting new development that we'll be launching this fall! That said, it's not easy to identify challenges, surprise costs, and the amount of time it takes to launch new projects. And we are making it happen on a tight budget! We need you to invest in our blossoming movement and join the co-op club.

We need to raise at least $1,000 in monthly co-op club supporters to fund ongoing interpretation and translation needs, and administrative costs like bookkeeping and insurance. Join the co-op club today with a $25 monthly contribution. Club members will join us for a special event later this year. If you can't join the club, make a one time donation of $100. We need you to support us through this growth spurt! Thank you in advance for taking the time and pitching in to make this work sustainable.

In cooperation your Executive Director,
Drew

House Co-op Openings

Rosewood Community Housing has openings in two houses in July and August. You can see more here.

Whitehall Cooperative has openings this summer and in August. You contact them here to hear more about it!

Student Housing Cooperatives generally have openings in the summer and August at the start of the school year. Please be aware these organizations are student only. There are two large student housing cooperatives in town:

College Houses has big houses like 32 to 130 members. See openings here.

ICC Austin has smaller houses, like 12 to 32. See openings here.

Principle 5 Committee
Tuesday, June 5 · 6:30 - 7:30pm CDT - First Monday of the Month

Wish to volunteer for a committee and support the Austin cooperative movement? You can join our P5 committee! What does P5 mean? P5 is the 5th Cooperative Principe "Education, Training and Information." The overall purpose of the P5 Committee is to support the mission of the Austin Cooperative Business Foundation (ACBF) by providing education, training, and information about cooperatives to residents of Central Texas.

You can see our committee calendar and committee Zoom link on our events page. Hope to see you there.

Job Opportunities

College Houses is hiring an Social Media & Marketing Intern, Part Time - Essential responsibilities include making social media posts and creating messaging campaigns. The ideal candidate brings creativity, a high level of emotional intelligence, and an interest in learning new skills relevant to social media, communications, fundraising, and general administrative jobs. Check it out here.

OurSpace World is hiring an Assistant Director of Projects, Full Time - OurSpace World, Inc is seeking a dedicated and strategic Assistant Director of Projects to manage key day-to-day administrative functions, assist with program administration and help to strengthen and grow all aspects of the organization. Check it out here.

Race Forward is hiring a Research Director of Federal Strategies, Full Time - The Federal Strategies Team Director of Research is integral to the Federal Initiative to Govern for Racial Equity. The Director will work with the Federal Strategies Deputy Director in shaping and executing the research vision of the Federal Initiative. Research on racial equity at the federal level is a landmark endeavor. Race Forward is focusing on "government as an institution" as well as "governance within institutions". The Director is responsible for overseeing and coordinating research for the federal team; developing research and policy fact sheets, issue papers and reports that align with racial equity and governance for featuring in reports, presentations, media outreach, and curricula; and assisting with the development and execution of Race Forward's research and policy agenda broadly. The position requires a keen understanding of the relationship between racial equity and public policy issues. Check it out here.

We Make the Future is hiring an Senior/Capacity Builder, Full Time - They are looking for a Senior/Capacity Builder to join our team at We Make the Future (WMTF) to help grow the multi-racial movement for the issues of most public and political importance. This role is responsible for working with state-based organizational leaders to develop the capacity to use best practices around strategic communications, race-forward messaging, and the Race Class Narrative (RCN). This work includes driving strategic and collaborative narrative implementation across the country, designing and leading learning experiences that aid partners in applying our tested approaches to their work, overseeing message testing and distribution strategies, and coaching organizations on integrating communications into their organizing/field, and policy planning. Our state-partners run innovative campaigns that leverage national resources to support local and state power building. The Senior/Capacity Builder will work on-the-ground directly with state-based partners, while being part of our remote team. Check it out here.

Wheatsville tends to have positions open. You can see openings here: https://wheatsville.coop/co-op/job-opportunities/open-positions.

The ACBA is conducting a census of Co-op Businesses in the Austin-area. The census is meant to gather information on how the ACBA, City of Austin, and Texas Rural Cooperative Center could further assist cooperatives in the Austin-area.

If you are a member of a credit-union, worker co-op, a producer co-op, or a consumer co-op, like Wheatsville it would help us greatly if you could complete this 15 minute or less survey*. It would especially be helpful if you are a member of a credit union or producer cooperative!

*If you are not a worker of your co-op, please skip the work specific questions.

More Co-op News

Help sustain our work by joining the Co-op Club with a monthly $25 donation. Support us in staffing up to succeed with our projects and continue growing this movement.

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In Cooperation,

Henrik "Henny" Tucker (they/them)
Program Coordinator