House Presidents (HP)

DoC Intro

One major lesson I’ve learned is that every year 550 members form a deep connection to their specific co-op house. I absolutely love the strength, support, and passion that exudes from our 16 unique co-ops. There has been a lot of discussion on how to create that same level of support for the entirety of “the ICC.” So I’m hoping to use this platform to shift this narrative of “the ICC” as an ambiguous administrative entity to the foundation that allows for the connection to specific co-op homes. What happens to one of us, impacts us all.

Therefore, welcome to my house, Rochdale. We’re located at 337 E. William and offer four floors of chaotic cooperation in service of our community. Our amenities include a convenient downtown location, multiple open office spaces, cable/internet, multiple computers, printing and duplication, delicious candy, crafts and HeRSTORY (archives, organizational data, etc.) We’re proud to introduce the newly renovated basement that includes a shower! Now folks can bike and/or exercise to the House without smelling up the joint. Our leadership team consists of:

• Our President (GM Brian)
• Our Board Rep (TBD)
• Our Work Manager (DHS Ron & HSC Lenny)
• Our Treasurer (DFS Ann)
• Our Maintenance Manager (MD Geoff)
• Outside Maintenance Managers (Danny, Drew, Deric)
• Our Education and Food Steward (DET Pink)
• Our Social Chair (AOC Susan)
• Our Tech Steward (DoC & John)

Our 47 housemates turnover every year

Veterans: CoCo
First-Second year housemates: BoD & HP’s

As one could imagine, we face similar strength, support, passion and challenges as most houses. We have to do dish raids after committee and team meetings, we hold meetings that last for hours on end, we struggle with folks doing their work chores (Member Assistance Program), we never have enough parking, we laugh, cry, and discuss cooperation for far too many hours than humanly possible. We learn from the various backgrounds, degrees and experiences that walk through our doors yearly. We try our best and yet we can always do better-be better-as a community.

House President Support Materials: a tad outdated but helpful nonetheless

Legal Responsibilities 

This brief narrative is meant to help you remember the important points of the legal responsibilities of providing housing.

Social Contract in the Co-op

When someone decides to join the ICC, they are entering into a social contract with the other members of the house, as well as with the ICC at large. Many people have idealistic viewpoints about what cooperative living is all about. These folks are moving into the co-op because they want to live in a cooperative setting. Other people are simply looking for an inexpensive place to live that is close to campus. They may not even be aware that they are “joining” anything. Whatever their initial reasons for choosing the co-op, we have certain expectation of our members. The co-op not only expects members to pay their rent on time and keep their rooms clean, we are also expecting them to do workshifts, participate in the policy-making of the co-op, abide by the founding principles of the co-op, and so on. It is very important that this aspect of co-op membership is understood when the applicant moves into a co-op. An effective orientation at the house level will discuss both the social obligations and the residency obligations inherent in living in the ICC.

Co-op as Landlord?

Yes, we are the members and also the owners of the cooperative, and assuming that everyone acts reasonably, all members will abide by the terms and conditions of residency because they are “good” co-opers. However, when your house is faced with a member who violates their membership agreement and then refuses to comply or move out, you are in the situation where you have to ask the courts to help you.

Within the context of legal agreements and remedies therefore, the ICC is seen by the State of Michigan as creating tenancy with the members when they sign contracts, which creates a landlord/tenant relationship between the ICC and the individual member/resident. Within this landlord/tenant relationship, both the tenant and the landlord have rights and responsibilities:

Landlord’s Obligations

• To keep the premises habitable
• To do repairs in a timely manner
• To NOT discriminate in any way
• To give notice of eviction
  • General Manager & ICC President will be involved
• To re-rent in the event the tenant moves out mid-contract
• NO LOCKOUTS or retaliatory actions

House President’s Role as a Landlord

So, the real question is how this landlord/tenant thing affects you. Within the context of our co-op, the tenants are the members (that means you) and the landlord means the ICC (and that means you too).

As a House President you are effectively an agent of the landlord. In fact, many housemates see their house level officials as the authority figures that they deal with. To them, YOU are the ICC. They logically believe that when they tell you something (like their lock is broken), they are telling the ICC. And legally, they are. The ICC has lost cases in court when members notified an official of a problem, the problem didn’t get fixed, and then they took us to small claims court to get a portion of their rent back.

House-level officials, are responsible for ensuring that all of the landlord’s obligations are fulfilled.

• You are not (necessarily) responsible for fixing everything yourself (you have lots of resources available to you within your house and at Central Level).
• You ARE responsible for making sure that the resident’s concern is addressed, and you also must ensure follow through in a timely manner, so that the member is satisfied.

Using Your Master Key

As an agent of the landlord, there are only three instances in which you can use your master key to let yourself into a member’s room: (Review the Member Maintenance of Premise on our contract)

1. To show a prospective member a vacancy, providing the remaining members are aware of the vacancy
2. To make a health, safety, or maintenance inspection with the consent of the member or 24 hour written notice in advance of the inspection
3. In response to a bonafide emergency
   • we are working centrally to provide more context for what is deemed an emergency in this context
   • please check-in with the Director of Member Services or General Manager prior to utilizing this option

Take Your Residents’ Complaints and Concerns Seriously

The ICC can be liable for your failure to respond to a legitimate complaint in a timely manner. If you don’t know what to do about a problem, call the Main Office. We’ll be happy to help you out. If you are not sure about a situation, be honest, and say that you don’t know but that you will find out.

The Liability Equation

1.  Duty + breach of duty + causation x seriousness of injury = amount of Liability
2.  Reasonableness of actions: The reasonable, prudent, person standard.
3.  How would a judge or jury evaluate your behavior?

Know What Is and Isn’t Your Responsibility

You already have pages and pages of information about what you need to do to keep you house running smoothly.

The Final Responsibility: Informing People of Their Options

If you have a member with a concern or complaint that you don’t know how to address, or who isn’t satisfied with your options, send them to Central Office. As an agent of the landlord, you are required to inform the member of all the options available to them. Because you may not be aware of all the options available to a member within the ICC, you should be sure to include talking to Membership Office as an option.

Generally, there are two kinds of complaints you can receive from a member – complaints you can deal with at the house level; and complaints that you may not be able to resolve and that will need to be passed on to a committee or staff member. Complaints at the house level often include things like missing a mattress, a dirty room, a broken window, an unwelcome guest, etc. Complaints that may be legitimately beyond your ability to personally address include the general standard of cleanliness at your house, the house’s location, a roommate conflict, the general standard of noise at your house, etc.

Whatever the complaint, it needs to be dealt with in a timely manner, ASAP. ICC staff members are always available for assistance (to you or the member), regardless of the kind of complaint. You can also direct members and issues to an appropriate administered committee. For example, a member who’s having trouble paying their monthly charges should be directed to the Finance Committee for payment options. A member who wants to appeal the terms of their referral should seek advice from the Dispute Assistance and Resolution Team (DART).

Main point of contact for account access and support is the Director of Member Services [DMS]

Non-Profit = No Cost

Our 501(c)3 status qualified us to connect our domain (@icc.coop) to the Google platform for no cost. Though there are no up front costs the old saying “there is no such thing as a free lunch” may apply. The benefits continue to rack up as we’re still in the initial phases of implementation.

Organization-Wide Accounts

Long gone are the days of mass confusion across the organization – was that an @gmail, @umich or @hotmail account? The Board of Directors and our Committees and Teams were the first to transition over to @icc.coop accounts. House Officer accounts were next on the roll out, we’ll need to continue to do some evaluation and outreach to ensure all houses are using this resource to their full potential. Remember we’re not a one size fits all group. Switching to this internally managed system, not only allows for central support but creates an opportunity for house wide institutional memory (which we were severally lacking) year to year.

The formula for emailing a single house officer or position is:   house + . + position + @icc.coop

If an officer needs their email reset, they can send an email from their personal email to passwordrecovery@icc.coop specifying which email they need the password reset for. It will automatically revert to “guffreset” once reset.

ICC Google Drive

A large perk is having our very own ICC Drive. A file structure that all central leaders have access/permission to manage. The goal is to increase access to institutional knowledge and therefore informing our decision making. Long gone are the days of personally-owned folders that get deleted at the first sign of drama or turmoil – yes this did happen, centrally and at the house level. The general practice currently is the top three “tiers” of folders are managed by the administrative central account (central@icc).

Layout Image

Once in the fourth tier the Alumni folder, it’s entirely up to that team and advisor for how they choose to store/retrieve their information unique to their operations.

Listservs/Groups

Similar to the email confusion-central and house leaders utilized varying group communication services. There were issues when members were not U of M students and could not manage their @umich listserv accounts through MCommunity. Centrally, we were unable to support members in relocating, updating or changing these accounts as they were managed externally.

Rent Manager

Screenshots of Owner Web

2021 OWA

Reports You’ll Need to Frequent

• Occupancy List
  • Check this ~2x a week if you have folks in/out of the house all summer
  • Compare it to the Move-in/Move-out report
  • Review the signed contract column and have members submit their contracts!
• Move-in/Move-out
  • Set your date range for a week at a time
• Rent Roll & Recurring Charges
  • Mainly the treasures will look at this report
  • As HP you’re the back up and should be aware/support
  • Keep an eye on rebates/assessments
• Delinquency
  • Check for non-payment

Your main duty is a conduit of information from Central to your housemates. YOU know the dates and spread the word THEY are responsible for communicating their attendance (via RSVP) and fulfilling their training requirements. Training Calendars are updated regularly on our website.

Training Fine Process

Things to Keep in Mind

How you and your partners at central can support a healthy and functioning officer team:

MAP: Member Assistance Program

More in this section coming this Fall once the MA Representative approves a newly developed webpage

It is a requirement for each house to contribute hours each term. Some Member Assistance positions or assignments are weekly others are project based and may be completed in different blocks of time. Work Managers are responsible for budgeting 1 work hour per 3 members for every week of the term (which is usually —weeks) to the central ICC. See below for averages.

Standard contract dates

• Spring/Summer: May 2, 2022 to August 19, 2022.
• Spring Term: May 2, 2022 to June 25, 2022.
• Summer Term: June 26, 2022 to August 19, 2022.

ICPSR contract dates 

confirm with Housing

• Session One: June , 2022 to July , 2022.
• Session Two: July , 2022 to August , 2022.

Non-standard contracts

• First date: May 2, 2022.
• Minimum length: 30 days

Meeting Minutes are critical to our organizations longevity and accountability systems. Housemates come together and vote on officers, budgets, pets, non students, social events, hosting capacities. . . you name it. Centrally, when these decisions get made and someone inevitably comes along and complains or disagrees with what has occurred we’re able to go to these documents and say well I hear you AND on xyz date we see that a house meeting took place and your housemates voted xx to yy that xyz was approved. It allows central to support the decisions made at the house level while upholding our cooperative values and decision making.

Once the meeting minutes have been taken, upload them to your houses Google Drive Folder (see below.) Then any central process that requires outcomes of decisions (non students, fines, pets etc) can review the house folder or you can link them to the exact meeting date.

Ideal pathway to address concerns:

1. Member to Member Response
2. House Leadership Response
3. Central Level Response
   • DART
     • Member Resource Panel
4. Emergency Response
   • Incident Reports
   • Emergency House Operations Team

Central

Late Payment
DAMN Damage
Training Fine
Member Assistance Program
Uninhabitable Space (Scream and Runs)
Pet Damage

House

Missed Work Shift
Missed Work Holiday
Uncleaned Room

What is an Emergency?

Remember those SR’s? Let’s start there…

1. Examples of emergencies include, but are not limited, to sexual harassment of a member or members, threats or acts of physical violence, destruction of co-op property, criminal acts, acts that create an unsafe environment in the house and gross violations of health codes.
2. Emergencies include problems that houses are unable to or will not address and that endanger the well-being of ICC members.

Historical Cases & Current Climate

• Sexual Misconduct
• Prejudicial Behavior
• Mental Health Concern
  • personal concerns and transports from house
• Alcohol or Other Drug (AOD) Concern
  • personal use and distribution
• Property Damage
  • fires, falling off roofs. . .

HP Info (this info comes from some historical documents, work in progress) 

• Minors drinking and the results
• Sexual violence
• Assault and battery
• Domestic violence
• Sale and use of drugs in houses and the consequences (loss of student aid, criminal and civil penalties)
• Noisy and disruptive parties (alienating neighbors and the police – legal/monetary ramifications)
• Failing to repair or maintenance of a hazardous condition
• Aggressive animals biting guests (allergic members, pet damages to the house)
• Fire from improper:
  • Cigarette disposal, food on stoves, candles, incense
  • Leaving pots on stoves (violates fire policy!)
  • Barbecuing too close to house, storing flammables on porch including paper or charcoal or charcoal fluid… BAD

Sometimes we need to contact the police… we know it’s not a preferred action amongst our members, though it may be crucial to a functioning house.

For non-emergency situations that you want to talk through with someone, please contact our GM or DMS. We have a police community liaison. This individual usually attends our first BoD meeting of the year and can help walk us through certain situations and what the response process would entail. It’s a nice stepping point to exploring what options are available through our local community resources.

If you or your housemates are facing legal concerns (noise violations, injuries on property, etc.) please reach out to the GM for any support that the Central Organization may provide. We’ve been known to appear in court dressed in our ICC Swag to support individuals as they engage in local accountability systems. Also, if you’re a student reach out to Student Legal Aid for more individualized support.

Content pending

This hosting experience main point of contact is currently the Director of Member Services

This hosting experience main point of contact is currently the General Manager.

The AAFF is the oldest avant-garde experimental film festival in the country, internationally recognized as a premiere forum for independent filmmakers and artists. Each year, the festival engages audiences with remarkable cinematic experiences from around the world.

Festival is March 26-31st

Past Communication with AAFF Leaders

• we arrange with co-op presidents to provide accommodations for students and filmmakers who would like to attend the festival.
• we really appreciated working with the ICC on this in the past, and we would like to further streamline the process this year by facilitating the communications with co-op presidents ourselves.
• we would like to remind you that we are more than happy to provide tickets to the festival as well as publicity for the ICC to our 10,000+ ticket holders in exchange for these services.

This section under maintenance 

Review Standing Rules 12.5

Review House Constitution