Member Owned & Occupied Homes

 Welcome! Here our organizers gather resources that we Members share in our efforts to meet student needs and improve our student friendly homes. In Googles striving to innovate they broke this reference site in 2022, so one may need to email our secretary to request some forms and resources.

Best summary of our policies is: New Tenant Booklet + our Membership Agreement. Beyond that refer to our fee schedule & rent dues tables. Anticipate rent increases as we struggle to milk ourselves for enough volunteer hours to assure we make good purchase and repair decisions.

MSC was established to most affordably meet the needs of U of MN students for a student friendly home suitable for those ready to bare a fair share of home owner responsibility while life centers around study|research|teaching, yet in need of a flexible structure to pass their share in our organization to a new Member when they graduate to a career phase elsewhere. (History is more complex started by WW2 veterans..., results in an ethic to conserve resources & cooperate) 

Available Rooms:   Please complete MSC's free online Membership application. Resident student Members have priority for room swaps at any time. U of M Students seeking more than 6 month lease  to conclude on a date outside of any U of M Semester period have priority, followed by University students or researchers committing to longer Memberships, yet approval by House residents or their elected representative is required. We are sharing our homes and rely on each other to keep a nice, study friendly, home. Houses reserve the right to balance gender..., such that no particular identity exceeds 2/3 of a house other than we expect all Members to be capable of communicating in written or verbal English and value pursuit of education and natural world knowledge.

MSC could expedite work on some rooms to make them available. These notes help us guess when & where we may be able to bring in a new Member.  We welcome Students arriving for Fall Semester and intend to reserve leases for students arriving 1 Sept by default unless the new Member Commits to stay through the next school year.

Officially Vacant:

C21 ($240) ;  C1 ($300), E31  ($310) 

Potential Openings (depend on how members trade rooms and if research programs extend):  

If you see just "pending" on a room you are applying to Lease that may be because we anticipate your application.

This is the earliest date the room may vacate, up to 15  days for repair may be desired, beyond that one would need to reserve the room to claim ahead of future applicants ready to move in sooner.  [Ranges given represent subleases that return to the primary membership holder once they conclude. | Anything pending has an application in line for it, but no lease confirmed.  | ¿date? indicates the person leaving has yet to commit to a departure date. | d ate? indicates that move-out is nearly certain, but the room might not be ready precisely on the date indicated. | If you applied and see your desired room shifted into likely filled vacancy, you may be among applicants being considered.

Other Options:            Local Co-op Housing    or   Housing by U of MN St. Paul Campus.

Please tell a House Coordinator, if you are likely to be leaving within the next 2 months.

    U of M St.Paul campus students benefit most from our location.

    We particularly need members with energy to get involved in running our coop in the interests of students seeking a minimal carbon footprint. 

    We keep rent cheap, but it involves cooperative work and everyone must pitch in a little to make this place special. We need Members in every house willing to learn how to fix stuff. We need Members who do not leave faucets running and lights shining when done with them. Simply keeping cabinet and door hinge screws tight and promptly soaking up spilled water and sweeping sand off of wood floors goes a long way.

A general reference for Student Coops is: Director Orientation Handbook      

Board of Directors Planning Documents  <--THESE REALLY NEED UPDATING!        

Priorities    • Responsibilities  •      Project Schedule

We structure our Membership dues as Rent scaled  to the size of private bedroom Leased on a particular day, but by fixing up one's room for the next occupant one can move around in response to one's shifting budget and home study needs without breaking the Membership agreement period. Those here with family, or arriving as an in-group of close friends, may consider CTC or places with private apartments until they find themselves more alone in their efforts to complete studies because every house of ours is shared as an egalitarian household. We tend toward quiet to not disrupt sleep & study in old houses, so parties require some prior planned consensus. 

We aspire for MSC to be a highly sustainability oriented cooperative enterprise because it promises the best way to affordably serve basic needs of student owners who need a healthy safe home and feel responsible to become better stewards in areas related to the Colleges of Food Agriculture and Natural Sciences. Careers driven by a passion to serve ecological needs don't always pay off student debts fast. We can't afford not to plan so that building performance can keep pace with demands for resident & ecological health within student budgets. Like many homeowners, we tolerate durable old stuff while saving enough to make a better, more efficient, durable investment.

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    Until we receive the intent to vacate form, we can't know that a resident will move out when initially planned. 

As of October 1, 2012 Common Properties Management Cooperative manages MSC's financial and legal business.

Our Member Directors anticipated clearer monthly reports and assistance in crafting policies and long term plans that better reflect the aspirations of our leaders and the values of our members.  We remain diverse, and accommodating to the needs of members, yet CPMC limits abuses by a few members that chronically burdened MSC's finances and consumed both paid and volunteer management time. Our Treasurer receives receipts for messages and checks left in drop boxes, but neither CPMC nor our Treasurer will regularly accept cash payments for MSC. Members with cash can deposit it directly into our checking account at Sunrise Bank, if they provide proper notes to credit the right Member Lease.  

Thank you for patience during our transition from a single general manager to more collaborative self governance with off site administrative managerial assistance.

Editorial: The Sustainability Director believes long term plans require architects to actually solve some problems Managers have maintained. This can save us money, and improve healthy comfort. The strong preference of single people who share homes to seek a bedroom for under $320/mo, even if it is a small sleeping den continues. Without remodeling that could trigger issues given 100yr old homes that don't comply with many modern code issues, we simply cope with vacancies dominantly in more expensive rooms. Coop Members need to talk seriously about priorities and the cost of avoiding remodeling.  A balance can be defined. Increasing the number of bathrooms will increase property taxes assessed on us, but 

We borrow this video from an analogous cooperative in California that includes apartments in its network. MSC only offers shared homes, with private sleeping dens. We list other local coops that do offer apartments at the bottom of this page. The youtube link leads to other videos from larger coop communities that are both enlightening in their similarities to MSC and inspirational in how much more developed larger coop networks and missions have become.  We are a cooperative in a community of coops.

Director's Meeting

TBD

@

1403 Cleveland Ave

Click to see April 2011 Agenda?

Someday, maybe we'll catch up to such details.

To those editing this site, please take care to disclose information in a fair manner.  If there are privacy concerns please openly request changes to a fair disclosure policy and remove details in a consistent rather than personal manner.  Brian feels the compensation for every role in our Cooperative should be transparent.  However this site appears to have become more public.

No Member of MSC is compensated more than $25 for a single obligation, unless they are physically shoveling a lot of snow for more than 1.5 hours during an emergency when it makes sense to grant $15/hour to avoid city fines and let cars park safely, or doing >2.5hrs of agreed upon useful labor. Most volunteers do most repairs, e.g. replacing a toilet valve, for free because we all need toilets... to work.