M ANAGING A SUCCESSFUL HOUSING CO-OP requries that we maintain a balance between business and friendship, meetings and socializing, work and play. Our task is much easier when we blend art and creativity into the mix!
East Blair Housing Cooperative in Eugene, Oregon, is a limited equity cooperative geared as a transitional opportunity for low- and very-low-income people who were either severely under-housed or without housing. We did not gather so much for our common vision but because of our common needs. Our stated goal is "affordable housing and learning skills to re-enter the mainstream," but we want to do that with a commitment to cooperation.
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While EBHC is not an intentional community about arts, it has attracted many artists and people who appreciate art. Here live passion and political writers, poets, and song composers. Musicians, a photographer, people who sculpt, draw, and paint, and even a landscape artist share our grounds.
Seventeen of our 22 units are targeted toward families with children, and that is where our art begins. When we have our monthly general membership meetings, we hire two childcare providers who coordinate art and crafts activities for the children.
On occasion we come together to create collectively. Our annual party boasted an eclectic talent show with song, skit, and dance. We once muralized a fence. The color selection for most of the exteriors could be considered nothing but arty. Our bimonthly, hand-built newsletter invariably hosts graphics created by people here, but primarily we create independently and work together to insure that our homes are safe, affordable, and surrounded by folks we can count on in a pinch.
A community is not necessarily a homogeneous group of clones. The stranger with new ideas and new genes for the pool was always revered in olden times. Even then we knew the key to a healthy community was forged from the tension of diversity. We are different from each other. Although communication was initially more difficult, we all seem to be a bit better for it. Hopefully our art reflects that.
Robin Pruce is a batik artist and Scotty Perey is a musician/song writer who won this year's Willamette Valley Folk Festival song writers' contest. They produce a regular kids' talent show in Eugene and occasional musical events.
East Blair Housing Cooperative radiates a sense of creativity for the benefit of the entire neighborhood, with its beautiful gardens, play structure for the kids, wonderful murals on the buildings, musical talent shows at the co-op's annual birthday party, and its willingness to offer uplifting ideas for the future of this unique and colorful Whittier neighborhood in which we live.
Mostly the co-op is a whole-hearted and supportive place for members to develop their own personal Art of Living, wherever their talents lie, and a safe space for them to follow their dreams.
Kari Johnson is an artist who breathes creativity. Her blue, plaster, four-foot head graces our front yard. A mural she created years ago adorns the side of an old store a block away.
When I came to EBHC I got myself a big space where I can make big things, imagine big things. I have had the extra time and space to be able to construct the Revolution Oracle, an interactive "wheel of fortune and fate" for Eugene's downtown mall.
Living in the co-op is an expansion in another way. I listen to, talk with, and make important decisions with people who would otherwise be outside my social circle, many who are very different from me. I'm beginning to feel respect, understanding, and appreciation for these other co-opers. It feels like a little tribe, like a more real and natural way to live. I have a more general sense of support and groundedness, furthering my exploration of the world and the mirror world of my imagination
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Greene is a Food-Not-Bombs activist and cook.
Living at the East Blair Housing Co-op has definitely encouraged me to be artistic. It is the first time I have ever painted on such a large canvas. It is because I live here that I can afford to do the art that I do. Besides being financially assisted, I am emotionally encouraged by fellow co-opers who treat me like an artist. It is a blessing to be able to live amidst art!
Skeeter Duke, 51, is a recently retired childcare provider.
I think of myself as a drummer, painter, illustrator, storyteller, and dancer. Living here and having a stable home has really facilitated my ability to do these things. Here is also a space for my studio for jamming with friends or building mobiles or collages. I can lay out materials for art projects and leave them there while the creative juices build. I also provided childcare here and create stories, which I have tape-recorded for children's books that I also plan to illustrate.
A number of other creative people have lived in the co-op over the years and it makes for a nice synergistic feeling. We often share ideas and there is an excitement of creating that fills the air at times. That adds to the art-conducive environment that this older, funky neighborhood already provided.
I have hoped for some time that the co-op members would create cottage industries that we could market regionally or to the Pacific Rim. As a low-income housing cooperative, this effort could make us financially self-reliant and less dependent upon federal subsidies. It would bring us more in line with the original intent for this co-op--to empower low-income people. While we do this already by maintaining a self-managed, self-directed organization, I feel we could take it a step further.
John Zerzan, 52, is an author of anarchy-based books and articles and a contributing editor for Anarchy magazine.
In 1988, I wrote "Elements of Refusal" and co-edited "Questioning Technology," and in 1994 wrote "Future Primitive." I was already working on these projects when I joined the East Blair Housing Cooperative in 1987, but being here has contributed to these efforts. The most obvious contribution is financial help, with rent subsidies calibrated to income. Also, although EBHC is not an intentional community per se, we tend to forge one as we go along. Living here has given me a variety of perspectives. I don't have to go any further than the co-op to begin thinking about social questions when I'm with friends and neighbors. Working together on our responses to the pressures of society and on our survival has been instructional and helpful to me as a writer.
I think we are all anarchists in the co-op, too, by the nature of our self-management. This is at the heart of the anarchist ideal and close to my own interests.
I've been trying to work on questions of social conflict and the origins of conflict in society, especially the factors of technological development and other forms of alienation. We are affected in the co-op by these issues and the neighborhood we live in reflects this pressure, too. Though I lived in this neighborhood before moving into EBHC, my involvement here, as well as our reaching out to the wider community, has improved my social interactions. I have found that though people may disagree with my philosophical position, they support me as a person. You can stay in your room and write, but you need to have contact with other people to bring out what you are trying to explore as a writer.
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Sybil Natawa coordinates volunteers at the WOW Hall, a cooperatively run, community-supported venue for rock, folk, and alternative music and performance art. She also performs and is a storyteller, and under the pen name Mawb, is a published poet and writer.
The life-trek far from and, unexpectedly, back to my home town drew the epigram of my art form, Mytho-poetry. It's Hot, it's Intimate, it's Wildly Reveling ... which describes living in a cooperative pretty well.
My artistic public service is to provoke. If it weren't for co-operative living I would have never really tested out some of my high-falutin' ideals. Thanks to East Blair Housing I've been able to try living by these values 30 years after their inspired formation in the '60s.
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