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This page is for discussing anything related to Solar Community Housing and its Wiki page.

Controversy

This discussion [WWW]has moved to The Davis Voice. In it, the final, edited version of Pxl's letter appears with response and comments.

Former co-op member pxl has published the following letter of grievance with the SCHA. In it, he claims that the SCHA board of directors have violated the bylaws of their organization, are ecologically ignorant, and lack concern for the planet. He cites instances of alleged misconduct to support these contentions. He claims that a certain director unsuccessfully attempted to remove income limits on members in an interested manner, to ensure that his girlfriend could continue to live in the community. He claims that certain renovation contracts were awarded to a sitting director in an improper manner. He claims that the directors approved transportation to a community housing convention by air transit, which was an ecologically burdensome and unsustainable form of transportation. He also finds grievance with the meeting of the board and some current and former residents where it was decided that he should be evicted from the community complex. He complains that the organization does not adhere to its own bylaws, and that proper procedure is not followed as a matter of routine in both the case of his eviction and in the day to day running of the organization. He feels the manner in which he was evicted was improper, and urges readers of this article to ask that the current board members adhere to their own bylaws, that violations of proper procedure should be met with reprimand, and that certain board members should step down.

Open Letter

Written January 20th, 2010 by Pxl, a former member of SCHA

From 2005 to 2010, I lived at the J st. co-op, which is one of two co-operative homes owned by Solar Community Housing Association. In the past two years, a series of events has unfolded that leaves me with no respect for the SCHA board of directors or their collective commitment to non-hierarchical cooperative housing and environmental sustainability. In my opinion, the SCHA board of directors is desperately in need of reform and restructuring.

The SCHA board of directors has repeatedly ignored or violated their own bylaws and values and demonstrated their ecological ignorance or lack of concern for the planet. In housing cooperatives, there is often high turnover, including on a board of directors. My hope is that the board will soon get back on track, but I fear this is not the case. Several of the best board members have left this year, with some frustration over faulty board process and I think the most detrimental board members are now the “old hats” the new board members are learning from.

In order for SCHA to stay true to their core values of affordable cooperative housing and environmental sustainability and to put some recent wrongdoings in the organization’s past, I am calling for a general return to core values by the board and the resignation and removal of SCHA director Max Stevenson specifically for many reasons. There has been such high turnover on the board this year already, and I do not know some of the current board members so I do not think it necessary for the entire board to step down.

The not-for-profit SCHA was formed with the stated goal of “reducing the burden of affordable housing from the state.” In order to ensure this, there are income limits in place for all non-student SCHA members (80% of local median family income or currently about $38,000). In 2006 or 2007, SCHA Community Director Max Stevenson pushed a several month process of trying to remove the income limits from our housing. This was a huge time drain, detracted from the very core of the organization, and could have jeopardized our tax-exempt status had he succeeded. I opposed this action.

From 2007-2009, the SCHA board approved thousands of dollars in airline ticket purchases to send members to a national weekend co-op conference in Michigan, while, in the same period they completely ignored a similar West Coast conference. They purchased these tickets over the repeated objections of members who did not want their money to go towards one of the most polluting and damaging means of transportation possible. With these actions, The Board of Directors has increased the carbon footprint for this 16 room Co-op to an absurdly large and completely unsustainable size. I went to this conference once, but I rode the train.

In 2009, SCHA Community Director Max Stevenson attempted to get SCHA to co-invest in some property with him in an expansion project. This was in direct violation of SCHA’s governing bylaws. I opposed this attempt as well.

In September 2009, the Board awarded SCHA Community Director Ben Pearl almost $40,000 to be project manager for a new SCHA expansion project. They did this without creating a job description or seeking ANY outside applicants for the position. While not a violation of SCHA bylaws, I don’t think this conforms to common not for profit etiquette. Ben abstained from the vote to “avoid” conflict of interest but I would like to see him resign from the board OR step down as project manager for the new co-op.

On September 21st, 2009, the board held a secret meeting with a small group of mostly former co-op and board members. That night, the board decided that I should be forced out for being “too confrontational”. They offered me $600 to not sign a new lease and move out by October 1st. If I refused, they threatened to serve a three-day eviction notice… after living there for almost five years. As soon as I became aware of the board's action against me I initiated a mediation process with the City of Davis' Community Mediation Services, which is one of the first steps in SCHA’s grievance process. The board declined mediation.

I negotiated with the board personally. At this point, I no longer wished to reside in the midst of a negative situation. We agreed that I would have 30 days to vacate, I left in “good standing”, and I signed a small book-size-document they’d paid a lawyer to draft, saying I would agree not to sue SCHA. I have not financially recovered, am still homeless and I still have no desire to sue the organization. I just don’t want the current board to ruin this great organization.

According to SCHA’s bylaws, there are very specific ways to be forced out, such as 2/3’s of current housemates petitioning the board for a member’s removal. In my case, none of the criteria was met and more of my housemates opposed my eviction than supported it. The board violated many of its bylaws, established process, our written lease, and completely ignored the written grievance policy (a legal attachment to our lease). When I asked why they were not following procedure, the board told me “no one has followed process from the beginning, so we’re not going to start now” and “it’s easier for everyone this way.” Everyone except for me that is, whose rights were being trampled.

This secretive action caused me immense emotional damage and severely impacted SCHA’s reputation in the community.
Good organizational process is so essential for transparency, openness and accountability, which I feel the board is lacking right now. Many current and former members have said they do not feel the board is responsive to them. I have been asked to join the board many times and I always declined, as I’m not fond of meetings and stay pretty busy with my work and gardening for Food Not Bombs, Whole Earth Festival, Yolo County Food Bank, and J St. co-op.

I hope that you’ll let the board know what you think about their actions, demand that the SCHA board of directors adhere to their bylaws and that directors are reprimanded or step down when they don’t. The future of truly co-operative housing is at stake... email the board at: SCHA.Davis@gmail.com

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2010-01-21 02:29:10   I can see some arguments for including this, and for not doing so.

Pro: It seems like it is similar to the experiences that people post all the time for rental units. (Although it is MUCH longer.) So in the sense that it describes that person's view of what it was like to live there, it seems like we should include it (but as a comment, not as main content).

Con: It's also an attack on a set of people within SCHA, and goes beyond being descriptive in that it attempts to get people who are likely not involved in SCHA to affect the composition of the SCHA leadership. To me, that falls more under the categories of politics and advertising (for a particular goal), and doesn't really feel appropriate to the Wiki. Every group with enough people has its own internal politics. This really seems like an internal matter for SCHA... —IDoNotExist

2010-01-21 07:45:17   SCHA forced me out of the co-op in an illegal and unethical manner. I think it is very important that former co-opers, other co-opers, future coopers, and the general public know what's going on. I could see some of the personal statements moved to the comments section and the facts kept in place. There are so many controversial decisions that the board has made, I think a controversy section is important to highlight this. The Board tried to silence me form the organization, so the wiki is the ONLY place I have to air these complaints. —PxlAted

2010-01-21 08:02:46   PxlAted, I saw your long, personal letter of complaint against SCHA. Until such a time as you rewrite it to be in wiki format rather than personal-rant format, strip it of your opinion and analysis, and clean it of any accusations which are libelous, I'm going to do my damned best to keep it out of the main page. Statements which are not of fact but which speculate about the motivations of certain board members are not appropriate. State the facts and let the reader draw conclusions. For instance, stating that a board member tried to change the bi-laws just to keep his girlfriend in the housing unit is unacceptable, unless you've already sued them and a court of law has determined this to be so. Stating that the board member tried to change the bi laws, and that his girlfriend happened to exceed the income limit, allowing the reader to put two and two together, IS acceptable. Clean it up, shrink it down, remove the editorializing, but until then, keep it out, and find some other outlet to use to attack these people. Like court. —EdwardNiemand

2010-01-21 08:11:42   edward, I didn't think everything had to be NPOV... —PxlAted

2010-01-21 08:16:43   I heard something about your conflict with the board from a few former members of the complex... it's my understanding that the secret meeting you're talking about was basically just a meeting without you present but with everyone else there, and a bunch more, where a bunch of members who wanted you to go away all voted on whether to evict you. I don't know if a meeting like that is "secret," really. I understand that you're pissed at them, and your position of homelessness sucks, but is bringing that feud onto this site what you should be spending your time on? Did the document you signed contain any admissions or assertions of fact that you were agreeing to which are contrary to what you've posted in this opinion piece? —EdwardNiemand

2010-01-21 08:31:27   The SCHA bylaws state that ALL members are allowed to attend ALL board meetings. Also that the board has to post the real agenda a few days before the meeting, not a fake agenda with false items to obscure the true agenda. The board treated the former housemates as valid members and tried to treat me as a non member. The statement I signed, is kinda like the 9/11 commission, it doesn't tell you much but it covers their asses. If I had been notified of the meeting I would have gathered support as well. As it happened, they never gave me a chance to be heard or defend myself. —PxlAted

2010-01-21 08:35:56   What does a fake agenda with false items look like? At any rate, the rant is in the first person, which doesn't let any other editors apply factual corrections without putting words in your mouth. —EdwardNiemand

2010-01-21 08:43:59   It looks like "house dynamics" when it was really "3 hour rant about pxl." I was told that night that they were going to meet about me by one board member, but I assumed it was the start of the grievance process, not the meeting to evict me. What makes it all the more frustrating is that we have such a good lease and grievance policy in place which I thought were my rights, so much for those! —PxlAted

2010-01-21 09:19:29   It's clear who wrote it and whose opinion it is. It provides another perspective, which others can judge for themselves. When we have pages concerning local politics, people take sides and describe them in the main text. I don't see how this is different. There is often a pro and con. If someone wants to respond to Pxl's allegations, they can. Yes, he mentions particular people, but it's not as though he is calling them derogatory names. Even restaurant reviews often mention particular people. I think it should stay. —CovertProfessor

2010-01-21 09:24:04   How does one respond to the allegation that the board members are "petty bourgeoisie," cp? —EdwardNiemand

2010-01-21 09:47:27   RE: the Class reference. For people who pay attention to Class issues, this is an important point, especially with an affordable housing provider. —PxlAted

2010-01-21 10:29:02   I'm confused about the first person narrative letter being included in the body of the article rather than the comments. It's a personal letter from someone, so I as an editor can't change it or modify it without putting words in his mouth. If I want to write stuff on just about any wiki pages, and "immortalize" it from being corrected or altered by other editors, can I just write it in a narrative form and label it as a letter from myself about the article's subject too? We should either shift the complaint to the comments section, or PxlAted should let us re-engineer it to have the encyclopedic voice of a wiki article, so that we can tweak it as we please. Otherwise, he just gets a private section of the article to himself that we are prevented from editing. —EdwardNiemand

2010-01-21 12:19:16   Why not just move it to the comments section? That's where feedback normally goes for any business, including for every apartment in the city. Other SCHA members might disagree about the details of what happened, and it's not the place of the wiki itself to provide judgments on internal conflicts. By leaving it in the "facts" section, Pxl's account is essentially presented as *fact* rather than a single point of view. I agree that editing it as is would be problematic, because it is clearly the opinion of Pxl, and it wouldn't be fair to edit Pxl's opinion. But moving it to comments solves that issue. —IDoNotExist

2010-01-21 12:21:15   I don't understand why this isn't in the comments section - isn't that the natural home for windy personal rants and recounting of personal histories about the article subject? —rfrazier

*I think this letter should be in the Comments section. I also find it hard to follow discussions of this sort when people don't sign their names to their part of the discussion; e.g., "Why not have opinion in the entry?" —DonShor

2010-01-21 13:00:02   [WWW]iawte

*sigh*

Davis Wiki is not supposed to be divided into a factual and an opinion section. Yet, everyone expects this now. I think I'm going to go off and cry now.

=(

We can be so much more than a community-driven yelp clone. Please stop importing best practices from them and Wikipedia and let us be our own, awesome, multiple point of view thing.

2010-01-21 13:18:00   Ok, so if we have individual opinions mixed in with facts, how do I tell what is true (or at least agreed upon), and what is opinion? What should I give heavy weight to? What should I ignore? How do I make an informed decision? —IDoNotExist

2010-01-21 13:39:45   Opinion should be labeled. In this case, it is. In this case, it's also a major portion of the entry, with which some people clearly disagree. My thought is that it belong somewhere other than the main entry, not because it's opinion, but because by the time there are a couple of responses to it, it's going to crowd out everything else on the page. IMO the controversy should be freely visible to the public, if the editors so choose, but it shouldn't become the defining feature of the SCHA page.

Which is why I think it should be at most a short entry in the main body, with the bulk of discussion on it elsewhere—the Talk page, a Controversy page, or the comments. —TomGarberson

2010-01-21 15:58:29   I really appreciate the helpful edits everyone has been making. I think down the road moving the letter to a subpage and leaving a well written and easily editable controversy section on the main page would be best for SCHA longterm, to allow for continued whistle blowing. Part of my frustration with the whole eviction is that I was never given a chance to be heard, so I would appreciate keeping it in the foreground for a while, at least until Max and Ben step down, the board responds or the letter is no longer current. —PxlAted

2010-03-01 16:06:05   Discussion or opinions on entry content vs comments and talk? Let's get fair and open dialog about the changes. —Carl

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