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Penn Haven Housing Co-op Gives Students Opportunity to Live Sustainably

October 17, 2014 Category: PeopleUncategorized

About four years ago, a few University of Pennsylvania students had an idea: create a homeless shelter for college-aged kids, where Penn and other university students would live alongside them. They received grant money for their idea, but that plan didn’t work out. Instead, the Penn Haven Co-op was born.

“That’s why it’s called the Penn Haven Co-op, because it was aimed to be like a homeless shelter for college-aged kids, where Penn students would live alongside them,” said Sarah Allan, an Environmental Studies major at Penn. “It didn’t end up working out, but they did end up creating the co-op out of it.”

The housing cooperative provides an alternative community and opportunity for students to meet and interact with other socially conscious, environmentally sustainable, and cooperative-minded individuals.

The co-op started with an apartment during the 2011-2012 school year for about six or seven students, said Allan, before moving to a larger house on Woodland Avenue in West Philadelphia the following year. Last year, the co-op had 20 members and two houses on Woodland Avenue. Currently they have ten members and a single house.

Allan, who is on Penn’s gymnastics team, joined the co-op because she was looking for a community at Penn that she felt was conscientious and socially-minded.

“I also have a strong passion for sustainability and so I wanted to be able to incorporate sustainability into my living, and I knew that really wouldn’t be possible if I was just living with the gymnasts. I also wanted some deeper conversation that was more organic that I really wasn’t getting in my classes, that I also wasn’t really getting with my teammates,” she said.

The co-op’s ten current members make all decisions through a consensus process — a group decision-making process that seeks the consent of all participants — and they meet once a week on Sundays for an hour.

“So not only is [consensus process] a way of making decisions, but also our method of discussion when a topic arises. Our decisions range from large to small,” Allan said.

An example of large decisions they’ve made as a co-op includes passing their annual budget, how many members to have each year as well as a discussion and decision on how to make up the co-op’s deficit from last year.

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“Ultimately we decided to Airbnb our living room. That decision then generated a committee. And we follow up on the process weekly,” she said. They also form committees to work on things in the house such as finance, food, and events.

Smaller decisions they’ve made using consensus process include switching to Bennett Compost instead of doing their own composting, and deciding not to add quinoa to the list of bulk foods that they buy, a discussion that lasted a few weeks because of their concerns over the social impacts of quinoa farming.

According to Allan, the housing co-op is currently looking for members for next year (who don’t necessarily have to be Penn students). She said they currently have seven open spots, and that the application will be available soon.

“We like to have a diversity of interests in the co-op, but do aim to maintain our values of social justice, anti-oppression, sustainability, etcetera. Overall, we are just looking for someone who is interested in being committed to the co-op and contributing to our community,” she said. “We review applications in our meetings in a consensus style like everything else. If we haven’t met a candidate yet, we usually like to sit down to talk to them informally as well.”

More information about the co-op is available here and questions can be sent directly to pennhavencoop@gmail.com.

Image via Penn Haven Co-op Facebook

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