2mo ago

housing cooperative community management options

Hey all! I live in a housing cooperative in the USA and I've recently been elected to the board to help manage things for the housing community. I would like to modernize where possible, and wean ourselves away from corporate tools in an effort to increase the privacy of my fellow residents and provide resilience against corporate enshittification and our dangerously hostile federal government.

in case you aren't familiar with what a housing cooperative is

For some context, being in a housing cooperative means (in my case) that while from the outside the community appears to be an apartment complex like any other, it's very different because it is resident owned. Everyone living here owns an equal share of the community as a whole, and that share entitles them to living space (a housing unit) within the community, and voting rights on how our community is managed.

We don't pay rent to a landlord because there is no landlord. Monthly dues paid go directly to the community itself and are used to fund unit maintenance, infrastructure upgrades, property taxes, and so on.

The Board in charge of managing all of that is comprised of residents in the community who have been elected directly by the community itself. That's where I come in, as a new Board member.

We're currently using a horribly unsafe (from data ownership and privacy perspectives) mix of corporate software offerings to accomplish our management tasks. Gmail, Google Drive, TownSq (for property management needs, like maintenance tickets and payment processing), various proprietary building entry apps (e.g., pin codes for locks), etc.

I'm very comfortable with de-Googling and self-hosting something like Nextcloud to replace some of those things, but I've had very little luck finding fitting open source replacements for the property management portion. Everything I've been able to find is targeting landlords, real estate, or HOA models. None of those fit well for cooperative housing.

I'm leaning towards a self-hosted mix of NextCloud, possibly (mis)using Forgejo for maintenance requests, and Home Assistant to make a frankensystem covering as many community management needs as I can, and we'd just have to keep using proprietary stuff for the rest. However, I really would love to hear any creative suggestions or feedback from all of you about anything I've said, most especially if you're part of a cooperative and have dealt with similar issues.