Rhea Serna's blog

Cooperatives have the opportunity to play a vital role in helping to rebuild the economy. As unemployment and foreclosures continue, cooperatives are an attractive model for businesses and homeownership. Here in the Mission District of San Francisco, cooperatives are a vibrant component of the local economy. On Saturday, March 14th at the Centro del Pueblo (474 Valencia, San Francisco), the Mission Asset Fund will be hosting its first multi-sector coop discussion. The community discussion will be hosted in Spanish and is open to the public. Representatives from the following cooperatives and businesses will participate in the discussion:

Mission SF Federal Credit Union
Rainbow Grocery
San Francisco Community Land Trust
TechCollective
Design Action Collective
TeamWorks

Nancy Kaufman is a bi-lingual Latina that operates an event planning business called Balloon Art Productions and Rental. Nancy was operating her business out of her home and decided that she needed to expand her operations. She received small business technical assistance from the Mission Economic Development Agency and attended small business classes at ALAS (Alternativas Para Latinas En Autosuficiencia). It was at ALAS that she met other women interested in starting their own micro-enterprises. Nancy and her new colleagues attended MAF's Orientación Sobre Como Formar Cooperativas. Nancy quickly decided that she was ready to convert her sole proprietor business into a worker owner cooperative and invited her new friends to join her. I assisted the women in creating the organizational and legal structure for for their cooperative. Gabrielle Lessard from the Insight Center for Community Economic Development provided the legal oversight for the development of the operating agreement. While converting a regular business into a cooperative was challenging, the women were diligent about creatimg the legal structure as well as making important decisions for how it would function.

Part of my work at MAF focuses on the promotion of limited equity cooperative housing in the Mission. I am working in coordination with the San Francisco Community Land Trust to promote cooperatives to low-income tenants in the Mission. The SFCLT is currently forming a limited equity cooperative at 53 Columbus in Chinatown. The project is the only one in the country where the community land trust (CLT) model is being used to prevent the displacement of low-income working class people. In addition, the ground floor of the building will become the new home of the Asian Law Caucus.