R A N D A L L P E N T I U K , E S Q . E D I T O R ‐ I N ‐ C H I E F

L O O K F O R T H E S E

F E A T U R E S :

Dear Co-op Counselor (page 5)

Cooperative Dos and Don’ts (page 11)

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

Member Profile Conclusion

2

Co-Ops: Wave of the Future 2-3

Co-Op Focus: Noble Square 4

Veteran Assistance 7

MAHC Continuing Education Programs 8

MAHC Messenger

MAHC Member Profile Latisha Billy

Latisha Billy knows the value of hard work and sees opportunity in any challenge she faces. Her strong work ethic and excellent customer service skills have helped her progress through her current company, Kirkpatrick Man-agement Company (KMC).

As Regional Property Manager for KMC, Latisha ensures that each property is in compliance and managed in a fiscally sound manner. Preparing financial reports is just one aspect of her job. She also solicits RFPs for special projects, reviews property contracts, col-lects bids and puts together the bid pack-ages for the board to review.

When asked what she likes the most about her job, Latisha said she loves visiting different properties and getting to know the members. Traveling from site to site allows her to connect with others in a way that a desk job could not. This hands-on approach has proven essential to her success.

Throughout her career in the co-op field, Latisha has noticed that co-ops don’t fit a “cookie-cutter” model. “You just can’t slap down a general set of poli-cies and procedures and think that it will mesh well with the membership.” Her prior experience in customer service has proven invaluable in her current posi-tion.

Co-op members have diverse personalities, backgrounds, and value systems which all need to be taken into account when working with a co-op. “There are so many facets of co-op af-

fairs that it literally takes the cooperation and involvement of the membership to make it a success,” she said.

Because of the diversity within co-ops, Latisha encourages co-ops to join MAHC. “MAHC is a phenomenal mechanism for enhancing and preserving your cooperative. The courses and train-ing that MAHC provides co-ops can help prepare them to navigate challenging situations.”

“I can’t think of a better way for communities and board and staff mem-bers to gain exposure to other communi-ties and practices and to remain up-to-date on current events, trending, and le-gal and compliance matters.”

(Continued on page 2)

P A G E 2

M A H C M E S S E N G E R

Where does Latisha get her drive? She cites her grandmother as a major influence. Latisha said that her grandmother was always respected and ad-mired not only by her family but also by others in her community. “From her I learned to be fair and honest—to always stand up for myself and what is right. While that sometimes gets me into trouble, I appreciate that she instilled that type of courage in me.” She knows the sacrifices her grandmother made while raising a family of five on her own and sometimes working 80 hours per week. “That lady will always hold a very special place in my heart.”

Latisha feels others can be successful, too. “Be accountable and be willing to help. By taking on whatever responsibility or task as if it’s yours, you can set yourself up for success because your perspective changes.

You begin to take ownership.” Latisha also recommends a person develop a strong work ethic. “It’s something that is rare these days and it will make you stand out in an organization hands down,” she said. “You don’t necessarily have to be seen working hard, but your hard work should be seen. It should speak for itself.”

Latisha takes her position as regional prop-

erty manager very seriously. “If I am the property manager, I am going to operate that property like it’s my own. That means I put thought into every decision and action that I make.”

Despite her busy schedule, Latisha does have room for some outside activities. She has started a baking business and is very active in her church, Life Eternal Ministries of Clinton Town-ship, Mich., where she leads many of the ministry’s community-centered outreach events.

Latisha Billy exemplifies the characteristics of a good property manager: enthusiasm, a strong work ethic, willingness to be a team player and the desire to make the co-ops she manages a success.

Karlynn Wilburne, Pentiuk, Couvreur & Kobiljak

(Continued from page 1)

Finding affordable housing can pose prob-lems for some families, especially in urban areas, but the cities of San Francisco, Boulder, and Denver think that they may have a solution.

San Francisco with its expensive rental rates and premium housing has looked to its empty spaces and existing structures to provide an answer.

Students working with the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association have de-signed dwellings using the spaces between buildings and structures and even the top of some current structures to create extra housing for its citizens. (Continued on page 3)

MAHC Member Profile

P A G E 3 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6

MAHC Board of Directors 2015-2016

Position Name State

President Richard Berendson St. Charles, IL

Vice President Blaine Honeycutt Taylor, MI

Secretary Cynthia Phillips Royal Oak Twp., MI

Treasurer -State Vice President-IL Christine Johnson Chicago, IL

State Vice President-MI Randall Pentiuk Wyandotte, MI

State Vice President-MO-KS Michael E. Reading Lawrence, Kansas

State Vice President-IN-OH-KY Karen Mitchell Indianapolis, IN

Board Member Marlene Dau Chicago, IL

Board Member Lori Smith Pontiac, MI

Board Member Thomas Hutch Sr. Waukegan, IL

Board Member Esther Ohiku Chicago, IL

Board Member Mark Kennedy Clinton Twp., MI

Board Member Valerie Hall Mt. Clemens, MI

Board Member Angela Ware Indianapolis, IN

Board Member Leslie LaMarche Kansas City, MO

MAHC Office Joanne Day Detroit, MI

(Continued on page 3)

According to fastcoexist.com, San Francisco projects that it will need about 100,000 housing units to meet the city’s needs. Designing and building structures within different neighborhoods would bring diversity and, possibly, new businesses. Many of these new housing units would become cooperatives.

Boulder, another city with rising housing pric-es, is also evaluating its options to ensure that people without a high income can live within the city limits. One solution the city council has looked at is coopera-tives. Like San Francisco, the city has looked to exist-ing structures to solve their affordable housing crisis.

By turning these existing buildings into co-ops, the city thinks that it can conserve resources, such as water and electricity, and stabilize areas with high rental turnover in articles cited by the Boulder Daily Camera and 5280.

The city of Denver has also seen its share of high demand and high prices for housing. It too has looked to cooperatives as a solution. Because Colora-do has maximum occupancy laws, establishing a co-op

in a single home can be difficult.

Advocates for cooperatives are working with the state government to change these occupancy laws to address Colorado’s housing concerns for cities with burgeoning populations and expensive housing costs.

P A G E 4 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6

P A G E 5

Preparing for Your

Annual Budget

Preparing the

annual budget may

seem a daunting

task, but if the board

uses the following

documents, the

process can run

much more

smoothly:

1. Ledger Book

and/or Journal

2. Monthly Cash

Flow Reports

3. Cooperative

Documents

4. Past Annual

Budgets

5. Current

Contracts

Dear Counselor; I’m looking for some funding sources to initiate or es-tablish some programs at my co-operative. I know I may need to apply for a grant, but I don’t even know where to start. Please advise. Signed, Finding Funding Dear Finding; You’re in luck! Although there are many organizations that provide grants for different kinds of programs, we’ve high-lighted a few which we find interesting. 1. Healthy Smiles, Healthy Children. www.healthysmileshealthychildren.org This organization works to provide dental care to children whose families cannot afford dental care. 2. American Association of University Women (AAUW). www.aauw.org Founded in 1881, the AAUW, has worked to promote education and equality for women and girls. Their community action grants are awarded to projects that focus on their guiding principles. 3. The Nathan Cummings Foundation. www.nathancummings.org Open to I.R.S. recognized 501(c)(3) organizations, this foundation focuses on four main areas: inclusive clean economy; racial and economic justice; corporate and political accountability; and voice, creativity and culture. 4. Saucony Run for Good Foundation. www.saucony.com/en/runforgood The foundation focuses on children and fostering an interest in running and living a healthy lifestyle.

Signed: Co-op Counselor (CC)

M A H C M E S S E N G E R

Dear Co-op Counselor; HELP!

Disclaimer: While we hope this information is helpful in answering some of your questions, please be ad-vised that the answers pro-vided here are for “general” informational purposes only. This information should not be construed as “legal advice” either to the individual or the Coopera-tive that they represent, the use of this forum does not create an attorney-client relationship between the user/reader and Mr. Pen-tiuk or his law firm, Pen-t iuk, Couvreur and Kobiljak, P.C.

For specific legal advice and personalized assistance with regard to your particu-lar issue or problem you should contact a profes-sional cooperative attorney.

 

If you are interested in submitting a question (regarding legal policy and procedure) to the Co-op Counselor, please submit your question via email to MAHCeditor@gmail.com, insert the words “Co-op Counselor” in the subject line. If you would like to mail your question please send it to Pentiuk, Couvreur & Kobiljak, P.C., 2915 Biddle Suite 200, Wyandotte, MI 48192 Attention: “Co-op Counselor”. While we will do our best to respond to your question please understand that submission of your question to this forum is no guarantee that you will get a published re-sponse.

Did You Know?

P A G E 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6

P A G E 7

MAHC’s

54th Annual Conference

Crystal Gateway Marriott Arlington, VA

May 21-24, 2017

Why should you attend?

Network with your fellow MAHC Members Training

Certified Cooperative Director Certified Cooperative Manager New Board Member

Annual Meeting Awards Ceremony Election of New Board Members Plus a whole lot more!

Go to MAHC’s website www.mahc.coop

and click on the link to make your reservation now.

Register Today!

Helping Our Veterans HUD and the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently announced that 39 local public housing agencies have received $18.5 million to assist approxi-mately 2,100 homeless veterans obtain housing. Check out HUD’s website at www.hud.gov to see if your state was a recipient. In June 2016, the departments helped more than 5,200 homeless veterans obtain housing. Since the incep-tion of the program in 2008, HUD and the VA have worked with about 111,000 veterans providing rental assistance and support services.

MAHC will come to you for training! When new board members, long term board members (who feel like they need an update), and employees need or want training: think of MAHC as your source.

Great classes are offered, ranging from four hour subject specific lessons to our popular certification classes.

Certified Cooperative Director class (CCD): 1 ½ days of intense training for Board Members, ranging from History of Cooperatives to How to read your Audit.

Certified Cooperative Manager class (CCM): 1 ½ days of intense training for Managers, Assistant Man-agers, and Office Managers, ranging from Marketing to Finance.

Certified Cooperative Maintenance Manager: 1 full day of training, ranging from inventory systems to working at a Cooperative.

Unfortunately, we may not be able to travel to your property if you only have two people who need the class. However, we attempt to put on a regional class to accommodate a greater number of interested people. And in addition we host classes at the annual conference every year.

MAHC would like to recognize some of its latest attendees: Chatham Park Village in Chicago, Illinois. We were proud to bring training directly to them, classes which included Fair Housing, Ethics, Knowing your Documents and Parliamentary Procedures. Over two Saturdays they had 11 attendees.

As well, we would like to thank and commend River House Cooperative for hosting a training session for the CCD Certification for seven board members! Lots of learning was crammed in on a Friday and Saturday.

We have had some interest for a CCMM in the Michigan area. For this class to be dynamite, we need a minimum of 10 to 12 attendees. If your Cooperative has maintenance personnel you would like to see at-tend, please call Joanne Day at the MAHC Office. Location and date has not been selected yet; we first want to see how many people have interest.

Calling

All

Students!!!

P A G E 9

Space is running out. If you are interested

in advertising in the

MAHC Messenger please notify:

Karlynn Wilburne

via email at: MAHCedi-tor@gmail.com.

If you advertised

with us last year and haven’t

renewed your ad, please email us.

Georgetown Place is offering the following two-day training session to

any and all who want to attend:

Certified Cooperative Director

When: Friday, February 4, 2017 Time: 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

When: Saturday, February 5, 2017 Time: 9 a.m. –1p.m.

Class fee is $250.00/person

Call MAHC at (734) 955-9516 to register

Georgetown Place 24276 Rosewood, Taylor, MI 48180

Attention

Michigan MAHC

Members

Education is

Power.

MAHC offers valuable resources such as:

Cooperative Housing Hand-book

Serving on the Board

Membership Orientation

Cooperative Communication

Parliamentary Procedure Cards

Visit our Website at www.mahc.coop/index.html to order these titles and find out

about the other valuable materials and resources that we offer.

Don’t take chances with your cooperative. ...

M A H C M E S S E N G E R

Our Mission Statement

To support and champion the cause of quality

housing through education, legislative actions,

partnership, and advocacy for housing cooperatives.

P A G E 1 1 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6

Cooperative

Dos & Don’ts

Board Members...

Do – Know what to delegate and

what to do themselves.

Don’t – Don’t try to delegate everything

or nothing.

YOU CAN NOW LIST YOUR UNIT SHARES FOR SALE WITH NAHC!

The National Association of Housing Cooperatives formed a Share Listing Committee last year to review the opportunity to develop a Share Listing Program. The Share Listing Com-mittee has been working for over a year, and has partnered with the Website Committee and the Website Coordinator, to develop a Share Listing Program, that will be included on the National Association of Housing Cooperative's Website. The National Association of Housing Cooperatives website is www.coophousing.org. If a person wishes to list their cooperative share unit for sale, the Share Listing Program is avail-able to help. Only NAHC members are eligible to use this service. Check out the link listed below for further details. http://coophousing.org/cooperative-usa-share-listing-program/ MAHC Messenger-

We welcome your article contributions of 500 words or less submitted in MS Word format. Please feel free to forward them to the editor at the address listed below. If you are a Management Company and would like to contribute to the “Cooperative Dos and Don’ts” section of the MAHC Messenger please submit your suggestions to MAHCeditor@gmail.com.

If you are interested in placing an ad in the MAHC Messenger, please contact the editor at MAHCeditor@gmail.com

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and contribu-tors and should not necessarily be re-flected as those of the Midwest Associa-tion of Housing Cooperatives. The pur-pose of this publication is to serve as informational only and not to engage in disbursement of legal advice. If you re-quire legal assistance please consult an attorney. If you have questions or com-ments please submit them to the editor at the email address listed above.

MAHC Messenger Staff

Editor -Randall Pentiuk, Esq.

Review-April Knoch, Creighton Gallup

Publication Design and Layout- Karlynn Wilburne

MAHC is Going GREEN! (at least we’re going to try)

But we need YOUR help to do this.

If you currently receive the

MAHC Messenger and

you have an e-mail address, please email

Karlynn Wilburne - MAHCeditor@gmail.com

First & Last Name Address, City, State & Zip

Name of Cooperative or Business Email Address

Thank you for your help in our endeavor to make the

world a little greener!

M A H C P O B O X 1 8 5

R O M U L U S , M I 4 8 1 7 4 - 0 1 8 5 P H : ( 7 3 4 ) 9 5 5 . 9 5 1 6 F X : ( 7 3 4 ) 9 5 5 . 9 5 1 8

E M A I L :

Romulus, MI 48174-0185

Prsrt Std

US Postage

P A I D

Permit #31

MAHC has been recognized as one of

the Nation’s leaders in training, education, and support services for Housing Coopera-

tives

M I D W E S T A S S O C I A T I O N O F H O U S I N G C O O P E R A T I V E S Q U A R T E R L Y N E W S L E T T E R E N C L O S E D