Moulin Building One with Preliminary Budget

Okay, clearly we can't count on being able to accomplish anything revolutionary through the government, and as individuals we are virtually powerless to stand up against mega corporations and other super-wealthy entities.

As a modern western culture, and specifically as America, our country faces a huge pile of interwoven problems. I want to help everyone in the country that isn't outright wealthy.

Of the people I want to help, basically some of us don't have any money, and some of us don't have any time, and we spend most of our time and money competing instead of cooperating.

So, the thing that's really had my noodle cooking for the last couple decades is: how can we create a scenario in which the middle class pays the working class and the impoverished to create alternatives to corrupt/unsustainable economic institutions and provide solutions for problematic socio-economic realities?

About this project, some pre-words

First of all, I'd like to be clear on the difference between the format/tools I want to make available to the public, and the specific plan I personally intend to use that format to accomplish. For example, I want to create a format of living that functions as a low-risk incubator for creating sustainable small business and social outreach programs, and I hope the public makes use of that format, whatever that looks like to them. Additionally, I have a specific set of small businesses and social outreach programs that I will be using that format to accomplish. This can be tricky to talk about concisely, so I'm going to mostly describe the later, while trying to point out where other people might do it differently.

In addition, I'd like to touch on the fact that I've spent 20 adult years working this all out, and I've spent countless hours thinking of contingencies and inclusions, such as "what if one of the 28 people isn't a good fit, but doesn't want to leave the project?" and "what happens to the budget when several people move significant others in with them" and while I have answers like proposed buy-out/buy-in clauses to a lot of this stuff it gets super long and convoluted to try to include them all in a simple overview.  I have to leave out  soooo much that I've thought about. jsyk.

Also, I believe it is very important to make this project family friendly, as it is intended to address problematic norms with home management, economic navigation, and family care, with a lot of thought about what is broken about modern western norms regarding child rearing. More, creating an environment that allows working class and single parents to provide high level childcare is an important issue, and room has been made for that here even where children or families are not specifically mentioned. 

I'm currently conceiving the project as 4 stages, I'm going to describe the first 2 for you in greater detail (I believe the second stage is going to be most relevant to your specific skills, so hang in there for that) and then I'll talk briefly about stages 3 and 4, why not.


Lastly, I know you're at least a little familiar with micro credit, but I'm going to include a brief explanation here.

Basically, if you loan 10 people a total of 100k, they are each responsible for 10k of debt. If one of them defaults, the other nine split their debt, so now each of them has about 11k of debt, which is payable, and also encourages them to all help make sure nobody defaults on the debt. A couple of banks in Bangladesh and Germany have had success with this, citing a 98% repay rate which is a few percent better than the average home loan repay rate here in the states. Additionally, there are at least a couple million people who have this structure of loan here in the states, so it's not unheard of nor untested, even specifically in our own economy.
 

___________________Stage One_____________________


Note: I ran the following numbers for California. Obviously property values and minimum wages are different other places, but the concept should still be applicable. 

SO. 28 people get what is essentially a home loan for 2 million dollars. We'll call them group A. They each have about a $71,000 mortgage, their share of the loan.

Group A buys property (ideally unused/abandoned industrial sites or dilapidated property in low income areas) for about a million, maybe a little under, and builds a facility on it for about a million, maybe a little over. (I looked at apartment building costs per square foot and reviewed properties currently for sale in California to get these numbers). Some of the money is earmarked for partnering with the city on local infrastructure - so, say the streets in that neighborhood need repaving, we might buy all the materials for the city to do that, saving them money, incentivizing the city to work with us on rezoning and permits, while at the same time those kinds of improvements are an investment in the value of the property. 

The facility is 60 bedrooms, with an industrial kitchen, plenty of diverse common space, and shared facilities (like at a gym: banks of private shower stalls, a hot tub and a sauna).

Group A moves in and rents remaining rooms to an additional 28 people, we'll call them Group B.

Now, out of 60 rooms we have 56 people living in the facility. 10 of them are caretakers. Instead of paying money, they pay their way in labor, and they additionally receive a monthly stipend of 500 dollars a month to start. The caretakers do all the building maintenance and groundskeeping, they do the housekeeping and laundry, they make sure the bills are all paid, and they provide a meal plan. Utilities are all included in rent. This means that anyone renting there has a single, affordable monthly bill for their cost of living, never has to cook, never has to do laundry or wash a dish. I call this Full Service Living. And the budget is for 60 but only 56 are planned in, with 4 slots available for social outreach, so this community can offer semi-temporary room and board for free to women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, homeless people with children, rehabilitated felons, whoever they want to help.

All this for a single payment of $1,000 per month, per paying resident.

Rent, food, utilities, housekeeping, everything. In an area where rent alone is more than that. This guarantees that a person making local minimum wage can afford to live, and pretty decently, with more free time and less headache. 

When the building is paid off, if they want, Group A will each have a room to live in, plus a room to receive rent from, as income.

Let's break down the budget for this so far
 

(60 people, minus 10 caretakers and 4 outreach residents, equals 46 paying residents)

Per Month Costs to Paying Residents:

Meal plan for 60 people = $5,000.00

60 person phone plan = $1,800.00

Internet sufficient for a business: $400.00

Water bill for 60 people = $1,800.00

Electricity for 60 people = $3,600.00

Garbage bill for 60 people = $2,000.00

Caretaker stipend = $5,000.00

(subtotal: $19,600.00)

Building/Community fund = $1,853.00

2 million dollar mortgage = $21,213.00

Property tax = $3,334.00

Total: $46,000.00

= $1,000 per paying resident per month, roughly $600 “room” and $400 “board” with as many costs of living as possible paid as one low bill. Sharing a room adds a "board" payment to the room, so if you move a romantic partner in with you and split it evenly, you each pay $700. I also have discount rate breakdowns for people with children in various scenarios, but it starts to get complicated for what is supposed to be a simple overview. Basically it comes down to an inherent flexibility in the meal plan; the fact that a food budget for 60 people easily accommodates an extra mouth to feed could allow a group to offer a single parent a separate room for their child with no board payment, so they could live in two rooms for $1,500; stuff like that.  At those payments, the building is paid off in ten years. TEN. Our low income earners don't have to wait 30 years to be actual property owners, and they only have to give the bank an added $500k instead of the 1.4 million a 30 year mortgage would net.  Here is one place people participating in their own group can do whatever they want. The 28 building shareholders have the option of leaving everything the same but owning the place outright, which means they are no longer paying the ~$500 mortgage portion of their bills, instead each receiving about $500 in rent from the other residents, which is a net gain of $1k per month each in disposable income. Or they could all just sell the building and split the money 28 ways. Or they could all move out and use the entire building to generate residual income. Anything is good, we've made almost 30 people property owners and built them equity for only minimum wage while they provided relief services to the surrounding community, so anything they think is best, we've already done it good. Ideally they move into a second building and sell the first building to group B, but I get into that later. so..... honestly, as far as I can tell, I just need to find the participants, and the lender. That's it.

I mean OF COURSE it still represents a lot of work to get just to that point, and there are a lot of associated up-front soft costs, like paying an architect for an accurate estimate of building costs for the facility, and probably a professional proposal or grant writer, real estate assessor, almost certainly a lawyer, it might take a year or more just to work out the permits and zoning and the construction itself is another 13 months at minimum, likely more like a year and a half, but, if I had the initial 28 people and the home-loan, I am positive all of that would get done.