The Red Victorian: A Metamorphosis in Governance, and so much more.
The Red Victorian is one of the most dynamic social structures I’ve had the luck to be part of. The 1904 Jefferson Hotel, became the Jeffrey-Haight in 1967, then when Sami Sunchild painted it red and renamed it, took it’s next form as the 1960’s famous peace and love hotel, then finally the Embassy Network took on the lease in 2015. In our short time alone, the place has been a wonderful mix of home, community, counterculture, an art space, music locations, pop up furniture store and event space. The building itself has been one of creaking creativity and adventure for so many.
In the middle of last year, the Red Vic was running as a half-home and half-hotel. We had residents living there as well as a hotel manager, (the incredible Brittany Ferrero, who steered the great ship Red Vic for two years and built out so much of the rich culture that remains today) and a number of work trade positions that helped run the hotel side of things. The collective had already gone through the earlier phases of governance shifting.
For various reasons, in September 2016 it was clear that a shape shift was in store for the Red Victorian. At that time, we were eight residents, four work trade hosts, and the rest of the spaces were hotel guests coming through on our custom built booking system (thank you Jessy Kate!). Whilst the Red Vic was culturally thriving, it was not financially surviving and with Brittany wanting to move onto other things, and it was the natural time for change. In a group huddle one evening in the backyard of the Embassy (our sibling house), all residents, hosts and lovers of the Red Vic gathered to plan the next phase.
The options on the table seemed to be either we lean towards full blown mega hotel, or we hunker down and birth a Haight St mega commune. Whilst both options got a lot of air time and generated a great deal of excitement, the Red Vic was home to many and an almost unanimous vote led us to commit to mega commune. We gave ourselves a November 1st start date — one month to move from a centralized system of governance over this part-hotel, part-home, to a 20 person collectively run commune.
It was energizing to see residents rally around this. A core team of people gathered who put their names down to take responsibility for making this shift happen, and this team began beavering about putting things into motion. The core team comprised a supportive structure (as opposed to an authoritative one), the goal of which was to steward and manifest the vision of the collective into being. Lots of people have asked me over the year past, ‘who’s in charge’? We have been explicitly moving from a somewhat centralized model to a decentralized one, which means that the core team is here to take responsibility for making sure that we pay the bills each month, that we have enough money to do that, that we can all eat and so on. Their role would speak to what is and isn’t possible financially speaking, but were not there to dictate how things should go. There is still no single person who knows how to run all the things. Some of us have access to the finances and bank accounts, others know how to change the door locks and make changes to the website or order food. Roles are flexible and dynamic, even if sometimes it takes a while for them to shift. While we all contribute in different ways, and to different degrees, with perhaps differing levels of voluntary responsibility, this community is and would remain, cocreated by all the individuals in it.
In the coming weeks, spreadsheets with participation levels were shared (thank you Autumn!), pros and cons listed, governance structures proposed, a flurry of people started working on financial models for the future of the Red Victorian. We spread the word that we were transitioning and we screened and searched for the right residential contributors for this next phase. We went from seven residents to twenty two in just four weeks, transitioning a large proportion of the hotel space into residential space. We dissolved the management structure, and cut back on hotel operations.
We built a financial model that leant a bit of the hotel side of things, to make the finances viable for residents, but with the hope that, any extra income generated by the remaining guest spaces or events would form our social impact funds. By shutting down most of the hotel we have gone from 58% guest occupancy to nearly full, all the time.
Development of the Hive
Six months on, the Red Vic has been a veritable hive of activity. With more residents, the building has been totally transformed. Honoring it’s history as an art space, the corridors and rooms are a trove of experimental decor. The third floor boasts a resident lounge with loft spaces and hang out zones on multiple levels, an indoor sauna and DJ booth. The winding corridors are filled with contrasting light sources and portraits of the residents. The back stairs have been transformed into an accelerationist staircase — a monument to the demise of capitalism. Utility closets have been turned into secret wood paneled reading nooks and harry potter closets. The main space has continued to evolve, and residents have build an led breakfast bar, a DJ booth for instant raves, an indoor beach and some beautiful bike storage space. They have built speakers and a bubble machine out on the the street, so they can host spontaneous parties for passers by who stop to dance outside under the pink lights of the Red Vic store front. Residents have built out a bunch of beautiful loft beds using the amazing Red Vic woodshop (courtesy of the amazing Kyle Stewart) and designs from Eric Rogers. The building feels like it’s alive, ever changing, ever breaking but always growing.
Development of the Swarm
More than this, residents have formed their own social processes, around accountability, participation and finances. These have been used with great effect, and have served to hold them all accountable to their shared agreements, to distribute financial responsibility and to ensure that they are able to emotionally look out for each other. They have created a thriving Citizenship system such that non-residential contributors can feel empowered to be more actively involved and use the space. We have explored living with younger people, taking on the amazing Felicity, who has only 13 years on this planet but the experience and wisdom of someone with much more. We have learnt about intergenerational living and hopefully have paved the way for more diversity in our residents in doing so. These developments have been remarkable to observe in just a matter of months.
“True consensual ownership is an evolutionary process, not something you install”.
Emotional ecology
The community has a steward of emotional ecology, who makes sure that emotional needs are being tended to, who assigns everyone a steward to go to if they are struggling. We have a captain of crucial conversations, who is an external party who’s role is to come in and figure out what conversations need to be had but aren’t being had, where the break points are, and to feed this back to the group. They are given permission to be able to say the hard things, and can feel safe in doing so without jeopardizing their sense of home.
Decentralised Finances — can it really work?
We have set up the finances so that each budget allocation has it’s own bank account and it’s own debit card. The residents look after the cards and cheques for these accounts and so have totally agency to spend their allocated funds as they wish, are are only held accountable by their peers. We loose the cards, fairly often :) but aside from this, it’s working nicely.
There is so much more that this group of people have created in their short time together. Mutual support circles, the critical hedonisms event series, a solidarity fund, and guest experiences. Between themselves, they are managing a hotel that brings in around 15K a month. There is no management, no one has final say on all things. This is a fully functioning decentralized collective.
The Red Vic is a forest, grown from the seeds of many generations of residents. On reflection, it seems that the breathing cycle of the Red Victorian is a six monthly one. Each six months another creaky breath is taken and the creature gambols forward a little further. Perhaps this is driven by the seasonal cycle of hotel guests, that fill up our beds in the summer, perhaps it’s something about the emotional boom and bust that comes with such a passionate project. But there are deep threads of continuity also — seeds sown by each generation of Red Victors still shape things deeply. Artwork from Grizzles is still scattered on the walls, murals from various residents, furniture and decor from previous Red Vic heavy weights. Chore allocation and participation structures proposed by Max inspired by the systems they have seen in the Berkeley coops, built on by many, iterated and honed.**
** This isn’t to say that all of this hasn’t been without hardship of course. In the last month, we’ve dealt with a lot, many of our processes and learnings have come with overcoming these struggles. I’ll be attempting to describe some of these hard things and learnings in a incoming post.
It’s been an honor to bear witness to this metamorphosis and I write this to pay tribute to all of those who contributed to this project, and to also to have it known, that indeed, a swarm of humans who haven’t known each other for very long at all, can drive a $54,000 a month project, and do so collectively, with great care and elegance. They have shown that they can protect their commons, all the while being open and inclusive, experimental and reflective, compassionate and assertive.
As I leave (I have three weeks left in the US), an even more remarkable event is taking place. Residents have self organized to take on liability for the project. Four residents will soon become officers of the Red Victorian LLC, and will share the responsibility of the longevity and viability of the project. Nothing could leave me happier than to leave seeing this evolutionary phase of the Red Vic - a mighty oscillating, evolving experiment in place, in social dynamics, in care, in critical thought and intentional living.
This collective, in all its phases and generations, has been a wonder to be part of. My heart soars at what this group are capable of doing and what the future holds for humans that will come to reside in the heart of the great Red Victorian.
Thank you to all that have made this possible — Jessy Kate, Brittany, Kyle, Molly, Jacob and so many more.
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