I am very happy to announce that Mark and Ann Hislop will be the new live in House Managers at Carrical; replacing Amanda when she exits Carrical in early-mid July. I think this is very exciting news for Servants.
Category Archives: Houses
$6450
I had a phone call from Ngaire (pronounced Nyree) from Hawthorn Rotary this morning. They will be giving us $6450 for a new freezer at Carrical, posh raised garden beds at Romana and industrial sized slow-cookers for each of the 3 houses. The new freezer for Carrical is particularly important.
Good news!
I was also informed that they have approved their Club funding the set-up costs of a ‘Men’s Shed’ type facility at Carrical. This will equate to a few thousand dollars.
Romana Opening Ceremony
The official opening for Romana will be the lunchtime of Saturday 17th May – at Romana, not surprisingly!
Further details will be forthcoming – but this is the date to put in your diaries.
First choice. Room 7.
The first room at Romana was chosen by a resident today. Natalie chose Room 7. We are on our way!
In other Romana news Brian and I had a site meeting today with Architect Steve and Builder Jeff. Everything is on track for Project One Builders to hand the house back to us on Wednesday 23rd April. We are currently on track for taking in the first residents on Wednesday 30th April.
I am working towards a tentative Opening Ceremony type of event on Friday 16th May – with a BBQ at lunchtime.
Romana resos
At some stage in the very near future I am going to have to stop interviewing people for Romana. The referrals from workers have been quite outstanding – with very few people that I would not even consider housing. From this week future residents are coming back to the house to start choosing rooms. And just FYI, there are currently 2 females who look set to move in from Opening Day.
Crazy stat
A crazy stat for your viewing pleasure. The last resident movement in or out of Hamer was in late November last year. We are now a week into our fifth month with no movements. This stat tells us many things – the fact that we are largely putting appropriate people into the houses, that our model is working well and that there is a serious lack of quality housing ‘out there’ for our type of resos to access.
Fruit. Urban Seed.
In the last few days I sent our live-in House Manager PD at Hamer Court to Urban Seed, at their request, for them to send out to their networks and alumni to see if there would be any interest at all in any of their contacts taking over from the Donohoes at Hamer at the start of 2015. I am informed from US that the response has been very positive in terms of quantity of people who have contacted them displaying some interest. Good news!
General Lease
An increasing amount of time is currently being invested into looking at the General Lease for Carrical and what we need to do to be in a position to sign this off. There are several steps involved in this process – one of which will be ensuring that Committee is abreast of all relevant information in time for important decisions to be made at the May committee meeting. In a nutshell everything appears to be on track right now – we have had a comprehensive property condition report carried out at Carrical, have met with the Dept, have informed the Registrar of our General Lease intentions and have started to timeline all the other pieces of work that are required to ensure we are ready to sign the General Lease.
As a footnote to this it is reasonable to say that the Dept is currently in a greater state of chaos than usual. People are disappearing from their positions there on a daily basis. My confidence in the Dept is at an all time low.
Meeting with Housing Registrar
This arvo I met with Christine and Kai from the Housing Registrar to show the around Romana and for a general catch up in regards to all things Servants. It was a low-key, quite informal meeting; but all very positive. The meeting lasted 90 minutes so there was plenty of ground covered. And a sign of the continuing good relationship with the Registrar was perhaps best exemplified when Christine advised me that she will be putting a person from another housing group in touch with Servants in regards to a specific item ‘as Servants knows how to do these things better than anyone.’ I tried to appear humble – but what she said was true!
Site meeting
The first site meeting at Romana was held this morning involving the builders, Architect Steve and Mark, Brian and me from Servants. It was full of mostly very good news. At this stage the builders are talking of a handover date to Servants of Tuesday 22nd April. In general the builders are ahead right now of where they had anticipated being. There were/are of course a few little issues to sort out along the way – but nothing that looks likely to cost us significant time or too many additional dollars.
Establishment grant
I contacted DHS today to ask them about the possibility of an Establishment Grant for beds/mattresses etc for Romana. They usually only deliver this grant to properties that are DHS owned. However, I was told that I could expect an answer within a few days. Even a few thousand $$$ would be of great benefit.
Rotarians, Romana and Mark
14 Rotarians spent many hours this morning/arvo working alongside Brian & Pat and Mark on the bathrooms at Romana. A huge amount of tile removal was accomplished. I am hopeful of posting a picture or two to the Servants Facebook page tonight. The community support we have for Romana is remarkable. It’s so lovely to finally be showing off Romana to people – all are stunned at just how terrific the place is. There are many more work days ahead for volunteers – I cannot even begin to imagine how many tens of thousands of $$$ this might be saving us – let alone continuing to develop mighty relationships and opportunities left, right and center!! In fact, whilst considering how many $$$ of labor we are receiving it would be remiss of me not to mention the work that Mark Hislop continues to give us, as project manager, in getting Romana ready for occupancy. I have learned a great deal just in watching Mark at work and how he has attacked the project in front of him/us. And of course, this has all been free of charge too. I think a nice ‘thank you’ bottle of scotch or something similar will be the order of the day once the project is complete.
Housing Registrar
I will be showing Christine and Kai from the Housing Registrar around Romana next Wednesday. This will also serve as an opportunity to bring them up to date with all the Servants news.
Asbestos in Romana?
No. There is no asbestos in Romana. Ahead of bringing in the first group of volunteers on Wednesday to get busy removing tiles from the bathrooms a question was posed as to the possibility of there being any asbestos in any part of Romana. Steve the Architect thought not. Romana was both built and opened in 1992 – which should well and truly mean that no asbestos would be present. But just to be sure Mark Hislop took some tiles, tile glue samples and anything that looked likely to be an offending article to be tested locally at a lab. The relief when the samples all came back this morning with a ‘negative’ verdict was pronounced!! We roll on ……………
Filling Romana
As of right now 13 of the 24 places at Romana have been accepted/filled. I have another list with half a dozen folks on it who I will probably interview again or offer accommodation to at Hamer or Carrical. Interviews continue at pace in the week ahead. I am now beyond the idea of being ‘hopeful’ that we will be ready to occupy Romana with good people from Opening Day. It is now a fact. The only thing we will once again be short of is enough facilities/beds to house those who want to live with Servants.
Also!! We will officially be housing at least one Slovenian!!! And, believe this or not, his name is Roman!
And they’re off!
The builders are off the leash and have started at Romana. After just 24 hours the front part of the house is well and truly a building site. It’s fantastic!! I must admit there have many days/nights over the past year that I wondered if we would ever see this day! Good news!
Funeral arrangements for Dennis
The funeral of Dennis Donovan will be at Le Pine, 741 High Street, Kew East, this coming Friday, commencing at 10.30am. All are welcome and a morning tea follows the service.
The longest
Saturday night at Carrical witnessed the longest Community Dinner of ALL Time! These auspicious occasions usually commence at 5.45pm and finish no later than 8.30pm. Last night we decided to pull up stumps at 10.30pm. Expect great things to occur as a result of this Dinner!
20,000,000 bathroom tiles
Ok, there may not be quite 20,000,000 tiles @ Romana in the bathrooms – but there are a lot! It has come to our attention of late that the majority of the bathroom tiles are in poor condition – they have, after all, been doing their job for the past 30 years or so. A finance sub committee decision was taken that Servants should pay for the tiling repairs to be carried out. Quotes have been obtained and a tiler will be engaged immediately to start this body of work.
The week in Romana
Roll on 7.00am next Wednesday morning. Yours truly should be onsite to take the first pics of demolition/preps occurring there. This week has seen the last few documents being signed/red tape cut thru etc in preparation for next Wednesday. How exciting that after all this time we are actually about to alter the building!
Interviews have continued this week with some more wonderful candidates appearing. The decision to make Romana an alcohol free house appears at this stage to be paying off handsomely. There are just so many prospective resos who want to live in a ‘dry’ house. I now have 10 people definitely moving in – and another half dozen whom I am considering/will invite back for further talks/might house elsewhere. 24 rooms is not enough! The word on the street from workers is that the need is becoming still more chronic. At one stage we wondered if charging $560 per fortnight was an amount that people would refuse to pay. From what I am currently seeing and hearing we could be charging significantly more than this (not that I am advocating for this at all) and people would still be lining up to be housed by us.
For the first time ever today I witnessed a worker in tears (in a good way) as her client was interviewed. Slightly disconcerting as you can imagine she later explained that Servants is unique and treats people with such respect. Good to hear. I hope that this enormously encourages all staff and committee.