Shock and horror! We have a vacancy about to occur. A resident is leaving Carrical to move into a transitional housing opportunity. Hopefully this will be a good move for him. We would be more than happy to house him again in the future if the need arose. The next resident to move in has been waiting since May 2013 to be housed by us.
Category Archives: Houses
General Lease
There is some good progress to report in regards to Servants outsourcing the majority of our maintenance requirements in order to be prepared to sign the new General Lease in time for 1st July.
Amanda and I met with Yarra Community Housing prior to Christmas and today with t2m, the maintenance arm of St Kilda Community Housing. Both groups are more than well equipped to deal with our maintenance needs.
We aim to bring a proposal to committee at the 10th February committee meeting.
Hamer management update
With most of the current Hamer management team away on holidays the Halls have moved into Hamer for a couple of weeks.
Although there remains no clear pathway forward for the future management model of Hamer post the current team there has been some momentum over the past couple of weeks. Knowing precisely what we would like the management model to look like, and finding that it is not quite eventuating as desired, Amanda and I have commenced looking at alternate management structures for Hamer. This has been proving to be of great value.
I look forward to keeping you abreast of developments as and when they occur.
Flowers
Servants received many wonderful gifts over the Christmas period. One of the best were bunches of magnifique flowers. Now, don’t even think about asking me what they were as I have not the slightest idea, but they are beautiful and have made a fantastic contribution to helping Carrical look and smell amazing. I suggest we keep all of our houses in fresh flowers 100% of the time. If anyone would like to suggest how we might fund such a venture please let me know!
Christmas Eve. Part 2.
The major Christmas meal was celebrated at both Hamer and Carrical today – as is tradition. Hamer held a lunch and Carrical the evening meal. Both meals were a great success – great food and equally good atmospheres. There were lots of volunteers at Hamer. Polly Maudlin provided some singing entertainment at both houses – encouraging resos to join in with Silent Night and Joy to the World. The Hamer crew won this contest hands down!
Christmas Eve. Part 1.
During the now traditional Hamer Christmas Eve luncheon today (which was a mighty, mighty success) one of the resos took a photo of Paul Voutier and a fellow reso. Paul says that the reso then said ‘I have had nothing worth photographing the past 20 years at Christmas time.’ Seems to me that so often we hear tremendously bitter-sweet comments ………….. and we always seem to be the ‘sweet’ end of these comments.
Romana lease
Sarah from Moores informed me today that the lease for Romana has now been signed, sealed and delivered. Hurrah! A nice little piece of news leading into Christmas!
Churches et al
Saturday was a terrific day for resos of both houses. The regular BBQ folks from Kew Baps and Christ Church joined forces to provide a stunning lunch time meal for Carrical resos and the folks from Canterbury Baps provided an evening meal and held a carol ‘service’ for Hamer resos. A handful of Carrical resos have gone to the Hawthorn Rotary/Foundation Boroondara Lunch today. To quote a former, esteemed Servants Chairperson: ‘Everyone loves a homeless person at Christmas!’ True. And I will milk it, on behalf of the resos, for all it’s worth!!
Christmas Eve and Christmas Days at the houses are looming large as days of great merriment and feasting.
Romana Breakfast
Looking forward to the Romana Breakfast tomorrow morning. Pleased that many people will have their first look at the new house.
CHFOV update on the Standard Lease 6th Dec 2013
CHFOV held a workshop on Friday with speakers from various groups that have adopted the general lease.
All of them have adopted the lease and believe they are better off on it. They also talked about the problem and opportunity areas:
- the elephant in the room – UNFUNDED PROPERTY LIABILITIES.
- Insurance for the property – the department currently “self-insures”.
- Grey areas about total loss and the definition of uninhabitable.
- Less regulatory reporting – e.g. CCB reporting disappears, some reporting move to 6 monthly as well.
- Maintenance backlog when we take it on.
- structural assessments needed.
We will need to convince the regulator that we can complete the required asset management. This is not trivial.