By Sarah Andrew, Liberty CERC
Photography: Shannyn Higgins
Welcome to Member Voices. Learn more about other members and their stories from within the co-op. Sarah interviews Liza from Liberty CERC and talks about how she became involved in the co-op and what it means to her.
What makes a co-op home?
Longevity of tenancy, the mark you leave on the house: scratches from moving furniture, pets joining your family, or the smell of bay leaves wafting in your cooking. Part of being in a co-op home means you are permanently attached to the co-op that has chosen you, and that you have also chosen.
Working collectively in Liberty often requires business thinking, often having to separate the personal from the practical. Finding a balance between both is important.
A co-op home has a sense of being completely personal on one hand, yet something collectively created on the other. It is important to respect people’s attachment to where they live, and also the commitment members make with their workloads.
Long term renting has so many opportunities. Not buying into a capitalist mentality, giving lower income the opportunity to live somewhere decent.
The friendships in a co-op, the arguments, the learning how to be assertive, learning finance, learning when to step back and realizing the requirements that enable me to have a permanent home are worth respecting (and sometimes they need challenging too). I believe ultimately, the joy from a co-op is granted by this sense of permanency we create.
It takes a long time for a house to morph around you, for memories to arise, to know your local shop keepers by name.
I ask Liza Dezfouli a fellow co-op member, friend, writer and artist how she feels about being part of a co-op.
How long have you lived in your current house for?
Six years. We moved here in, April 2014. Before we moved here, we lived for nearly eleven years in another Liberty property in the same area.
Why are you in a housing co-op? What are the pluses and minus’s verses home ownership, or a public housing block?
I was a sole parent of two sons when I became a member of Liberty. Getting into a housing co-op saved my bacon – I’d been living in a private rental, spending half my income on rent – to live in an old crumbling damp terrace house. One of my sons had severe asthma, and that house was a particularly unhealthy environment for him.
For someone in my position, obtaining secure accommodation for myself and my sons was a godsend. One of the best things about moving to the new house was finding ourselves practically over the road from the primary school. As I’m a non-driver, that made thing so easy for me. Prior to moving we’d had a half hour walk to school in the morning.
I like having shared responsibility for my home; being in a co-op house is like something between renting and owning.
I’m so glad I live in a house with a backyard rather than in a unit or in a tower block, as I’ve become a mad keen gardener, which I wrote about for the last edition of this mag. I’m out in the garden every day, even when it’s raining.
Do you find the balance of keeping a professional business face on whilst balancing personal needs of members hard?
Yes. Co-op members are more than work colleagues, but not necessarily friends with each other. We have some strong personalities in our co-op and managing our respective cooperative ‘styles’ when we disagree in meetings is one of the biggest challenges, I find. It’s not usual in life to stay in a group situation like this for years and years and years.
What do you love about being in a co-op?
Obviously being securely housed. Being able to afford to live in this diverse, highly desirable suburb. And I have a lot of respect for the members of Liberty: they’re an incredible bunch of resourceful women with much agency, some of whom have had to overcome rugged starts in life.
What don’t you love about being in a co-op?
We’ve had to make some tough decisions over the years. At times we’ve needed to weigh the good of the co-op against the individual needs of a member. We’ve made mistakes: granting a new member special leave (for what seemed to be a good reason) when she’d only been in the co-op for five minutes was one. We paid dearly for that! Turning away prospective members who’ve shown potential during the member selection process is always hard.
What do you get out of being a member of your co-op? What don’t you get, what is the downside?
I’ve learnt a lot from being a co-op member. I’ve been challenged and stretched. You have to be patient in meetings, keep a lid on your emotions and stay calm, no matter how triggered you might be. I’m sure everyone in Liberty will disagree with this, but I’ve discovered that I’m a much more practical person than I’d thought!
How do you feel about the place you live? What is your favorite memory since you have lived there?
I love my house, insanely. I might even become one of those objectum sexuals – people who marry buildings – and propose to it. (We’ve been living together long enough.) The interior is adorably quirky, with asymmetrical cornices and doorframes in the main kitchen area, a couple of bronze metallic ceiling arches and these random metal inserts in the floorboards – lines and a circle, not even in a pattern.
The ancient poplar tree next door is the oldest tree in Northcote, so I’ve heard; I like to believe that. It’s massive, a landmark you can see for miles, and in summer when it’s in full leaf, the sound of the wind rushing through the canopy is musical. A million birds live in that tree and bats hang out in it at sundown. The branches hang over our back fence.
There was a trampoline out the back when we first moved in and on a couple of sweltering nights during my first summer here, I slept outside on it. On one of those nights I was woken by a curious possum snuffling me, checking me out. I don’t know who was more startled, me or it!
One of the best memories I have is of our first spring here and being surprised by what bloomed in the garden. Some things seem to burst into flower overnight. Right now, there are new pink blossoms on the young fruit trees. We’ve got bluetongue lizards living under the house; they come out in spring, too. One special memory is of seeing my two cats and three bluetongues hanging out in the sun in the front yard together.
Listening to Liza’s story I think about an upstairs flat I used to live in before joining Liberty, how the unit living was difficult with a one year old and no yard. In the last ten years I have watched my yard home trampolines, chalk drawings, mini hoes and gardening tools for Lewis, a basketball ring, a shared driveway where he can play with the neighbours children (wonderful for an only child).
Lewis has four or five boys over at a time for birthday and special sleepovers: smelly and full of testosterone, they have the opportunity to run around outside. Now, in a time of lockdown with only two people in the house, seeing each other day in day out, there is a space to shoot hoops, for me to drink wine at night, for Lewis to study on his MacBook on a blanket in the sunshine while I prune before spring.
I feel an alliance with Liza, similar stories perhaps, and not just luck that we fell across Liberty, but a sense of commitment to what we are doing and what we have.
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