Andres Castro Arms Student Co-op: Berkeley, Ca

Many trips up and down Warring street made me aware of a Julia Morgan mansion with an extended front staircase. It was clear this was not a Greek house because there was a half-manikin-half-art-piece in the front yard, a few vegetable plants, and good deal of weeds. Later, I peeked through the back window and spotted a “Where the Wild Things Are” mural on the opposite wall. Yep, this was a co-op all right.

History:

In 1906 Julia Morgan designed this house for George Washington Merrill and his family. At the time there were no houses across the street and no International house. The view of the bay was the centerpiece of the project. In the 1930s, a sorority took up residence in the home, expanding 20 years later to add the northwestern wing. During the counterculture movement of the 60s, the house became a cooperative. It was named after Andres Castro, a cook at the BSC’s central kitchen during the period in which meals for all the cooperative houses were prepared centrally.

Overview:

• 56 residents
• Single Bedrooms: 7
  Double Bedrooms: 20
  Triple Bedrooms: 3
• Accessible Rooms: 1
  Parking Spaces: 8
• Shared living room, dining room, full kitchen facilities, laundry, food, printing and house computers, garden, pianos
• 2 main entrances (front and back), 4 secondary entrances
• Favorite places for conversation: front porch (esp. at sunset), the garden, upper roof
• Unfulfilled needs: seismic retrofit, more outdoor accessible common space beyond deck, wheelchair access to study room

Neighborhood:

Castro is located on a block of sororities, fraternities, and two other co-ops (Davis House and the African American themed house). It is a five minute walk to the UC Berkeley campus and a two minute walk to the football stadium.

Outdoor space:

The key outdoor spaces at Castro are the front deck and the higher of the two rooftops. Both are places where residents spend time reading and talking in the sun or watching the sun set over the bay.

The front porch is the only ADA accessible outdoor space. The porch overlooks the front staircase and garden. Julia Morgan celebrates the front stairway as an important social landscape by extending it halfway across the yard. The staircase has taken on a different personality since the view of the bay was blocked by multi-story student housing; residents traveling up and down generally greet each other and keep moving. The addition of the west wing also makes the front stairway more visible to those with rooms with south facing windows.

Co-opers from nearby houses sometimes visit Castro to watch the sunset from the upper roof. The lower roof (over the west-wing) doesn’t get much sunshine or have much of view, but it does have an array of solar panels and space to hang laundry. In a sustainability audit of Castro, they noted that the lower roof doesn’t drain very well. Residents don’t spend much time on the lower roof.

Common Space:

House meetings are held each Sunday night in the dining room and announcements go up on a chalk board. Residents play fooseball relentlessly in the dining room, eat, play piano, and catch up with friends. Two doorways lead from the dining room to the kitchen.

The original Julia Morgan kitchen was remolded in 2009 to reduce the size of the walk-in frig and increase the size of the pot-washing sink. Two other large common rooms are located on this main floor: a room with a pool table and a room with a large projector.

The maintenance room, study room, free pile, and laundry machines are on the basement level.

The east and west wings:

The rooms added in the west-wing expansion are no match for the carefully sculpted rooms in the original mansion. Even the hallways in the Julia Morgan house are more liveable spaces. Below is a picture of a window nook at the end of a hallway in the Morgan house and a long straight hallway in the west-wing addition for comparison.

Room selection in the co-ops is based on a seniority point system. The longer one lives in a co-op, the more points they have to bid on a new room with. Alex told me that Castro is more or less divided: younger/newer co-opers end up in the mediocre west-wing rooms and older co-ops bid into Julia Morgan rooms (often with views out over the bay) like the rooms shown in the plans below. This division creates a hierarchy within the house that upsets the sense of house unity.

Shared amenities:

• Food, all kitchen supplies, eatable garden (<1% food)
• 49 cuft refrigerator, 49 cuft freezer, walk in refrigerator, personal refrigerator (~20 cuft)
• Ice machine
• Cold milk dispenser
• Printing, study room computer
• Kitchen computer and sound system
• Laundry
• Maintenance tools
• Free pile of hand-me-down items
• Common space pianos, pool table, fooseball table, projector

Energy:

In 2010, the monthly cost of energy and natural gas ranged from $90-$160 per resident¹.

ADA accessibility:

For Alex, Castro is the best house to live in with a wheelchair because the common space is largely on the main floor. He also has access to a sunny porch and his own personal restroom with a key—sharing the bathroom would tricky. He chose not to live in other co-ops because they lacked sufficient common space on the main floor, were too far from the university, and/or they were just too big of a house (120+ residents). He would have preferred more outdoor accessible common space and access to the study room at Castro.

Entrances:

Alex guessed that about 70% of foot traffic enters through the front door (shown above) with the remaining 30% entering through the back door (shown below). The entrance to the west-wing from Warring street also gets a fair amount of use. The doors are always locked, although frequently propped in fair weather.

Conclusions:

Castro’s ADA accessibility is greatly enhanced by all of the interconnecting common rooms on the main floor.

The significant difference in the quality of the rooms in the east and west wings poses a serious challenge for this co-op. It is important for new members of a co-operative house to interact with older members of a house and feel welcomed. The spatial division of the house into older and younger members will systematically decrease those interactions. West wing shown below.

¹Advanced Home Energy Audit. BSC Sustainability: Houses. Feb 8 2012. <https://sites.google.com/a/bsc.coop/sustain/houses/castro>

Mini-dorms, Group Living Accomodations, and Parking

Co-ops and other shared houses tend to have higher population densities than their neighbors, and this can sometimes cause conflict, especially over parking.  At the last City Council meeting, the City of Berkeley heard legislation to add regulations to rooming houses.  The action was prompted by 2133 Parker Street, a 19-bedroom rooming house six blocks south of UC Berkeley.  The building was once a 3 story duplex with a garage on the first floor and two apartments with a total of six bedrooms on the upper floors.  Two years ago, the building was sold and the new owner expanded and renovated the building with the following notable additions:
- Garage converted into a 3rd unit.
- Attic space expanded into a 4th floor with more bedrooms.


2133 Parker is located in a R2-A low/mid density residential area consisting of houses, duplexes, and small apartment buildings.  See map below. 

Not surprisingly, neighbors were unhappy about the expansion - which violated some zoning regulations - and took their case to the City.  A detailed description of some neighbors' reaction to the project, as well as before and after photos of the building, can be found at the 2133 Parker blog. 

The neighbors' main land use related complaints were:
- Building has too many bedrooms
- Building has insufficient parking, leading to shortage of streetside spaces
- Building is too tall

Once residents moved in, a couple more complaints surfaced:
- Noisy parties
- Recycling and garbage out of control.

 The outcome of the meeting was the following:

1. The property owner had to make 2133 Parker comply with the zoning code by reducing the number of bedrooms from 19 to the code compliant 7.   The zoning code limits the number of bedrooms a building can have based on the size of the piece of land, in this zone, one per 800 square feet.  
2. In R-2 multiple family residential zones, buildings adding bedrooms beyond the 5th to a house or apartment would no longer be eligible for residential parking permit (RPPs).  RPPs are permits sold to residents at a nominal $35 a year to park for unlimited amounts of time in 2-hour zones in their neighborhood.
3. Mini dorms would require an onsite manager to handle noise complaints and deal with recycling.  The city define mini-dorms as follows:
   
   Section 13.42.020.A. is amended to read:
   “A. “Mini-dorm” means any building in a R-2 or R-2A Zoning District in which any Dwelling Unit in the building contains more than five Bedrooms and the Gross Floor Area of that Dwelling Unit devoted to Bedrooms is more than 60% of the total Gross Floor Area. For purposes of this subdivision, the Gross Floor Area of any room, closet or other ancillary space that can be entered only through a Bedroom shall be considered part of the Gross Floor Area of that Bedroom. Permitted and Legal non-conforming Sororities, Fraternities, and Student Co-ops shall not be considered Mini-Dorms, as long as they have a resident manager.”

Let's take a co-op look at all of this...

 The Parking Issue:
The city's zoning code requires 1 space per 5 residents in R-2 zones.  Experience in the student co-op (which are located mostly in R-3 and R-4 zones closer to campus) has been that about 1 in 10 to 1 in 8 residents will keep a car in Berkeley.  (See the article on Lothlorien)  So 1 in 5 is reasonable.  In fact, at non-student co-ops, which are more likely to be in R-2 zones, car ownership is often 1 in 3 or 1 in 4. 

However, requiring more onsite parking might not be the most effective way of making sure there are enough street spaces to go around.  At $35 a year, the permits are underpriced.  Often in the student co-ops, onsite spaces sit empty because residents would rather pay $35 a year to park on the street instead of $500-700 to park in a lot or garage.  Many of these vehicles are used only a few times a month, and raising the parking cost would probably convince a number of their owners to switch to carshare or other transportation.

It remains to be seen what residents in buildings ineligible for parking permits will do.  My guess is they will register their car at a friend's house - something people already do now to park in an area closer to where they want to be.  

The bedroom density issue:
Closely tied to the parking issue.  However, loopholes abound: this could encourage fewer, larger double bedrooms instead of smaller singles.

The Recycling and Garbage and Resident Manager Issue:
Here the problem was more of a management one: building owners not providing enough trash cans, probably since the city charges for garbage pickup by the number of bins.  In a rooming house, where garbage pickup is included in rent, residents may lack incentive to reduce waste. In any case it is unlikely this part of the ordinance will ever take effect, since for a building to have bedrooms account for 60% of floor area would require some very impressive architectural gymnastics.  Apartment buildings average 10-15%.  The typical large student co-op in Berkeley such as Lothlorien is about 20% bedroom.  Even Pacifico, with its ultra-efficient floor plan, is only around 30-40%.  Stairs, bathrooms, kitchens, hallways - these all take up lots of space.  A building that is 60% bedroom would require nested bedrooms that have to be entered via other bedrooms, have insufficient bathrooms, and have almost no common space. 


The noise issue:
 It's true, the more people live in one place, the more likely it's someone's birthday or some other occasion to party.  However, this is more of a management issue as opposed to an architectural one. 

So at the end of the day, it's about parking, as usual
Competition for street parking is the biggest impact a high-density residence tends to have on its neighborhood.  The city could charge more for this scarce resource, but this tends to anger residents who suddenly have to pay more for the same service.  Then there is the privatization approach, where the street parking spaces in front of a house belong to the owner to do whatever they want with it - keep it for themselves, rent it out, or charge the public to park in.  The city could also encourage more cycling and public transit use, but when self-proclaimed environmentalist communities can only get down to 1 car per 4 residents after they are no longer students, some parking will be required in the near future. 

UCSC Trailer/Camper Park, Santa Cruz

October 2011

North of the UCSC campus, the trails through the redwoods are quiet but for the whir of the occasional mountain biking crew. When I stepped off the path, I came across a shelter made of redwood branches, a blue tarp laid over a sleeping pad within. One such path opens onto a small clearing where forty-two trailers are clustered. Vibrantly colored and timelessly silent, there is something quite stunning about happening-upon the trailer park.

History:

The trailer park is located north of Kresge College and west of Heller Drive. It started in the early 1980s during a housing shortage. Students were parking RVs and trailers in campus parking lots and started several trailer parks in the woods. This is the only known trailer park left. There is a long-term plan to use the land for student dormitory housing but no moves have been made yet.

Current camper park lore: pre-university-regulation, seven students lived together in one trailer. The lead singer in Sublime helped get the camper park started.

Overview:

• 42 trailers (with cooking facilities and running water)
• Shared common house: kitchen, laundry, refrigerator, freezer, music/computer/entertainment room, 2 showers, 2 bathrooms
• Bi-weekly pot luck dinners (Wednesday/Sunday)
• Favorite places for conversation: the dish-washing sink, in front of the “free-food fridge”, the community room, bathrooms, walking around the park, by the barbeque and the picnic tables, in the trailers when food is being cooked and a couple people are sitting around
• Challenges: trailers can be cold, not enough privacy for those sharing a trailer, hard to get to the bathroom without running into someone, some trailers don’t have working ovens, hard to cook elaborate meals

Neighborhood/surroundings:

But for the occasional whir of a mountain bicyclist, the trails up through the redwoods hold a steady and also eery silence. There are stories of secret encampments in the redwoods surrounding the trailer park.  At one time, the people living in the encampments were known as "woodsies" and they were often close friends with the parkies. 

On one side of the camper park, there is a university parking lot and a road leading down to campus. Although the camper park feels very far away from campus life, it is a five minute walk to the Kresge dormitory and a ten minute walk to centrally located campus libraries.

The Park:

The 42 trailers that compose the camper park are arranged much like houses in a suburban cul de sac. There are 2 main foot paths and 1 main road leading into the neighborhood. The group of trailers on the loop furthest from the common house are called “the lonely loop.” Trailer 42 is known as “the gate keeper” and the current resident is “Gatekeeper Jeff”. The residents of trailer 14 said their neighborhood loosely spans from trailer 9 to 18. They suggested that a few other neighborhoods exist within the park.

The Common House

October 2011

The common house is located near the center and includes 2 showers, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a common room/study room. Just outside are the common waste bins. Every Sunday and Wednesday, the parkies gather for a potluck meal at the common house. Some people talk about upcoming events and make announcements. The only official meeting was the first meeting of the quarter when campus officials came and chowed down on some chili and ice cream. The kitchen sink and the common room are particularly popular places to stop and talk. Most parkies carry their dishes in milk crates to wash them in the common kitchen. The industrial sinks are much more convenient then their miniature private sinks.  While most parkies are well acquainted with one another, five of the forty-five official residents were only spotted a couple times in the first month. Most conversation happens at the common house or on the street between trailers.

Trailer life:

According to university regulations, all trailers must:

• be manufactured units intended for use as a residence
• meet UC requirements
• be fully operational/DMV registered
• pass inspection
• be less than 28’ in length and less than 12’ in width
• include: cooking facilities and a sink with running water, a 110 volt underground AC electrical system, adequate light/heating/fire extinguisher/smoke detector/carbon monoxide detector/ propane leak detector

Only 5 of 42 trailers have a sewer hook-up (sewers are not required). Below are a few examples of trailers in the park:

Obviously parkies don’t hesitate to make their home their own. Around 7 trailers were painted in a single fall quarter. Some parkies spend a good bit of time keeping up their garden and making their trailer “homey”, while others allow the potted plants to die. Although the oldest parkie has only been around for three years, the outdoor furnishings have been inherited by many parkies. This passing on of sculptures, paintings, plants, and furnishings lends to a sense of continuity.

Some of the best conversations are had between parkies inside the trailers.  One person volunteers to cook and the others sit in the booth or on the bed. One resident reported sharing at least one meal a day with 3-4 people from the trailer park. Many parkies don’t have an oven so they cook in other trailers frequently. When it is someone’s birthday, fifteen or sixteen people cram into a trailer and the space is filled with lively conversation.  Trailer 14 is shown below.

While the dimensions and spatial arrangements vary from trailer to trailer, this trailer illustrates the compact space and the primary components. Most trailers have 1-2 space heaters and a portable fan. One parkie said the cold is the most challenging part about living in a trailer. Trailer 14’s stove/oven is used on a daily basis to prepare breakfast and sometimes lunch and/or dinner. Some trailers don’t have an oven so complex meals are difficult. The bed separates and folds up into two opposing couches and a table can be propped in between. The windows look out to the green canopy of the redwoods. The space in front of the kitchenette and the mini-fridge are where residents do the “trailer shuffle”—a celebrated side shuffle to get out of way of the other person. Storage is tight (even with the non-functional corner-shower) and overflow ends up on the table. They are considering remodeling to replace the kitchen table with a single bench against the wall. The canopy next to the trailer provides an outdoor space where neighbors and visitors stop to chat; the owner of the trailer sometimes sits on the step or stands in the doorway. This trailer also has a back porch where residents read, stretch, and study.

The outdoor space is cluttered with potted plants, both alive and dead. Some trailers have small garden plots that they regularly tend. A live oak tree grows in front of trailer 14.

Shared amenities:

• 2 central bathrooms (only 5/42 trailers have a sewer hook-up)
• 2 central showers
• 2 dishwashing sinks
• 17 cuft refrigerator
• 14 cuft freezer
• Donated food from grocery stores and bakeries (usually expired or not fresh enough for sale)
• 3 common computers
• Wireless internet access
• TV, VHS & DVD player in common room
• Outdoor barbeque
• Central recycling and trash

Ownership:

A student who wants to move into the trailer park puts their name on a 30-80 person waistlist. When a parkie moves out, they sell their trailer to the next person on the waitlist for $3,000-$3,500 and they are the new official owner of the trailer. When they move out, they usually sell it for a few hundred dollars less than they bought it for. Parkies also pay $500 each month (or $556 for those with a sewer connection) in rent which is about $300 cheaper per month than the cheapest dorm.
 

Zoning:

The parkies said clusters of trailers will operate like mini-neighborhoods within the larger community. The residents in these clusters tend to communicate more with one another and spend more time cooking for one another in their trailers. The parkie that lives in trailer number 42 is called “the gatekeeper” because it is close to the primary vehicle entrance.

Storage:

Before UC regulation, what parkies couldn’t store in their trailers, they fit into a variety of outdoor storage units. Two college students with a conservative amount of belongings can make do with the indoor shelves and closet (~14 sqft) and 2 outdoor dressers or storage bins.  Most parkies find the mini-fridge in their trailer to be too small for their needs and the overflow is put in a bag in the central refrigerator.

Conclusions:

The layout of the trailer park provides for the type of coincidental contact that is essential for a strong community. Parkies are motivated to leave their residence to go to the common house to grab food from the refrigerator, prepare food, clean-up after meals, use the bathroom, take a shower, empty the trash, attend the potlucks, use the central computers, or use the television. The interactions that happen as they carry out these daily tasks are the heart of the community. The individual kitchenettes and tight quarters provide smaller, more private places to cook for small gatherings within the community. While this may seem to create unnecessary divisions within the community, it is my hypothesis that it allows more introverted parkies a place to create friendships and feel at home within such a large group of people. Literature on cohousing has already tackled this idea of smaller, divided spaces with two important findings: nooks and smaller spaces allow space for residents to have more private conversations¹ and members of a community on this scale usually really connect with four to five people². The trailers are somewhere between a co-op and a co-housing community: each has a kitchenette but the bathroom facilities are shared. In co-operative houses, shared walls lead to a lack of auditory privacy, some rooms don’t get any direct sunlight, personal kitchen facilities are rare, and most rooms don’t have any personal garden space. The shared walls in co-op houses do help keep the energy cost low. Check back for the energy-use of the trailer park.

¹Franck, Karen and Sherry Ahrentzen. New Households, New Housing. Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY. 1991.

²McCamant, Kathryn and Charles Durrett. Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities. New Society Publishers. 2011.