The Maholian Way - Part Two: The Maholian Way in the lives of two

Spurred on by these two sets of discussions, the residents, assisted by the two agencies, started to take action. They removed the graffiti from walls and fences, and collected up all the rubbish and put it into skips provided by the local council, as well as arranging for the council to take away the car bodies and white-goods. A group of older men organised a night patrol in which they would walk around as a group – with torches but without weapons – to deter drug dealers and other criminals, and this measure also symbolised an assertion of control by the community over its territory. Another group started a community garden in one of the parks, with vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers grown in individual and communal plots. Garden produce could be consumed by the growers and their families, or it could be sold, swapped, given away, or used for shared meals and other community events. Some of the growers were immigrants from Pacific Islands such as Tahiti, the Cook Islands and Tonga, and they grew produce from their home islands. Residents met expenses for these activities from a materials allocation in the Abode budget and from some fundraising dinners, raffles and stalls.

Over time the residents established three cooperatives. The first was a laundromat, started – following Carla’s suggestion – because the machines in residents’ own homes kept breaking down, and it was more economical anyway to share a smaller number of sturdier ones. It was also more social, and a chance to notch up a shared accomplishment. The laundromat was located in the estate’s only strip of shops, a Ministry-owned facility half of whose premises were unoccupied, including the one next door to the laundromat. This gave them an idea: why not start a café next door? There wasn’t one on the estate, so the café cooperative came into being, and before too long espresso coffee and an array of sweet and savoury foods were on sale. Twelve months later a catering cooperative began, using the café kitchen and equipment. Start up finance for these enterprises was obtained from a community bank that had recently established a branch in a suburb nearby – a bank that focused on lending money to local ventures – and Abode went guarantor.

Abode’s management of tenancies and maintenance had a big impact on the tenants. Previously, tenants saw ‘the ministry’ as the face of that giant monolith, ‘the government’, a monolith that demanded money from them and kicked them out if they didn’t pay, and took an age to repair anything that wasn’t working. There was no causal relationship in their minds between their rent payment and treatment of the properties on the one hand, and the service they received from government on the other, just as you wouldn’t see a causal relationship between pouring a bucket of water into the sea and being able to draw a bucketful out. But under Abode’s management it was different. Each month the agency distributed to all residents a financial statement for the estate. On the income side there were total rental payments and a fixed subsidy from the Ministry, while the expenses side listed administration, amortisation of government debt incurred in building the estate, and totals for maintenance and capital works. The statement also showed which items were going up, which going down, and why. It was soon clear to residents that rental arrears and money spent on repairing deliberate or careless damage was money that was not available for other maintenance and improvements on the estate, so the level of tolerance for wanton damage and non-payment of rent shrank very quickly, and both became much less common.

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