I am glad this message is making sense to folks. I was curious about commercial real estate and just as one example, here is a cool looking commercial building near Laney College that used to be a plumbing company that is $728,000.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/reb/d/oakland-825-8th-avenue/7684763216.html

NOT that I want us to move, I just want to encourage us to be realistic about worst case scenarios (they're not that bad!) so we can calm down and make the right decisions here. What if the worst case was we bought a cheaper building and then had a million dollars to put in to an Omni Commons Trust to maintain the building for the next 20 years or somethin?

> What will make the LLC strategy any different from our burnt out operating body?
My understanding is the LLC is a legal entity to protect the donors who would donate $900k to keep Omni in the current location. The LLC would be given a guarantee that if Omni defaults on loan repayments, the LLC could legally recover losses through the sale of the building. The LLC is not to manage Omni Commons, which would be done by current leadership.

And I don't know if it is correct to say that Omni leadership is burnt out beyond dealing with this financial issue. What I will say is that Omni Commons has never missed a mortgage payment so the organization is running smoothly enough to manage its debts.

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 3:16 PM Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd@gmail.com> wrote:
The remainder from the foreclosure would go to the Omni Commons non-profit organization, to do with as we please.

That could include finding another $2-3M space we could buy outright and all move in together. The commercial real estate market is still in the dumps right now, so a couple million can go far! I'd rather have us be debt-free under a functioning roof, than owning a giant event space to manage...

The other option would be to dissolve the non-profit, and split its assets among the current member collectives. Legally, money from dissolution of a nonprofit can only go to other nonprofits, so any existing "sponsored projects of the Omni" would need to be adopted by one of the nonprofit member collectives (or we can help them get their own non-profit paperwork submitted asap). Exactly how that split is done can be negotiated in advance - presumably by amending the existing Dissolution clause of the bylaws. If we want to include some of the former long-standing collectives who have since left - like GWS and CSC - we could do that too.

Patrik

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 2:15 PM Z Silver Zahn via sudo-discuss <sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org> wrote:
What I'm curious about is who would that 2 million go to? Omni Commons is made up of several collectives. Collectives that have come and gone as well. How would that money be split up? How would working groups be included in the division? Would collectives that got banned also earn a cut of the sale? Also in reality the 1st million payment on the building was from an anonymous donor. The last 9 years of Omni Administration was mostly done by volunteers in working groups. The administration didn't do so well. What will make the LLC strategy any different from our burnt out operating body? 


Best option would be to work with a non-profit that can take on that work we struggle with while staying in the building! We can also negotiate our needs and desires in operations with prospecting groups. I also think offering a space to community led Black and or Indigenous folks from Oakland/Ohlone is work towards collective reparations. I was under the impression Omni was operating as anti-capitalist, it feels extractive of all the free volunteers who made Omni stay afloat for maybe some lucky collectives to gain profit. 

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:01 PM Taylor Alexander via sudo-discuss <sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org> wrote:
(sending to sudo because I don't think I am on other lists, please forward as needed)

Just had a conversation about the current situation. It sounds like People's Programs essentially want to completely take over legal and administrative control of Omni Commons. I would be against this as it seems it would spell the end of Omni Commons. I also want to put up front that Omni's Lawyer has made clear we have more than 90 days to resolve this as foreclosure cannot take less than 90 days.

But what I wanted to talk about was the assets of the Omni Commons organization, specifically the building. Using very rough numbers, Omni Commons owes $900k on a property worth roughly $3m (I am told).

It seems to me that would mean that Omni Commons has $2 million in assets by way of the property. Even if the bank foreclosed on the property, the value of those assets does not disappear! If the bank foreclosed on the property and sold it, one would expect that after they take their $900k and some fees, they would have to pay the balance back to Omni Commons. This would leave the organization with no building BUT with $2 million dollars in cash. That seems to me the worst case scenario we should accept! Worst case Omni vacates the property and then looks for where to spend its $2 million for a new property.

So we have a few scenarios ahead. One option is to find a new single large lender to give us a 5 year bridge loan to continue in this property, or to do the same with an LLC and multiple smaller community lenders (low risk bridge loans from a number of supportive community members).

Or we could let People's Programs spend $900k to acquire a $3 million property, essentially giving away Omni's $2 million in assets?? That seems like a terrible idea.

We absolutely should not give away $2m to any organization for any reason, and any support we receive must be contingent on Omni Commons maintaining legal and administrative control of our assets. It seems the best path forward is to form an LLC and seek low risk bridge loans from community members, with the backstop option of taking our $2 million somewhere else and setting up a new location.

-Taylor Alexander aka Sequoia
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