La Reunion Cooperative

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====== December 1, 2024 ======

Present: Dwain, Gardenia, Beryl, Chinhae, Bernard, Philip, Jill, Lorenzo, Paul (minutes), Kate (membership review minutes), Corey, Bailey (Sasona), David (operations manager), Joy, Graham, Tif, Leah

===== Meet and Greet =====

Bella (second meeting, approved, can move immediately)

John Cruz (first meeting, wants to room with Gabe, can move immediately)

Venus (first meeting, room or unit, can move immediately)

Hannah (first meeting, room or unit, looking to move in February 1st, no pets, cat allergies)

Evan (second meeting, approved, looking to move in January)

===== Review of Minutes =====

Minutes approved.

===== Wiki Updates & Announcements =====

Beryl, steward: Election nomination season has arrived! Sign up for a position! The initial round will go through December 13th.

===== Agenda Item 1 =====

(Bernard, Leah, Gardenia, Beryl) Update: In addition to previously stated reasons for membership review of Phillip McCain - "violating harrassment policy by misgendering and separately mocking of a trans coop member that has been repeatedly addressed in multiple conversations with coop officers" another cause for review has come to light:

On multiple occasions, Phillip has been witnessed entering his roommate's locked bedroom without authorization, and co-op funds (quarter rolls) have gone missing from the premises.

Video evidence was obtained showing him breaking in multiple times, on 11/28/2024, and looking through his roommate's things while they were away, which is a breach of house policy, his roommate's trust, and the law.

Due to the urgency and emergent nature of these allegations and their relevance to member safety, we feel that these matters should be discussed at Phillip's already-scheduled membership review on 12/01/2024 even though they were not known and so were not announced among the reasons for review at the prior Sunday meeting.

<We discuss who should facilitate. Multiple members signed the membership review, and others feel involved. Paul agrees to facilitate, and Kate steps in for minutes.>

Paul: we should talk about this separately, which should we talk about first?

<We decide to talk about second item of review first.>

Beryl: Tif, do you want to talk about the stuff you were affected by?

Tif, on the phone: I’m in the car right now.

Beryl: How long until you get where you’re going?

Tif: Thirty minutes.

Leah: if Tif isn’t available, it will be harder to have a conversation about the second item

Beryl: We’ll talk about the first one first then.

Paul: So, we’re discussing the misgendering and mocking allegations.

Paul & Corey: Please speak up, people have requested it.

Logan: Phil had been misgendering people for a bit, so I sat down to talk with him. Said that I understood that he was having memory trouble but that he needs to treat people better. He thought people were messing with him. Then Phil walked around saying mockingly, “ooooh I’m a girl”. I said that talking about it like that was disrespectful and everyone was being serious. Phil then turned his back on me and crossed his arms.

Phil: I didn’t mean to disrespect anybody. I don’t mean no harm. I don’t have problems with nobody, don’t want to hurt anybody.

Logan: Direct response: We’re not talking about you physically hurting people, we’re talking about you hurting people’s feelings.

Phil: I’m working on it, I did apologize. I’m gay myself, I have no problem with that. I respect and hang around people like that. Don’t take it personal, I love all y’all. I aint trying to hurt anybody’s feelings. It hurts when I don’t have anybody to talk to.

Paul: Does anybody have anything else to say about the charge of misgendering and mocking?

Bernard: One of the things with Phil, I understand he forgets things, but that can’t be an excuse when someone says don’t do that, don’t call me that name, don’t misgender me, you have to take that seriously. You have to respect people’s rights, and if you’re told to stop you should stop, you can’t double down. That’s something we’ve had a problem with with Phil, and something I was talking to him about on Thursday. Sometimes you don’t listen, and keep going, and when you’re addressed about it you try to play it off like you’re joking. You don’t have to be friends with everybody to live your life, you don’t have to be in every situation. You need to step back and give people their space.

Philip: I can’t tell people how to live their life, that’s not my job. Everywhere you go, you gotta respect people. I don’t have anywhere else to go. This is the only place I can work things out with social security. They wanna put me in the psych ward. I was traumatized by abuse as a child.

Logan: Hey, that affects a lot of people here and we don’t want to hear the gritty details of that.

Bernard: What happened to you is not what we are discussing, we are discussing that you have misgendered people and won’t stop when they ask.

Phil: I’m sorry, I’m going to make a change.

Corey: We understand you have memory issues. If people have to give you the same instructions over again that’s fine, just don’t mock people when they give you that instruction. It doesn’t matter how many times you have to be approached, people aren’t mad about that, it’s the response they get when they do talk to you about it. We understand you won’t be perfect all the time, people just want to be respected.

Leah: It sounds like it came to a review because these conversations have happened a lot and that’s why it came to a review.

Logan: It came to a review because every time we talked about it it he was rude and brushed it off, used health problems to deflect from what people were actually upset about.

Chinhae: I’ve witnessed situations where Phil has misgendered people, apologizes, then does it again, has come up and tried to be physically intimidating and trying to talk to people. I am in chronic pain all the time and I could be an asshole if I wanted to but I don’t. Your disability doesn’t mean you can’t be held accountable.

Phil: I want to better myself, change myself. I ‘m working on getting help for stuff. I can’t do stuff, I can’t move, I can’t run. Doctor told me to pull back, case worker told me to pull back. That’s why I’m in my house all the time.

Paul: does anybody have anything else to add?

Phil: It won’t happen again, from now on I’ll respect everyone.

Paul: Is Tif ready to talk?

Tif: Ten minutes.

Corey: Let’s talk about door stuff. To start: nobody is allowed to install their own locks, maintenance does that. There are a number of reasons, fire safety and also compatibility with our rekey tools. I’ve talked to you about this before, Phil.

Bernard: It says this in our lease, that we can’t install Security Devices? Where does it say that?

Point of information: we should find the specific part of the lease that says this.

<We read paragraph 25.6 of the lease.>

Phil: I’ve put locks on my doors.

POI: Multiple people have told you not to do this.

Logan: The 109 keyring has a million keys on it, I can’t look at it and know what’s on it.

Paul: Do we want to look at the video evidence?

<Multiple people say they have seen it.>

Logan: I have the video pulled up on my laptop, I can bring it out.

<Group decides to watch the video.>

David: This is one video, there’s another.

Paul: It’s in a similar vein?

David: Yeah.

Leah: Does anybody want to see it?

<Group decides it’s not necessary.>

Bernard: Why do you have a key to that room?

Phil: It’s my lock on the door.

Bernard: So it gives you the right to go into that room, because it’s your lock.

Logan: He put a lock on that door and told me to change it, other stuff came up and I never replaced it, but I did not know he had a key to it. He should not have had that key in his possession.

Bernard: when I questioned Phil about being in her room he said “I didn’t take anything.” I don’t care that you didn’t take anything, you shouldn’t be in her room. She’s afraid to come back because you violated her privacy, because you were in her room. You made an excuse as to why you were in there, but you had no right to be in there at all.

Phil: I was looking for laundry detergent. I couldn’t find it.

Tif: So he was planning on stealing from me. Even if it was just soap.

Corey: so you’re saying any detergent in there would have been yours?

Tif: Yes.

Logan: Before I heard you say you were looking for quarters.

Phil: I didn’t.

Logan: I remember you saying this. What you are saying now is that you called Tif to ask if you could get in their room, got no response, and so you went in. You are not allowed to go into someone’s room even if they give you no response. I don’t care about quarters. You should not have gone in someone’s room.

Corey: you don’t look like you’re looking for detergent in the video. You’re digging around through cubbies, you’re on the bed. Detergent would be in a big bottle. You kind of look like your digging around for something

Lea: Second what Corey said. If we have multiple videos that means that you went in multiple times, correct? Why are you going in someone’s room multiple times for detergent. You could have just asked someone for detergent or quarters. You do that all the time

Phil: my clothes had been sitting in the washer for awhile.

Logan: Were they in the washing machine? Why did you need detergent?

Phil: I had more clothes to wash.

Paul: You say you respect everyone, but you’re violating a member’s privacy. That’s not respect.

Bernard: Phil. This goes back to what we said previously. You’re doubling down, denying what is obviously clear. If you needed something, there’s at least thirty people who live here you can ask. But you violated someone else’s rights. You broke into their room. The video is clear. You can’t just say you did that because you have health issues. You violated someone’s rights. How many times have you broken into that room. You have a key to that room, you didn’t get permission, you went In there and looked through her stuff. You violated her rights, plain and simple.

Corey: I know you’ve had a rough go with roommates here. You have said multiple times when you’ve had issues with roommates that that’s why you keep your door locked and have cameras. That’s totally fine. But you don’t want your roommate going into your room. And here you are doing that to your roommate. I can’t wrap my head around that you don’t know that’s inappropriate, because you don’t want that done to you.

Phil: I basically have everything I need, I’m not gonna steal anything. I don’t need quarters. I showed David my bank statement.

David: Yep.

Logan: This is not about your bank statements. The big problem is that you have shown you are able to violate this boundary without thinking about it. You’ve also shown this by walking into my apartment at 3 am. Now everyone thinks “if I lock my door to keep Phil out, that won’t keep him out.” You violated tif’s privacy in an extremely public way that now has everyone concerned that you might violate their privacy, because you won’t accept a locked door as a boundary.

Phil: I knocked on Lorenzo’s door.

Logan: His door in our apartment. You didn’t knock on our apartment door. He didn’t like that you did that either. And we hashed that out with you, but now you’ve done that to somebody else again.\\
\\
Joy: I do have doubt about the laundry detergent story. He’s claimed that Tif was peering into his room, he was suspicious about her. Seems weird he was upset about that.

Question: when was the lock installed?

POI: The lock was installed after Tif moved in.

Graham: A couple months ago Phil asked for help installing a lock on Tif’s door. Door was all warped and it wasn’t working, so I told Phil we’d get one installed later.

Dwain: There have been several times where Phil has walked into my apartment without knocking.

Leah: After the member review went up Phil came up to me and Joy and said that he couldn’t stand how messy Tif was. Didn’t make sense since Tif has been gone, felt like redirection, was combined with legal threats against the co-op.

Joy: The threats often follow an apology.

Leah: It makes things seem insincere if out of one side of your mouth you’re apologizing and out the other you’re threatening. Feels like an attempt to deflect.

Phil: I came back and apologized, I was mad at the time. My dog was pissing and shitting.

Leah: So why did you tell us Tif was messy?

Phil: It’s my responsibility to take care of my dog.

Paul: Point of process we have 15 minutes left in our two hour meeting. We’ll need to approve extensions at that point.

Corey: Point of process we’re getting into the weeds.

Logan: I was either not made aware of or forgot that the door was broken, wasn’t aware a lock was put on to fix that. Sorry if you told me and I forgot. I would have gotten the door fixed instead of just replacing the lock. I feel like I wasn’t informed because my solution would have been to replace the door

Beryl: Phil has come to me multiple times with complaints about his roommate, and I haven’t heard the same from Tif. I don’t know if he’s taken my recommendations to talk to Tif but whatever problems they’re having seem to have come to a head.

Paul: Does anybody have anything else to add about this charge of the review? Phil?

Phil: I made mistakes, I’m going to own up to my shit. I’m sorry, I’ve washed my hands. I’m in a no-win situation. I won’t go knocking on doors. I’m sorry.

Paul: That sounds like a closing statement.

Corey: Any last minute stuff before we close the stack?

<Philip leaves and we move to the commons to discuss next actions.>

Tif: I don’t like him playing the victim card when he premeditated going into my room because he had a key. I could call the cops for that, but I won’t.

Leah: Are we correct in understanding that the reason you got the camera was because you suspected Phil of going into your room?

Tif: Yes.

Leah: What made you think that?

Tif: Pack of cigarettes went missing at the beginning of the summer. quarters had been going missing but slowly, so I thought maybe I was mistaken. I just didn’t expect that of him until the morning he walked into my room. I don’t feel safe there. I don’t feel safe with him on the campus.

Logan: With regards to the level of respect and understanding he has for this, when people have had these conversations with him about what he’s done, he’s claimed that he’s called an audit on our books, that he’s called the code department, he consistently talks about trying to retaliate against us for bringing this up.

Corey: People do have a right to have their complaints heard in court.

Logan: Yeah, I don’t mean we should kick him out because of that, I just think his apology is insincere because he brings this stuff up when we try and hold him accountable for stuff.

Bernard: Hearing that he walked into another unit and was told not to do that, and then he did it again. We need to strip him of all the keys he has except for the one to his apartment. Him having keys we don’t know about puts everybody at risk. We may need to change all the locks.

Jill: One of the times I locked myself out of my unit he opened the key box.

POI: Yeah, he’s already not supposed to have access to that.

<It’s 9 pm. We straw poll on extending meeting another 30 minutes. It passes.>

Leah: This has happened multiple times in some form.

Logan: My door wasn’t locked, but he did just walk in.

Leah: I’m not sure what it would take for everyone to feel safe even up to key revocation.

Corey: I specifically chose not to watch this video up until tonight, but to be honest watching Phil systematically go through that room seemed like a gross violation. I can’t abide by letting that continue. I think Phil of all people if would be very upset if a roommate did that to him. I don’t see any scope where that’s appropriate behavior.

Chinhae: About him going into Logan’s place, a previous member Jared had done something similar and we established this was not ok. There is no reason anybody should be doing that. I’m completely aghast, I went into this not even knowing about the footage.

Logan: We can’t trust that just telling Phil not to do that will work, because it hasn’t. When I brought it up tonight, he kept trying to come up with reasons it was ok to do even though we talked the next day why it wasn’t. And he keeps trying to come up with excuses for something that happened months ago. I don’t think a locked door will ever be seen as a no to him. What do you have to do to tell him no? I don’t know

Joy: Question for Tif, are you still there?

Tif: Yes.

Joy: Phil said he tried to contact you.

Tif: He only tried to contact me after.

Joy: OK. He’s kind of stopped Echo, Reyna and me a few times to make weird threats? Like you’re \\
trying to do this to me so I’ll do this to you. I kind of don’t know what we would need to do to feel safe. I would second not feeling that safe with him.

Leah: Crossing over with the other part of the member review about transphobia.

Tif: He never told me anything about having any issues with me, if that matters.

Beryl: Yep, even after I told him to.

Logan: It’s happened before. He talks to other people about problems with his roommate, then when we ask him to speak to them he doesn’t.

Tif: Can we change my lock? I’m worried about him retaliating.

POI: yes, we do have a lock ready.

David: Outcome regardless, I think that for the safety of Tif’s things we establish some kind of control over her room.

Corey: I am in the process of rekeying a lock to put on the door. We’ll do that tonight. I also just changed the key box code.

Logan: I think the first thing could be solved with a behavior contract, but I have no idea what a behavior contract for the second thing would even be. “Don’t go into peoples rooms without permission” is pretty basic.

Bernard: On these issues. I am very much ticked off by what I saw on the video. the only behavior contract you can make, we’d have to strip him of any leadership, keys, change all the locks. if we’re going to do a behavior contract we have to do that no matter what.

Paul: We’ve talked in the past about requiring that he doesn’t have a roommate, that he pay for a whole unit.

Corey: I hate it but I have to move towards eviction. I love Phil but that video was so egregious, a hard line was crossed.

David: I don’t know how this will be reviewed by either HUD or the board or whoever, if you move towards eviction you need to be very clear on why, we might want to separate these two issues.

Corey: Yeah, if it was just the other thing I’d be fine with a behavior contract. However, if it was only breaking into the room, I would still be in favor of eviction.

Gardenia: Echo what Corey said. I think that for the first issue a behavior contract would solve it, but about the second issue, after seeing the video I don’t think it would be fair to ask Tif to move so Phil can have his own unit. Specifically relating to the second point on the review, I am in favor of eviction.

Bernard: I said before, Tif could have called the police and she didn’t because she knew it would be bad for him. I think because of that we have to back Tif. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to move because of his bad behavior.

Jill: By law, that room is her home. By law that’s breaking and entering.\\
Leah: Tif has expressed that they don’t feel safe with him in the building, not just another unit. That makes sense, since he doesn’t respect locked doors and it’s not impossible for him to get keys and codes he shouldn’t have.

Logan: if we gave him his own unit thats kind of a reward for this terrible behavior.\\
Corey: We’ve talked about requiring to have a single unit before and his case manager said that wasn’t a possibility.

Straw Poll:\\
No action:0\\
Behavior contract:2\\
Eviction: 11/unanimous

Paper ballots:\\
Yes:12\\
No:2\\
Abstain: 0\\
Motion to evict carries.

<We discuss terms and what timeframe to put on the notice to vacate.>

Corey: For starters, he can’t be in the common areas. We have to pull his commons key. He uses this space to get into a bunch of stuff.

Bernard: We need to get his keys.

Kate: we can take all his keys and just give him his unit key.

Corey: I hate to do this, but the only way to do this securely is rekey everything. He has had access to the key cutter, he could have keys to who knows how many things.

Bernard: Do we want to give him more time than normal?

Paul: I don’t want to evict him around Christmas.

Leah: Tif also has a right to feel safe in her home.

Corey: I feel like going with the normal 30 days is kind of excessive since a crime has arguably occurred, but a week is probably not realistic. So maybe two? How does Tif feel about it?

Tif: I’d like to be able to come back from Dallas. I’m imposing on my family.

Logan: Would you be ok with staying in the commons for a minute?

Tif: No, I don’t feel safe with him there.

David: The date on the notice to vacate won’t necessarily be the date he leaves.

Corey: regardless how this goes we’ll probably have to refund Tif December rent, but that’s a different topic.

Bailey: You can stay at Sasona with me.

Tif: That might be fun!

Corey: So how long?

Leah: I think one week is pretty unrealistic. Two— has anybody heard when his case manager is off medical leave?

POI: No.

Leah: Two weeks gives some pressure to keep things moving while also giving everybody some leeway timing-wise. A month seems too long, keeping Tif out of housing for a month seems like a problem.

David: Feel free to talk to me about this after. I’ve tried to reach out to Phil’s case manager, but Phil told me in the middle of the meeting to talk to their supervisor. I will keep going up the chain to try and reach communication.

In favor of two weeks: 10\\
Opposed: none

In favor of taking commons keys: 10\\
Opposed: 0

POI: Taking their commons keys is what’s always supposed to happen when we end contracts, but we need to be clear and firm here.

Leah: Also we should not be facilitating commons access, please notify the discussion list.

Leah: He’d like an official notice to go out tomorrow, is that doable?

Beryl: Yes.

Corey, David: Hand deliver and explain the notice to vacate. We will forward it to his case manager.

<It’s past 9:30 pm. We straw poll on extending the meeting. It fails.>

===== New business =====
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