Resident Organizer & Project Manager

East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative; Oakland (CA); Hybrid; USD 69,000 - 84,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full benefits package

Job summary

East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative in the Bay Area is seeking a Residential Organizer and Project Manager to lead the participation and leadership of our Resident Owners, steward housing sites, and help grow the cooperative's impact.

You will collaborate across residents, staff, vendors, and contractors, manage property operations and capital repairs, ensure legal compliance, and help build budgets and programs that keep residents at the center of all decisions.

Qualifications

• Proven tenant or grassroots organizing experience.
• Proven project management or property management experience.
• Strong written communication and relationship-building skills.
• Experience collaborating across residents, staff, vendors, and contractors.

Responsibilities

• Organize with residents by helping plan and facilitate property and portfolio-wide Resident Meetings.
• Develop and lead resident political education so residents can learn about.
• Address resident concerns to enable participation and ownership in change.
• Participate in tenant and community organizing for new acquisitions with staff.
• Onboard new Residents to our cooperative and train Resident Owners in co-ownership, including education modules.
• Organize and help lead workdays at residential properties with community support, aligned with residents' vision and development plans.
• Coordinate with property manager and engagement team for messaging, documentation, strategy, and resources.
• Build out and implement marketing strategies to lease up vacant units to mission-aligned individuals and families.

Skills

Tenant organizing

Community leadership

Project management

Property management

Budgeting & finances

Contract review

Written communication

Collaboration across teams

Conversational Spanish

Anti-racism / anti-oppression

Tools

Google Suite

Asana

Buildium

Job description

The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) is a multi-stakeholder co-op that facilitates BIPOC and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, purchase, occupy, and steward properties, taking them permanently off the speculative market. We create community controlled assets and empower our communities to cooperatively lead a just transition from an extractive capitalist system into one where communities are ecologically, emotionally, spiritually, culturally, and economically restorative and regenerative.

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION

We are seeking a dedicated and community-minded Residential Organizer and Project Manager to lead, develop and grow the participation and leadership capacities of our Resident Owners (review our bylaws and website to learn more), both in the stewardship of their sites as well as the entire cooperative.

This role requires a person who is comfortable collaborating and organizing alongside people from a wide range of economic and social class positions, from those at the lower stratum of the working class who might be struggling to manage several jobs with family, to educated class individuals. They are able to communicate in accessible, considerate and inspiring ways, through one-on-one meetings as well as education curriculum. They know how to be a leader that organizes alongside other leaders (our resident organizing team) while developing the leadership capacities of our residents.

This role also requires project management of the material base of our Residents and their properties. This includes managing discreet capital improvement, maintenance, and repair construction projects, as well as familiarity or the willingness to learn and apply basic property management practices and legal requirements to support the basic functions of our residential projects. The role requires the ability to be creative and develop new cooperative methods alongside and on top of baseline requirements.

Our residential portfolio includes single-family homes, and small apartment buildings, located in Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, CA. We have 14 residential units currently, and are seeking to grow in the coming years.

ABOUT RESIDENT ORGANIZING

An organizer is a leader who “has one eye to the sky and one eye to the ground,” meaning they can see a destination on the horizon and can mobilize relationships and resources in order to get us all there. This role has this capacity and skill, which includes:

• strategic and efficient evaluation about what is possible now and what could become possible if we change a few things,
• the ability to articulate and inspire others towards those changes, and
• the warmth, relatability and confidence to make those changes happen in relationship and coordination with people.

In addition to the theory and methods of organizing, this role must be versed in operations related to stewarding properties. The latter is conventionally known to be property management, and while the ideal candidate will be familiar or have transferable skills to do property operations well, they will also need to be creative about what this practice can look like in a context where resident engagement and participation is a goal.

WHAT THIS COULD LOOK LIKE

On the individual sites, this could include:

• Creating an ecosystem of relationships that supports the long-term maintenance of resident sites, from landscaping and groundskeepers to handypersons.
• Creating proposals to implement new policies, practices and priorities, either with other residents or with staff
• There is the possibility of long‑term financial management, such as maintaining their own yearly operating budgets for occasional review from staff

In the overall cooperative, this could include:

• Creating proposals to implement new policies, practices and priorities across the cooperative, such as programs for workforce development (i.e. creating an ecosystem within the cooperative where residents can also become staff at the commercial sites) or supportive programs to prevent eviction from nonpayment.
• Organizing with residents and their neighbors around specific needs or new acquisitions.

While the ideal articulation of this role would blend resident organizing with project and property management, some of the tasks are differentiated below. Our ideal candidate would be able to do most of the below responsibilities with limited training.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Resident Organizing & Relationships

• Organize with residents by helping plan and facilitate property and portfolio-wide Resident Meetings
• Develop and lead resident political education so residents can learn about
• Address resident concerns in ways that allow them to become participants and protagonists in the change they want to see happen
• Participate in tenant and community organizing for new acquisitions alongside other staff
• Onboard new Residents to our cooperative and train Resident Owners in co‑ownership - this includes implementing the current education modules and refining and developing new content as needed.
• Organize and help lead workdays with residents at residential properties, bringing in community support as desired, in alignment with residents’ vision, and property management and development plans.
• Responding to resident needs as they emerge. Supporting residents has also looked like navigating access to resources with them, whether it be subsidized housing (ie Section 8), family services, or new job searches.

Project & Property Management

• Coordinate with existing property manager and resident engagement team for messaging, documentation, strategy, and sharing resources.
• Build out and implement marketing strategies (in coordination with our Communications Team) to lease up vacant units in the portfolio to mission aligned individuals and families. Market available spaces effectively and conduct property showings, tours, and outreach.
• Coordinate with the construction manager to identify and execute maintenance or capital repairs. Familiarity with construction processes and vendors is a plus.
• Maintain accurate records of property transactions, leases, incidents, and maintenance activities.
• Ensure compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and building standards.
• Review and help develop property management plans and support updates to the operating budgets.
• Work with the team to ensure timely record keeping and accurate financial monitoring.
• Review and approve contracts.

Cooperate!

• EB PREC is a small team working in a dynamic field with ever‑changing needs. In addition to our core responsibilities, we all carry the load collectively, and we all step into various support and leadership roles outside our major focus areas as needed.

QUALIFICATIONS

Role‑specific

• Proven tenant or grassroots community organizing, including campaigns and political education
• Familiar with developing and executing base‑building and mass organizing methods that emphasize leadership development
• Within this cooperative, as well as in the networks we participate in, there are a wide variety of political lineages and ethos. Someone who would do wellin this role can identify these differences and navigate towards clarity and unity that is effective to achieving our shared goals.
• Proven project management or property management experience, including managing timelines, budgets and contracts.
• Strong relational and interpersonal skills that can be applied to identifying methods for addressing resident life hardship challenges, such as rent nonpayment, resident conflict and domestic violence. Actual mediation skills to address situations such as domestic violence are not expected.
• Social service case management background is not required, but would helpful; specifically knowledge of city, county and federal resources supporting family well‑being, employment and workforce development, educational opportunities and mental health
• High skill level at written communication that is direct, specific and considerate.
• Versed in methods the support generative communication and collaboration, such as constructive criticism, generative conflict and nonviolent communication methods
• If applying without property management experience, the ability to take classes and learn quickly.

General

• Adept at learning and using digital tools for communications, records, meetings, project and property management systems such as Google Suite, Asana, Buildium, etc.
• Experience with deep collaboration across multiple teams and stakeholders - residents, staff, vendors, contractors, service agencies, consultants.
• Strong commitment to anti‑racism and anti‑oppressive movement building
• Strong commitment to collective decision‑making and working in a staff collective
• Highly attentive to accuracy, detail and nuance
• Skilled at time management with the ability to juggle both short and long term deadline and the ability to respond to organizational needs as they arise
• Strong ability to take notes, track tasks and follow‑up proactively
• Ability to be timely, present and accountable to meetings and other work commitments
• Self‑motivated, self‑directed while being while being flexible and open to feedback
• Based in the Bay Area, proximity to Oakland strongly preferred

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Knowledgeable about EB PREC’s unique approach and programs especially our cooperative cultural and economic strategies
• Certified training and extensive experience in related fields (e.g. community organizing, community land trusts and cooperatives, social work project management, property management, construction management)
• Conversational Spanish a big plus

HOURS & PAY

This position is full time (30 hrs/wk) at $76,362/year. EB PREC offers a full benefits package.

This position is hybrid, and mostly in‑person at residential properties and at EB PREC’s office in West Oakland or affiliate space in Temescal, with many resident meetings and member events taking place on evenings and weekends.