Can I buy/rent floor space at VHS to house my project?

General lounge
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Part of the VHS culture series

VHS does not allow anyone to rent floor space for their projects. To my knowledge VHS has never rented floor space out to anyone for any project. When you work on a project you are suppose to pack it out at the end of the night.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. When something needs to dry overnight, they need a car to pick up their project, or laser cutter materials.

Originally VHS decided not to allow people to rent space or store their projects over night because;

  • We don’t have the floor space - We have never (45 west or 270 east 1st) had any spare space to rent out.
  • Other spaces have had problems with renting space - Other spaces that have rented out floor space to make up for their shortfalls on rent. This helped them find a larger space than they could afford but also caused issues.
  • They had issues when they grew to the size when they needed the floor space and had to either take the floor space back from the members or they couldn’t expand in to their members space.
  • Ownership of the space became a problem
  • Respecting members private property in their rental space.
  • Administration of the rental space - As a volunteer organization any extra administrative burden can cause lots of problems. (Who gets what. where, for how much, until when)

There are a couple of advantages to renting space.

  • We can do bigger projects that take a few days or weeks to complete
  • Rent money for the floor space can help us buy nicer things or rent a bigger space.
  • People without cars can work on large or more complex projects without having to spend a fortune on rental cars.

Anyone have any questions?
Anyone want to play devils advocate ?
Anything I left out?

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So, if there is no free space at the space (which is my understanding) then rental of space is a moot point, as there is no space to sub-let.

If there is space, or VHS moved to a larger space and therefore had an excess of surface area…* Rentals could be in a specific area of the workshop, that is “invite only” if you dont have a rental in there.* Rental leases are on a calendar month basis as far as renewals go, a shorter period can be booked as the purpose of this would be to ensure floorspace can be easily reclaimed. If a lease is not paid by the first day of the calendar month, it is cancelled. Recurring leases require board of director disapproval to cancel - meaning “no news is good news”, if you don’t hear anything then your lease is renewed if you pay for it. If a director says no, you are notified before the end of the month (7 days? 14?) that your space is being reclaimed. Space can be reclaimed for any reason, if a director thinks your project is messing with the fengshui then so be it - this encourages people to be tidy.
For administration, a simple web interface could be built that breaks the rental area into a grid (2’x2’?). Members can then just select the blocks they want using a calendar, and see what blocks are in use on a calendar.
They pay once they have selected and the booking is made.
Dates for the following month will be made available 2 weeks before the end of the current month, with the first week of bookings being exclusive access to those already with a rental. This allows existing rentals to be renewed or expanded/contracted before non-renters can claim. 7 Days before the end of the month, the current months bookings are cleared from view so new bookings can be made. The directors could easily get in early in this case to remove grid squares from the next months circulation, meaning a current renter cannot book those squares. Basically the same process as booking a hotel room online? This along with explicit disapproval rather than explicit approval should reduce any administration load.
The grid could be installed on the floor with paint or tape, and there could be a box of squares or bollards and rope that people can use to either put a square in the sections they have leased, or cordon off with bollard and rope, with a label that can be written on with a whiteboard marker they write the date their rental expires on. Any projects remaining after the booking expires are considered scrap/trash. To encourage cleaning up, a refundable bond could be made that is refunded if the area is clean after the rental period (take a photo of your space being clear and attach it, anyone from a list of trusted members can approve the photo and cause the refund to occur?)
The same could be done for small project storage areas/shelves if they are at a premium?

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I’m a drop-in member at both VHS and VCL ( the Vancouver Community Lab ). VCL rents space to keyholders. If this question is being opened up I’d suggest reaching out and asking them for feedback. In their current space, they’ve got two floors – woodworking + metalworking on the bottom floor, and a textiles area on the second. They’ve set up some areas on both floors that they rent as private space. However, they’ve always portioned off a section of their floor space to rent to keyholders. I think that makes a difference ( compared to introducing rented space to an already set-up hackspace ).

VCL has a different setup with regards to drop-in vs keyholder members – they have set days and times that drop-in members can use the space ( Sunday, Tueday, and Thursday, if I remember correctly ); drop-in members aren’t allowed to use the space outside of those hours. On the days that I’ve gone in, I’ve never noticed anyone working in one of the bottom floor spaces. I think this is because most of the bottom floor spaces seem to be used as storage by the person renting the area. The second floor private spaces seem to be better used.

One thing that I have noticed at VCL though, is that the rented spaces seem to just end up becoming project storage. I’m pretty sure they had been inteded to be used as workshops, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Some of them just seem to treated as a shed or storage locker for “cool and interesting stuff that I’ll totally work on one day guys, promise”.

Personally, from what I’ve seen at VCL and VHS, I don’t think we need to rent floor space. Granted, VCL has project storage and rented floor space, thanks to woodworking & metalworking projects that tend to be a bit harder to ship back and forth between the space and home.

  • We can do bigger projects that take a few days or weeks to complete
  • Rent money for the floor space can help us buy nicer things or rent a bigger space.

How big is big? I think right now this point is kind of moot. If someone wants to work on a huge project that’d take up half the space, I don’t think people would be happy with that. Maybe for a day or two, but not for weeks. I’m not sure what VHS has done in the past to accomodate people working on larger projects, but my feeling on the space as it is right now is that it isn’t really set up for large, long-term projects. The way the desks and what-not are all laid out isn’t really conductive to someone working on a large project. Large here being something that requires two or more people to move, I think.

  • Rent money for the floor space can help us buy nicer things or rent a bigger space.

This has to be balanced against the possibility of losing members because there isn’t enough non-rented space to support them, especially if you’re taking away current floor space.

Also, what happens when someone who’s renting a space tries to store something too big? Do we force them to rent an additional spot? What if there are no extra spots? What about libility? If a member is storing something in a rented space, and it spontaniously combusts, who is liable? If it a part drops off and clonks someone on the head or toe, who’s at fault?

Anyways.

I think instead of talking about renting space, a better converstation would be talking about storage. Project storage is a bit trickier at VHS than VCL I think. At VCL what you’re storing is bits of wood or metal, so they’ve basically just got some open storage to throw your stuff into ( as long as you mark it, other wise it gets put in the scrap bin ).

At VHS you might be storing things that are a bit rarer or costly, like Raspberry Pi ( costly ) an old computer ( rarer ), or some custom-built gizmo that uses parts from old electronics ( possibly rare and costly! ). I like that we’ve got lockers, more of that would be nice. If I’m working on a few projects at once, it’d be nice to put them into a locker instead of lugging them all back home when I’m done for the night.

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I just sent a huge email, but I just saw your reply and I wanted to point a few things out:

Who cleans out a space when a space is reclaimed? Is the member forced to clean it out ( good luck with that, if you’re forcibly taking their rental space back, they’re probably not going to want to come down to do you a favour )? If it’s not the member, then who?

What if the space is full of gross, dusty, and possibly mucky things? What if it’s full of sharp things, or potentially shocking things? What if it’s full of heavy things?

What if ( like VCL ) the space is just packed full of stuff, and would require a team of people a full day to clean it out?

What happens to the stuff in the space if a member loses it and they don’t get their stuff? Is it now ours? Do we get to keep it? If yes, whose job is it to go through all the stuff and sort through what’s garbage and what’s keep-able?

With regards to the money and payment stuff – how do we reconcile this more stringent “you pay or you’re out” rental style for a private space with the VHS-style “haven’t paid your membership dues in a few months? s’ok, come on down and work on stuff!”? Who’s going to be the bad-guy hardass who takes away a member’s private space because they’re down on their luck but will be able to pay for three or four months in one go two months from now ( tounge-twister, ho! )?

One last thing: it definitely sounds like you’re talking about project storage. Is that what this conversation is about? No, really, not being sarcastic or anything – what I got from the OP was more “private workshop area” than “private storage”. Private storage would be nice though.

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This was more to start a conversation on the topic. We may have to move in the future and when we do we might have to make a choice between a larger nicer space that we can’t afford without renting space or a smaller space that we can afford at the time.

The problems that VCL had in their original space with people storing stuff, was one of the main reasons VHS decided not to rent space. They have since gotten better at it, with the addition of more administration. VCL is more top heavy then VHS’s flat structure. (not a bad thing!)

Increasing the price to the point where other storage options are a better value might solve this problem. If storage was ~$5 a square foot at lot less people would use it and would try to use it for the lest amount of time possible (A good thing in my opinion) .

This does create a problem where the people with money have more privileges than the people without (like real life!). The rich people with money, renting space have the side effect of subsidizing the normal members making it cheaper for everyone else.

What if I attach it to the roof of the space, hanging upside down

I was talking about renting space bit storage is an interesting issue as well. Maybe you should split the topic (reply as new topic) and start a new thread

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If the company I am contacting for could rent a small office / work place large enough for a 3/4 person team they would.