Why P2P in Housing?

Everybody needs somewhere to sleep at night. Looking at P2P Housing can be done with a quick glance, or taken as a long term study through research and experimentation. Because P2P is generally focused on distributed systems and relational theory it is possible to use P2P theory to expose elements of housing and habitation to critique and possible improvement.

Areas of Interest for P2P in Multi-Unti Housing

P2P protocol and technology can be used in a number of distinct areas of a Multi-Unit housing project. There may be a number of ways that a housing group might come together. They might be in separate buildings, just a few units in one building, or perhaps every unit in one building. Regardless of the ways that buildings might work, this article is focused on the relationships between the residents, their housing, and all of the things that they create together as a group.

This is a list of entities in the P2P Housing network, with short descriptions. There may be more or less in your network. After this list are a few different ways of looking at the relationships among and between the entities.

A Resident is a single individual living in the housing network
The P2P Network is all residents
Owners - The P2P network plus all the perhaps external investors in the housing
Infrastructure - All the immoveable assets that are shared amongst the network
Culture - that created amongst and between the residents.
Ownership - How are relations between tenants influenced by the ways and means of ownership of the building? Is the ownership of the building an issue that mediates relations between people? Or is the ownership of the housing resource a means of allowing greater fluidity and freedom between people, acting effectively as a dis-intermediator.
Relationships between the occupants of the building
- How do residents address each other? Simply as neighbors, or co-owners, or perhaps more?
- How can neighbors come to trust and depend on each other?
- What P2P practices can facilitate interchange between peers?
Relationships between the occupants and the physical infrastructure of the building
- Is the building considered a part of the occupant's livelihood?
- Does the occupant feel ownership?
- Does the occupant feel inclined to steward and care for the building?
Culture of the occupants
- Can residents be enabled, using P2P, to co-create a culture that is valuable and appreciated by those residents?
Systems for Multi-Unit Housing
- How can P2P systems enable the occupants to:
  - Maintain or increase the value of their housing
  - Maintain or increase the value of the relations between neighbors
  - Maintain or increase the value of the culture in the housing
  - Lower or decrease the time or energy of residents needed to maintain or service their infrastructure

P2P Technology for Housing

P2P Ownership Modes

Multi-Layered Property

Questions arise concerning property definitions, and how various modes of property definitions co-exist, or trans-exist.

Hence, do nodes in a network of private property become commons ?

http://www.onthecommons.org/stem-cord-web-relationships

" the commons is concrete and graspable, both personally and collectively, because the commons is a node: a stem cord of a web of relationships. "

http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Commons

If property is considered as hierarchy, what does private property become in a distributed network of inter-dependent property ?

Such understanding related to peer property may be well documented in the field of knowledge, but what about housing ?

http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Property

Dante imagines that a "Rhiz-Home" project enables the creation of a commons, through a network of various forms of properties, as long as each of these properties enables inter-dependence, when choosing to "contribute" to the "Rhiz-Home".

Hence a commons becomes the results of the participation of individual properties, who benefit in choosing to participate by opening up their space, either punctually, either more permanently.

It are the conditions of such "meta inter-dependence" which may, according to Dante, determine the "Rhiz-Home".

Such conditions can be seen as a network, but also potentially as a multi layered set of property definitions.

Cooperatives by themselves may already have such kind of characteristics.

Can we develop architectures of networked property definitions that structurally make it possible to route around any centralized attempts on dependency and control ?

Debt and Control

"relation between money and control/hierarchy/governance/property"

Dante Is interested in understanding how participation in the buying of use value infrastructure in euros ( / artificially scarce debt+interest based currency ) leads to control of "investors".

Usership

Can "Usership" be a least coercive approach to debt based property ?

For example enabling debt based currency to buy use value, which entitles access to the use of resources, as long as one uses the resources.

Various forms of Usership

Can we imagine various forms of definitions of usership ?

Such as

Usership based on shares of a "specific" property (such as a building bought with other people)

What can such shares provide access to ?

Access to the use of living space corresponding to a right for an individual private and nominative flat, specifically defined in space ?

or

Right of Specific Governance of a specific amount of space within a cooperative housing ? Enabling modularity of such space by opening the option of choosing to contribute space into a commons ?

Participation into an economic and governance network ?

Governance of Usership

Do the other members of the building make choices as for the use of the Usership of a non-used space when the owner of the usership does not delegate its use ?

Demurrage

When a specific space is not used, does the owner of the "usership" still govern its space/resource ?

Who is entitled to the space when it is not used?

Does the "owner" loose a certain value from its total shares based on the amount of time of its non-use, such as a form of "demurrage" ?

Can the owner of the Usership delegate the use of the resource to other entities ( group, individuals ), as to not loose value of its shares, and if so, under what conditions ?

Demurrage Vs Hoarding Tax

Although a "Demurrage" may have similar effects as a "Hoarding Tax", it is in effect not a tax, but a reduction of the total value of each of the shares corresponding to the non-used property.

Hence "Demurrage" in this context does not lead to a form of income for the cooperative. A demurrage in this context corresponds to loss of influence in the governance of the cooperative.

Loss of Usership Rights

It may be chosen to define if there is a threshold at which one loses its right to use property, or have a priority in the access to the use of the property, based on one's Usership shares.

It may also be chosen to define who benefits from such loss of usership rights.

Re-appropriation of Usership by Cooperative

One option may be to allow the cooperative ( meta-structure ) to buy over the remaining value of the shares,

either at a moment where the owner of the Usership expresses to opt out,

either at a point of threshold, if at such point of threshold the Owner of the Usership shares does not express an interest in maintaining its Usership.

The value of the shares bought by the cooperative can be chosen to be based on the remaining value of the shares, after the effect of the demurrage.

Dante believes that, to preserve a networked and autonomous micro economy, it is preferable that compensation for the value of such Usership shares through an appropriation by the Cooperative does not correspond to mainstream debt+interest based currency ( euros ),

but rather to an equivalent, in use value/resources, or in usership rights, produced or related to the networked micro-economy.

Although in such case, a challenge may be to determine a common unit for value definition.

Legal status

Ideally, a non taxed entity could re-appropriate the Usership rights, as to avoid needing to depleted the networked micro-economy from its limited access to euros.

Better still, such not for profit entity could be the owner of the property, and contributions in euros to initially buy, and then maintain any costs or taxes in euros related to the housing infrastructure, can be paid by the "members" who in exchange benefit from usership rights

Usership rights as IOU's ?

It may also be chosen if such shares can be used as IOU's within a local networked economy, although any taxes on such IOU s are likely to be needed to be paid in euros, and may deplete the local networked micro-economy.

Hence preferably any transfers would be recognized not as "debt", but recognized by the micro economy as "donations".

More on Usership

http://p2pfoundation.net/Usership

Donation and Reputation

Recognition of Donation

Can a "recognition of donations" within a tool visualizing interdependencies, be used to "route" around centralized forms of control, and enable individual choices for support towards other participants.

In such model, the only thing an individual or a project owns, is "recognition".

Rhiz-Home?

http://ww.p2pfoundation.net/City_as_a_grid

More Information

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P2P in Multi-Unit Housing

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