Today we’d like to introduce you to Teresa Baker.
Teresa, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I founded LATCH Collective with my wife Shaina because we were interested in building our own tiny home but knew we needed help from others and also wanted to help others learn skills as we learned them. At first, we held social meetups to build up a local tiny home community in Los Angeles. Eventually, there were enough people that were interested in building their own tiny home that shared our vision of supporting each other as we built our own homes. Shaina and I formed LATCH Collective and held educational events including hands on building opportunities. We offer LATCH Learner subscriptions for our community to affordably access resources. We decided to become a cooperatively owned and managed business, and for three years, we held visioning retreats and camps and wrote out our goals and our operating agreement/bylaws. We finally became a co-operative in March 2019 and currently have 16 owning members who come from our LATCH Learner community.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Forming a business has been a long road and not one without struggles. Because we come from a community vision, there can be many goals and visions. There is so much we want to offer in terms of support for our community, and so many causes we want to be a part of. We have realized the need to simplify as we go.
A big part of our struggle was legal options for locating movable tiny homes, which were very limited when we began. We worked with the City of Los Angeles to legalize movable tiny homes as backyard homes which took years, but passed in December of 2019! Now other municipalities are using LA’s ordinance as a template for their own, and there are growing options for where to securely live in a tiny home, which really helps us go forward with our vision and goals.
Please tell us about LATCH Collective LLC.
LATCH Collective is a community of support for DIY builders and tiny house enthusiasts. We offer educational workshops and webinars on topics like Tiny Homes as ADUs and Budgeting for a Tiny Home. We offer courses that help people through their tiny home journeys. We offer hands on building experience where people in our community need help building their own tiny homes, and we match them with our community members who are interested in seeing a tiny home and helping to build one. We collect and create digital resources and share them with our community and beyond.
We are cooperatively owned and managed – everyone who works to run LATCH Collective is doing so out of passion for this community to grow because they benefit from the resources it provides. Everyone who is a part of our community has a chance to own this business if they become actively involved. Our diverse and passionate team helps us stay resilient and motivated to get the work done and support our wider community.
Pricing:
- 6 month LATCH Learner subscription is $60
- Legally Living Tiny Handbook & Webinar – $20 a
- Professional Associate subscription – $100
Contact Info:
- Website: www.latchcollective.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/latchcollective
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/latchcollective
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/latinyhouses
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUwByhQdVreSDuDsn5webA
Image Credit:
LATCH Collective
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