There are a lot of variables that need to be considered in the whole "house or not" debate. If your chapter is on a campus where everyone is housed and you aren't, it can make life difficult. Whether we like to admit it or not, there can be a perception of "What's wrong with them, can't they afford a house?" and so on. If your chapter is housed and others are not, you may find that more girls wish to join your group to have the experience of living in and immersing themselves in their college/sorority experience.
Amanda, what's ceiling on your campus and what's a normal formal recruitment total range there? How many students normally live in campus housing on your campus? I can't imagine it would be that difficult to fill an 8 bed structure for your chapter, but without knowing numbers I don't want to assume anything! Is your current housing situation a positive for your chapter in general? If not, has your executive board discussed the situation with your advisers and local house corporation officers?
In order to have and operate chapter housing, the housing simply must be filled to ensure sufficient income to do so. Also, often it's less expensive to live in chapter housing and/or it's comparably priced with more "perks" (housekeeping, cook, chapter kitchen, better furnishings, better security, etc) than campus or off-campus housing.
As for live-in requirements, that's a normal component of filling chapter housing AND of holding an executive office. If your organization only requires the CP and VP-F to live in you're really lucky! To me, these two officers are crucial live-ins, as they are most likely the point people for any chapter of any GLO concerning any risk/crisis management issues or financial issues. May I ask, does your sorority only require those two offices to live in for all chapters? I'm wondering this because I'm surprised that you aren't required to have at least a few other officers (standards, new member, recruitment/membership) also living in. Maybe because your capacity is so small you only have to have those 2 officers live in instead of a longer list of officers? If you haven't contacted your chapter's house corporation and other support personnel to ask these questions I strongly suggest you do so. You'll get much better answers than anyone on a message board could probably give you
Housed AOII chapters have certain officers that are required to live in. These include the CP and Chapter Treasurer along with others. We also elect a Property Manager and House Treasurer from the members who live-in.
I'm a proponent of competitive housing for all sororities on any given campus. If that means that they all have to fill a dorm floor, only have an designated meeting space or a suite, have a 100+ bed chapter mansion, or have nothing at all then that's how I'd like to see it across the board.
BTW--my collegiate chapter has been unhoused since it's installation in 1982 and it's been a struggle at times. We should finally have competitive housing in the fall of 2006 and I couldn't be happier about this prospect. All of the other sororities on that campus are hous
ed.