I was on the board of directors for a local Linux Users Group and can echo the difficulties in finding a venue. In a city full of empty office spaces on a weekday night it was virtually impossible to find a stable meeting location. Without a stable meeting location you are much less likely to establish a core group since people do not like to have to learn how to get to different venues. Mozilla hosted us at one point but the political tides changed there and we got kicked out. I think having strong buy in from someone in the C-suite of a company is the only real way to do it. Otherwise you are beholden to the changing winds of the company.

In the end we are now in a stable location in the local library, but only because we had someone on the inside. Previously when we approached the library we were stone walled without someone to grease the wheels.

I do believe that it should be a mandate for the municipality to provide meeting space for local non-profit and special interest groups. In many locations you can no longer pool some money with your buddies to buy a piece of land to build your clubhouse on. In my city there are many such clubs which were formed 50 years ago — the sailing club, the badminton club, the lawn bowling club, etc — but land is too scarce in many places now and we need the municipalities to pick up the slack.