Housing Co-ops - What and Why?

What is a Housing Co-operative?

A housing co-operative is not bricks and mortar, it is a group of people and the way they control and collectively manage their housing. By incorporating as a legal body, they can lease, buy and own property and enter into contracts as a group.

Housing co-operatives are organisations governed by the members (who are also the tenants) in a way that gives grassroots control of housing. They provide rented housing without landlords, or rather the tenants become their own landlord.

In its most basic form, a housing co-op is a business, which uses the rental income from its tenant members to pay off loans and mortgages and to cover all other costs of managing the rented property. There is no one else involved in managing this apart from the tenants themselves. The co-op and the property doesn't 'belong' to any individual person, it is in the control of whoever the tenant members are at the time.

There are 4 main legal terms for different types of housing co-ops. Of these, Radical Routes recommends your co-op be fully-mutual, with par-value shares, in common ownership and governed by General Meeting.

Why set up a Housing Co-op?

People set up housing co-operatives for lots of reasons. Sometime it is just a group of people with low incomes seeking secure housing by banding together. Some co-ops form when an opportunity arises - a house they are already living in comes onto the market for example. More commonly, they start with a group coming together and working out how to meet their needs.

There are often other links within such groups, for examples people who have difficulty finding suitable housing because of prejudice about their age, race, religion or gender have formed co-operatives.

There are housing co-operatives for pensioners, black people, women and refugees. Sometimes a worker co-operative will want to house its members and develop a largely self-contained community, providing work and a home. A specific political movement, goal or activity could bring a group together, and they might want to live together with a secure base for action. Sometimes the bond is simply friendship. A co-operative can be formed to meet the specific needs or ideology of any particular group. Reasons include:

Making Housing Affordable

Co-ops are often set up by people with relatively low incomes, who can't afford a secure home without joining with others to share resources (including time and commitment). Members of co-ops qualify for rent-supporting benefits. Many government benefits, including Universal Credit will give more financial support to people in rented housing than people paying off a mortgage. Paying rent to a housing co-op allows access to this extra support, while still keeping some of the benefits of home ownership.

Shared Aims and Identity

There are often other links within such groups. People who might struggle to find suitable housing because of their particular needs or prejudice surrounding their age, race, religion or gender have formed co-operatives.

There are housing co-operatives for older people, black people, women and queer people. Sometimes a worker co-operative will want to house its members and develop a largely self-contained community, providing work and a home. A specific political movement, goal or activity could bring a group together, and they might want to live together with a secure base for action.

Collectivising Property

Holding property in Common Ownership means that individuals can't use housing or land for private profit. It means that land and housing become or remain accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial means, rather than being used as investment vehicles or worse, being used by landlords to make money out of other people's needs. Ideally, once property goes into common ownership, it should stay that way forever, a permanent asset usable by co-operative communities indefinitely.

It can feel pretty powerful to know your rent is going to make a project you believe in work, instead of making a landlord richer.

Security to take risks

As long as your housing co-op is financially stable and you are getting on with the rest of the members, your housing is secure – it is not dependent on the whim of a landlord or meeting your mortgage repayments (although the co-op as a whole may still have a mortgage to pay off).

Co-op members whose only financial commitment is rent payment can be free to take action which carries the risk of losing their income, as long as the rest of their co-op supports this. This means if you are a political activist, risking fines, being sued or sent to prison doesn't also mean risking your home. Risking a new business venture or life choice can also be made more possible if you're living in a supportive housing co-op.

Community

Housing co-ops can help people to live with more connection to others, creating relationships of mutual aid, care and empowerment. Co-ops need their members to build working relationships with each other, and other people and groups. They generate resources for communities to act collectively, and create a sense of belonging and larger identity.

This is often facilitated by having deliberate shared space and resources

• Co-Housing: In 'co-housing' people live in individual flats or houses with some shared resources.  Often the properties are purpose-built to encourage community interaction, for example having all the letterboxes together, sharing laundry facilities and having the buildings set around a central garden.  Most co-housing communities have a 'common house' for socialising, joint meals and meetings.
• Communal Living: Plenty of co-ops are 'intentional communities' or 'communes' – pooling resources, living communally, cooking and eating together and perhaps also working together.  For some people this is also a rejection of living in a nuclear family – in other words, having an extended 'family' to share children's upbringing.

Ecology

Being in control of your own housing allows you to adapt and decorate your home according to your own tastes and values – if your co-op can afford it, properties can be built, retrofitted, refurbished and decorated entirely using sustainable, ecological materials and systems.

Sharing resources in the community (e.g. vehicles, washing machines) means a lower ecological impact.  The more communal your living arrangements, the more resources are saved, which costs less ecologically and financially.  For example, more people living in less space (i.e. in a shared house), means cheaper food and less fuel for heating.

Radical Routes recommends

The RRFM14 (Radical Routes Fully Mutual 2014) housing co-op model rules are a template set of model rules registered with the FCA, that only permit fully-mutual, par-value, in common ownership, and managed by General Meeting. For this reason, we only focus on this style of housing co-op in this wiki and some sections of this wiki may be less relevant to other models. We suggest contacting Confederation of Co-operative Housing, UK Cohousing, National Community Land Trust Network or Community Led Homes to find out more about other forms of Community Led Housing.