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.