A housing cooperative is a legal entity—usually a corporation—that owns real estate,

consisting of one or more residential buildings. (This is one type of housing tenure.) Each
shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit, sometimes
subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease. The occupancy agreement
specifies the co-op's rules. Cooperative is also used to describe a non-share capital co-op
model in which fee-paying members obtain the right to occupy a bedroom and share the
communal resources of a house that is owned by a cooperative organization. Such is the
case with student cooperatives in some college neighborhoods in the United States.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Legal status
• 2 Ownership
• 3 Management
• 4 Finance
o 4.1 Market-rate and limited-equity co-ops
• 5 Housing cooperatives by country
o 5.1 Canada
o 5.2 India
o 5.3 Germany
o 5.4 Nordic countries
 5.4.1 Finland
 5.4.2 Sweden
o 5.5 Philippines
o 5.6 United States
 5.6.1 The New York Cooperative
 5.6.2 Student housing cooperatives
o 5.7 United Kingdom
• 6 See also
• 7 References

• 8 External links

[edit] Legal status

As a legal entity, a co-op can contract with other companies or hire individuals to provide
it with services, such as a maintenance contractor or a building manager. It can also hire
employees, such as a manager or a caretaker, to deal with specific things that volunteers
may prefer not to do or may not be good at doing, such as electrical maintenance.
However, as many housing cooperatives strive to run self-sufficiently, as much work as
possible is completed by its members.
A shareholder in a co-op does not own real estate, but a share of the legal entity that does
own real estate.[1] Co-operative ownership is quite distinct from condominiums where
people own individual units and have little say in who moves into the other units.[2]
Because of this, most jurisdictions have developed separate legislation, similar to laws
that regulate companies, to regulate how co-ops are operated and the rights and
obligations of shareholders.

[edit] Ownership
Each resident or resident household has membership in the co-operative association.
Members have occupancy rights to a specific suite within the housing co-operative as
outlined in their "occupancy agreement", or "proprietary lease" which is essentially a
lease.

In some cases, the co-op follows Rochdale Principles where each shareholder has only
one vote. Most cooperatives are incorporated as limited stock companies where the
number of votes an owner has is tied to the number of shares owned by the person.
Whichever form of voting is employed it is necessary to conduct an election among
shareholders to determine who will represent them on the board of directors (if one
exists), the governing body of the co-operative. The board of directors is generally
responsible for the business decisions including the financial requirements and
sustainability of the co-operative. Although politics vary from co-op to co-op and depend
largely on the wishes of its members, it is a general rule that a majority vote of the board
is necessary to make business decisions.

See also Strata title

[edit] Management
In larger co-ops, members of a co-op typically elect a board of directors from amongst
the shareholders at a general meeting, usually the annual general meeting. In smaller co-
ops, all members sit on the board.

The board typically elects its own officers, such as a president, vice-president and so on.
Usually, the directors are volunteers, or are paid an honorarium. The board may then
establish standing committees from among the shareholders, who usually also volunteer
their time, to either handle the business affairs of the co-op or make recommendations to
the full board on such issues as its finance, membership and maintenance of its housing
units.

[edit] Finance
A housing cooperative is normally de facto non-profit, since usually most of its income
comes from the rents paid by its residents, who are invariably its members. There is no
point in creating a deliberate surplus—except for operational requirements such as setting
aside funds for replacement of assets—since that simply means that the rents paid by
members are set higher than the expenses. (Note, however, that it's quite possible for a
housing co-op to own other revenue-generating assets, such as a subsidiary business
which could produce surplus income to offset the cost of the housing, but in those cases
the housing rents are usually reduced to compensate for the additional revenue.)

It is relatively difficult to start a housing co-op because if the idea is, for instance, to
build a building or group of buildings to house the members, this usually takes a
significant mortgage loan for which a financial institution will want assurances of
responsibility. It may also take a year or more for the members to organize the design and
construction, as well as time and foresight to establish even basic organizational policies.
It is rare that these kinds of skills of organization are available in a random group of
people who often have pressures on their existing housing. It may be somewhat easier to
organize a group of closely related housing units. This opportunity may arise, for
example, if an existing apartment building's owner is thinking about selling it.

There are housing co-ops of the rich and famous: John Lennon, for instance, lived in The
Dakota, a housing co-operative, and most apartments in New York City that are owned
rather than rented are held through a co-operative rather than via a condominium
arrangement.

Market-rate and limited-equity co-ops

There are two main types of housing co-operative financing methods, market rate and
limited equity. With market rate, the share price is allowed to rise on the open market and
shareholders may sell at whatever price the market will bear when they want to move out.
In many ways market rate is thus similar financially to owning a condominium, with the
difference being that often the co-op may carry a mortgage, resulting in a much higher
monthly fee paid to the co-op than would be so in a condominium. The purchase price of
a comparable unit in the co-op is typically much lower, however.

With limited equity, the co-op has rules regarding pricing of shares when sold. The idea
behind limited equity is to maintain affordable housing. A sub-set of the limited equity
model is the no-equity model, which looks very much like renting, with a very low
purchase price (comparable to a rental security deposit) and a monthly fee in lieu of rent.
When selling, all that is re-couped is that very low purchase price.

Housing cooperatives by country

Canada

Housing co-ops in Canada take on many different forms. In Ontario, there are co-
ownership, equity and occupant-run co-ops.

Co-ownership co-ops are generally older apartment buildings, incorporated before the
Ontario Condominium Act, 1973 came into existence, where shareholders each own one
voting share in the corporation that owns the building and have a registered right to
occupy individual units as described on their share certificate. Most of these types of co-
ops date from the thirties, forties and fifties and are in the city of Toronto. They are
similar to condominiums, in that units may be bought and sold by private sale or on the
open market. Until relatively recently, these units tended to be bought by older people
with home equity who could buy the unit outright, as it was difficult to get a mortgage
against these units. However, a number of Ontario credit unions are now offering limited
financing, provided that that individual co-op corporations meet their fiscal standards,
making these units affordable housing options for younger buyers. Incoming owners must
be approved by the building's Board of Directors, and agree to abide by building bylaws
and Occupancy Agreements.

Equity co-ops are buildings in which individuals purchase a percentage share of the
building and the land on which it is built tied to the square footage of their unit; all
owners own the building collectively, with exclusive rights to occupy their own unit.
More credit unions will offer financing against them than against co-ownerships. They
are a relatively new form of construction, designed to encourage owner occupancy by
having the building's corporation hold back a percentage of the unit's share equity to
ensure owner occupancy. This legal structure is used as an alternative to condominium
registration, either when the government will not allow conversion of an existing
apartment building to a condominium, or to avoid the expense and difficulty of doing so.

Then there are co-ops that provide all the privileges of ownership except for the right to
make (or lose) money on a primary residence and are run by the people who live there.

The federal and provincial governments in Canada developed legislation in the 1970s that
aided potential co-ops by providing start-up funding and financing through mortgages via
an agency called the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The
government simultaneously began to encourage the development of resource groups to
contract with fledgling boards of directors of housing co-ops to develop co-operatives
either in turnkey buildings or buildings designed and constructed by architects and
builders with which the board contracted to deliver the service. Supervised by the board,
the resource groups marketed the units to suitable members, educated them about their
rights and obligations as co-operators, and established a management structure which
usually included paid staff. These organizations helped in forming initial policies and
holding the organization together while all the necessary work is done.

The federal government tied its loan assistance to requirements that these housing co-ops
provide a percentage of their units, usually at least 15 to 20 per cent, for what are termed
income-tested residents. These people voluntarily provide information to the co-op on a
confidential basis about their gross income, and their rent is calculated according to a
formula. If the calculated rent is less than the market rent of the units, then the federal
government, through another formula, would provide funding to those units to bring their
unit revenue up to the market rate. This produced mixed-income co-op housing, in which
relatively well-off people lived side-by-side with relatively low-income people and
worked with them on committees. This often had the ripple effect of improving the
financial health of those less well-off. (It's interesting to note that, depending on your
political point of view, such government payments for offsetting the rent could be
considered subsidy of the low-income people, or a contractual business arrangement
between the government and the co-op which helps to stabilize revenue to the co-op in
exchange for accomplishing a social goal for the government for a specific period. This
dichotomy is typical of the fact that a housing co-op is somewhere between a corporation
and a social agency, and where one places it depends on one's viewpoint—and the
collective viewpoint of each housing co-op.)

Political will dissipated in Canada in the 1990s, however, as other issues occupied
politicians and financial belt-tightening by the governments reduced the funds available
for the mortgages. In 2004 and 2005, however, the political winds shifted back towards
the idea of developing more low-income housing. However, not-for-profit housing co-
operatives are committed to the mixed-income concept and have not been able to make
much use of the few opportunities that have come available in recent years.Also, the term
of many of the government agreements concerning funding for housing subsidies are
coming to an end, provoking a debate in individual co-ops and the co-op movement on
the extent to which co-ops should continue to be mixed-income forms of housing.

In Canada, there are associations of housing co-operatives. The major one is the Co-
operative Housing Federation of Canada (CHF Canada). Most provinces have similar
organizations for their area, but many are stand-alone members of the CHF Canada, as
opposed to being branches of it. Each such organization charges its member co-
operatives a fee based on the number of housing units in the co-op to pay for staff to do
its work. This includes lobbying governments, setting up self-help funding and the like.
These organizations do not act for individual members, and do not give members advice
when the member encounters problems with the Board of their co-op. In most
jurisdictions there are no organizations for members of housing co-operatives, in contrast
with tenants in a traditional landlord-and-tenant relationship, who can be assisted by
various tenant advocacy groups.

In Ontario, the eviction of members of a housing co-operative is governed by special

rules set out in the Co-operative Corporations Act.[3] The Board of Directors of the co-
operative initiates the process by sending the member a notice to appear, requiring the
member to attend at a Board meeting at which that member's eviction will be considered.
If the Board votes to evict, the member has a right of appeal to the membership as a
whole. In order to enforce the eviction, the Board must bring an application to a judge of
the Superior Court, on which occasion the member has the opportunity to present his/her
case to the judge; the judge considers whether the eviction process was conducted fairly
and in accordance with due process, and has a residual discretion to refuse the eviction
should the judge consider it fair to do so, notwithstanding the decision of the Board.
Sometimes this hearing is conducted like a trial, with oral evidence from both sides,
while at other times it is conducted based only on written documents submitted to the
court; the practice varies from judge-to-judge and courthouse to courthouse, and there is
no consensus on the proper procedure or what right a member has to be heard. This
process is different from evictions of rental tenants, which proceed in Ontario before a
specialized tribunal and in which the tenant is always entitled to an oral hearing. The
standard of deference that judges should show to the decisions of Boards is a
controversial and unresolved issue in the law, with various cases taking seemingly
inconsistent positions on the issue.

A co-operative housing project can resemble a traditional apartment building, or it can be

the basis of an intentional community.

"Building co-operatives" ("self-build housing co-operatives" in British parlance, which

distinguishes them from worker co-operatives in the building trade) are formed by
members who cooperate to build their homes but own their houses on completion.
Building co-ops were extremely popular across Canada from the 1930s to the 1960s.

[edit] India

Co-ops are more commonly known as "flats" in India. This type of housing is very
common in big cities like Mumbai (Bombay) but not very popular in rural India.
Actually, they are registered as "co-operative housing society" rather than condominiums
in that the owners actually have a share of the co-op and not the actual real estate itself.
Owners can sell the "share" in the open market, but they have to get the approval of the
co-op to complete the transaction.

Germany

In the Industrialisation in the 19th century there were many housing cooperatives founded
in Germany. Presently, there are over 2.000 housing cooperatives with over two million
apartments and over three million members in Germany. The public housing cooperatives
are organisated in the GdW Bundesverband deutscher Wohnungs- und
Immobilienunternehmen (The Federal association of German housing and real estate
enterprise registered associations).

Nordic countries

A tenant-owner's association (Swedish: bostadsrättsförening, Norwegian: borettslag) is a

legal term used in some Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland and Norway) for a type of
joint ownership of property in which the whole property is owned by a co-operative
association, which in its turn is owned by the members. Each member holds a "stake" in
the association that is proportional to the area of his apartment. Members are required to
have a tenant-ownership, which represents the apartment, and in most cases live
permanently at the address. There are some legal differences between the countries,
mainly concerning the conditions of ownership.

Tenant-owner's associations were established during the 19th century and were originally
a United Kingdom-based concept (building societies). In Sweden, large non-profit
organizations such as HSB and Riksbyggen has constructed thousands of properties for
tenant-owner's associations. The market price of existing tenant-ownership shares is often
very high, normally much higher than the original stake price.

[edit] Finland

In Finland co-op membership is a common form of real estate and home ownership. On
the other hand, most Finns probably wouldn't use the co-op term for the form of
ownership described here. Owning shares that correspond to one apartment in a housing
company is generally considered as much owning your own home as actually directly
owning a (single family) house.

Except for a very limited number of co-ops that follow the strict Rochdale Principles of
one vote, all Finnish co-ops are incorporated as (non-profit) limited-liability companies
(asunto-osakeyhtiö).

Membership of a co-op is obtained by buying the shares on the open market, most often
through a real estate agent. No board approval is needed to buy shares. In some older co-
operatives old members have the right of pre-emption, i.e. the right to buy the shares at
the set market price.

Neither is there any requirement for members to live in the co-operative. Owning of
apartments for rent is a common form of saving and private investment.

The first housing cooperatives were built around 1900, many of them in the Helsinki
neighborhood of Katajanokka, in the national romantic Jugend style. Initially many co-
ops were set up by the future members themselves, often workers or artisans in the same
trade. By the 1920s co-op founding was the business of professional real estate
developers. After World War II nationwide non-profit developer organizations were
formed and a system of government provided loans (ARAVA) was introduced. Sale of
shares in co-ops with state loans were restricted by limited equity rules for 50 years, the
price of the shares was limited by an index.

The Finnish model of the housing co-op was also the basis of the modern U.S. co-ops, as
the first cooperative the Finnish Home Building Association in Brooklyn was started in
1918 by Finnish immigrants.[4][5]

Sweden

In Sweden, members of a housing cooperative (bostadsrättsförening) formally own the

right (bostadsrätt) to inhabit their respective apartment for an unlimited time, a right that
can be bought and sold on the open real estate market. This is one of the main forms of
home ownership in the country, and a membership in a housing cooperative is generally
held to be the same thing as owning (as opposed to renting) an apartment. The most usual
physical/legal form is a block of flats owned freehold by a cooperative.
Each housing cooperative has their own bye-laws. The members hold annual meetings in
the housing cooperative, in which they elect a board of directors that take on the
responsibility of managing the cooperation during the upcoming year. In most normal-
sized cooperatives the board members are recruited among the inhabitants. The board sets
the annual fee, secures proper administrative procedures, keeps the property in good
condition, and may initiate large renovation projects when necessary. The board is also
involved when a member sells his apartment (i.e. sells his right to inhabit the apartment)
to someone else, as the board has to make decisions on allowing the exit of old members
and the entry of new members. If the buyer of a bostadsrätt is found financially viable,
the board has no right to turn down a membership application. The board is also involved
when individual members want to initiate large renovation projects, or when individual
members want to rent out the apartment to a non-member.

The housing cooperative is a special legal entity, regulated in Swedish law. It has the
same obligations of bookkeeping and issuing annual reports as companies and it can take
mortgages in the property if needed. In addition, each member may also take mortgages
in his bostadsrätt in order to finance his acquisition of it. The annual fee paid by the
members to the cooperative is intended to cover the operational and financial
expenditures of the cooperative. The financial situation of the Swedish cooperatives vary
a lot, and on rare occasions cooperatives may go bankrupt. If bankruptcy occurs, the
property is sold and the remaining assets are shifted out to the members (who may stay
on as tenants or try to form a new cooperative).

In existing properties, tenants may form a housing cooperative together, and then make
an offer to the owner to buy the property. When such a cooperative has been formed, it
automatically becomes the first prospective buyer should the owner desire to sell. The
acquisition is financed by a combination of equity (i.e. the 'stakes' paid by the members)
and bank loans.

In properties intended to be owned by housing cooperatives from the start, the

construction company normally forms a cooperative when the building is erected, and
then sells the different apartments (i.e. the rights to inhabit them) at fixed prices. When
all apartments are sold, the new members take over the responsibility for the property and
elect their own board of directors.

Philippines

In the Philippines, a tenant-owner's association is often used as a means to buy new flats.
When the cooperative is created, it takes the major part of the loan needed to buy the
property. These loans will then be paid off during a fixed periods of years (typically 20-
30), and once this is done, the cooperative is dispersed and the flats are transformed into
condominiums.

United States
In the United States, housing co-ops are usually categorized as corporations or LLCs and
are found in abundance from Madison, Wisconsin to the Greater New York metropolitan
area. There are also a number of cooperative and mutual housing projects still in
operation across the US that were the result of the purchase of federal defense housing
developments by their tenants or groups of returning war veterans and their families.
These developments include seven of the eight middle-class housing projects built by the
US Government between 1940-42 under the auspices of the Mutual Ownership Defense
Housing Division of the Federal Works Agency.

[edit] The New York Cooperative

In New York City, another significant factor in the rise of co-op and condominium
ownership is strict and complicated rent control laws that have made many landlords
want to get out of the rental property market. In New York, cooperatives are scattered
throughout New York City itself, Westchester County, New York (which borders the city
to the north) and towns in New Jersey that are immediately across the Hudson River from
Manhattan, such as Fort Lee, Edgewater, or Weehawken.

Unlike in other parts of the world, most of these housing co-ops did not develop as a
result of social engineering. Apartment buildings and multiple-family housing simply
make up a more significant share of the housing stock in the New York City area than in
most other US cities, and the cooperative form of ownership has dominated over the
condominium form. Reasons suggested to explain why cooperatives are relatively more
common than condominiums in the New York City area are:[6]

1. Inspired by Abraham Kazan, Cooperatives appeared at least as far back as the

1920s while a legal basis for condominium form of ownership was not available
in New York State until 1964.[7] Passage of the Condominium Act then opened a
wave of construction of condominium buildings.[8]
2. The cooperative form can be advantageous as a building mortgage can be carried
by the cooperative corporation, leaving less financing to be obtained by each co-
op owner. Under condominium ownership only the separate condo owners
provide financing. Particularly when interest rates are high, a conversion sponsor
may find unit buyers more easily under the cooperative arrangement as buyers
will have less financing to arrange on their own; the apparent purchase price of a
unit in a cooperative building holding an underlying mortgage is lower than a
condo purchase. Cooperative unit buyers may not accurately weigh their share of
the building's mortgage.[7]
3. Also, later in a building's life after conversion, major new investments required to
repair or replace building systems can be raised by a new central mortgage in a
cooperative, while in a condominium funds could only be raised by onerous
assessments being required of each individual unit owner. However, New York's
condominium law was amended in 1997 to allow condominium associations to
borrow money.[9][10]
4. The 1974 creation and then subsequent influence on policy by the Urban
Homesteading Assistance Board,[11] a housing advocacy group, which enabled the
 conversion of over 1,600 foreclosed, city-held rentals into limited-equity,
resident-controlled co-ops.
5. A co-op building's board can exercise its own business discretion to impose
restrictions on shareholders, and reject prospective purchasers without
explanation, as long as the board does not violate federal and state housing or
civil rights laws.[7]

Most of the housing cooperatives in the Greater New York area were converted to that
status during the 1980s; generally they were large buildings built between the 1920s and
1950s that a single landlord or corporation owned and rented out that became
unprofitable as rental properties. To encourage individual ownership of units, the initial
buyers of units (buying from the owner of the entire building) did not have to be
approved by a board. Also, the rental tenants living in the building at the time of the
conversion were usually given an option to buy at a discount. If the tenants were rent
controlled, the law usually protects them by allowing them to stay as renters and the unit
may not be occupied by a purchaser until said tenant dies or moves out. Many of these
buildings, especially in Manhattan, are actually quite luxurious and exclusive; many
celebrities live in them and some famous people are even rejected by the board. In the
1990s and 2000s some rental buildings in the Chicago, Washington, DC, and Miami-Fort
Lauderdale-West Palm Beach areas went through a similar conversion process, though
not to the degree of New York.

Many of the cooperatives originally built as co-ops were sponsored by trade unions, such
as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. One of the largest projects was
Cooperative Village in Lower East Side of Manhattan. The United Housing Foundation
was set up in 1951 and built the Co-op City in Bronx, and were built by architect Herman
Jessor. One of the first subsidized, fixed-value cooperatives was Morningside Gardens in
Manhattan's Morningside Heights.

Another dynamic also contributed to the large number of cooperatives established in the
1980s and 1990s in New York City – in this case by low- and moderate-income tenant
groups.

In the 1970s, many New York City private landlords were struggling to maintain their
aging properties in the face of high interest rates, redlining, white flight and rising fuel
costs.[12][13] The period also saw some landlord-induced arson to obtain insurance proceeds
and widespread non-payment of real estate taxes – over 20% of multi-family residential
properties were in arrears in the mid-1970s.[14][15] In 1977, the city passed Local Law #45,
which allowed the city to begin foreclosure proceedings after just one year of non-
payment of taxes, not three, resulting in the takeover of thousands of buildings, many of
them occupied, by the city of New York through a legal action known as an in rem
foreclosure.[13] In September 1978, the city’s housing agency, the New York City
Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), created a series of new
housing programs designed to give building residents and community groups control and
eventual ownership of in rem buildings.[16][17]
The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), established in 1974, began to assist
residents of these buildings to manage, rehabilitate and acquire their buildings, and form
limited-equity housing co-operatives.[11] Working with the city’s housing agency, its
existing loan programs and the power to dispose of abandoned property to non-profit
organizations, as well as the state laws governing the establishment of co-operatives,
UHAB was able to provide low-income people with the tools – seed money, legal advice,
architectural plans, bookkeeping training – to build and run limited-equity housing co-
operatives. Through a long-standing contract with the city to provide training and
technical assistance to residents of buildings in the Tenant Interim Lease (TIL) Program,
UHAB has worked with more than 1,600 coops, preserving over 30,000 units of
affordable housing.[17]

Student housing cooperatives

Main article: Student housing cooperative#United States

United Kingdom

Housing co-operatives are uncommon in the UK, making up about 0.1% of housing
stock.[18]

Most are based in urban areas and consist of affordable shared accommodation where the
members look after the property themselves. Waiting lists can be very long due to the
rarity of housing co-operatives. In some areas the application procedure is integrated into
the council housing application system. The laws differ between England and Scotland.
The Confederation of Co-operative Housing provides information on housing
cooperatives in the United Kingdom. The Shelter website provides information on
housing and has information specific to England and Scotland.

The Catalyst Collective provides information about starting co-operatives in the UK and
explains the legal structure of a housing coop. Radical Routes offers a guide on how to
set up a housing co-operative.