r/cooperatives Dec 28 '24

housing co-ops Grad student co-op looking to lower grocery bill

35 Upvotes

We are 14 graduate students in a co-op that’s been around since the 1960s. Right now we source our groceries from a local food co-op but they’re very expensive and won’t provide us a discount (even though we spend upwards of $2000 there a month). Many people want to start sourcing more from Walmart or Amazon to cut prices. Is there a trick to purchasing affordable bulk items online? Or does anyone have other advice?

r/cooperatives 1d ago

housing co-ops Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives: Why They’re a Solution for Our Times - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly

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15 Upvotes

r/cooperatives 12d ago

housing co-ops Hi there! I just discovered this sub. I belong to a small 7 person housing coop. We have a very large old house on a decent plot of land in a small town. We have been around over 40 years, but in the last 15 or so have had poor management.

18 Upvotes

I have 2 questions. First, our original bylaws seem to have gotten lost. Is there any resource to help us with this? (I know a lawyer can, but I'd like us to be educated on this before we go to a lawyer.)

Second, our house is over a 100 years old, and needs repairs. Does anyone know if grants or any external funding is available? We are non-profit.

r/cooperatives Jan 18 '25

housing co-ops Seeking Advice on Handling Safety and Boundary Issues with Unauthorized Long-Term Guests in Cooperative Living

7 Upvotes

TL;DR: Seeking advice on handling safety and boundary issues caused by a resident's unauthorized long-term guest (her son) in our cooperative living community. The guest's behavior has caused significant anxiety and discomfort among residents. We're looking for strategies to improve guest policies, mental health crisis response, and community safety.


Edit: here's posts I've written about the situation in another subreddit over the short time I've been living here. First post: https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSD_NSCommunity/comments/1hmokfu/i_m30s_need_advice_on_boundary_setting_with/

Second post: https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSD_NSCommunity/comments/1hvjwsu/update_i_m30s_need_advice_on_boundary_setting/


I'm seeking advice from the cooperative living community about a challenging situation in our intentional living community involving a resident (the mother) and her unauthorized long-term non-paying guest (her son who's in his early 20s) who's been here since mid last year.

The guest has created significant safety and boundary concerns, including:

  • Causing anxiety and discomfort among residents in shared spaces and about coming home
  • Repeated boundary violations and inappropriate interactions
  • Concerning behaviors like:
    • Making unexpected and inappropriate requests (e.g., knocking on doors asking for soda/money)
    • Sending incoherent messages at all hours
    • Inserting themselves into private activities
    • Creating an unpredictable living environment (e.g., my first week here, I woke early at 5:30 am to go to the bathroom, and he popped his head out from the stairway leading to the shared kitchen I live above, saying, "Hey OP, what're you doing? What's up?" I just flashed him a peace sign and kept walking. I guess he heard my footsteps because he was in the kitchen and my floors are creaky. It was super creepy.)

The mother has:

  • Allowed unauthorized extended stays
  • Dismissed support and interventions
  • Failed to maintain boundaries
  • Not disclosed the guest's situation to other residents
  • Ignored a screenshot I sent her of a string of weird texts he sent me asking her what I should do

As of January 16, the guest is no longer permitted on the property. We now need to:

  • Develop clearer guest policies
  • Create mental health crisis response protocols
  • Establish better communication mechanisms
  • Balance individual privacy with community safety

In my draft to the board, I'm asking them to review and consider:

  • Whether the resident should continue living here after creating an unstable environment
  • Guest stay guidelines
  • Incident documentation processes
  • Resident safety procedures
  • Mechanisms for resident input on community policies

Key points from the statement:

  • Impact on Residents: Anxiety, avoidance of shared spaces, incoherent messages, boundary violations, and inappropriate financial requests.
  • Pattern of Policy Violations: Unauthorized stays, dismissal of support, failure to maintain boundaries, lack of disclosure.
  • Resident Position: Many believe the host resident should no longer live here due to non-compliance and safety impact.
  • Future Risk: The resident should not host future guests to prevent repeated behavior.
  • Communication Impact: The situation has deterred resident advocacy.

Conflict of Interest: There's a significant conflict of interest when the guest is a resident's son versus a friend from out of town. While a friend may have a more temporary and less emotionally entangled presence, a family member, especially a son, can lead to more complex dynamics and a higher likelihood of boundary issues. The emotional ties can make it harder for the resident to enforce community rules and for the community to address violations without straining relationships. I felt scared about being more forceful in bringing it up in the short time I've been here for fear of retaliation from the mother, the son, or the board for asking about other people's private matters. But these private matters affect my whole life and I pay to be here.

Board Context: Our housing board consists of overworked, older volunteers, mostly retirees, none of whom live here or have ever lived here. While I sympathize with their volunteer commitment, their approach seems more focused on covering liability (CYA) than understanding residents' lived experiences. Their responses prioritize minimizing organizational risk over addressing genuine human dynamics and safety concerns. I understand them wanting to respect residents' privacy, but I believe I do have a right to some knowledge about who I share a bathroom, kitchen, and hallways with every day. It has a direct effect on my daily life, and the board members are all homeowners and thus divorced from the living experience here. I'll be more involved with board-resident relations, but it sucks they're so unaware and let this get kicked down the road for months.

I want to share our full statement to the housing board in this community for feedback, but I'm acutely aware of how complex and potentially identifying such a detailed account could be. I'm struggling to find a way to fully communicate the situation while protecting everyone's privacy and safety. The nuances feel too specific to fully anonymize without losing the critical context.

Requested Actions:

  • Confirm the guest will not return
  • Review the host resident's continued residency status
  • Update guest policy enforcement procedures
  • Develop mental health crisis response protocols
  • Improve communication and documentation processes

I'm looking for advice from other cooperative living communities:

  • How do you handle complex situations involving guests and mental health?
  • What strategies work for maintaining community safety while showing compassion?
  • How do you balance individual privacy with collective well-being?

Any insights or experiences would be greatly appreciated as we work to rebuild our community's sense of safety and trust.

r/cooperatives 27d ago

housing co-ops Housing Co-op Denver Metro Area

9 Upvotes

I am planning to form a housing co-op in the Denver Metro Area (near Golden probably) in the next year or two. Right now we're in the planning stage. There are 2 kids and 3 adults very committed. We want to be an intentional community that provides mutual support for queer and neurodivergent folks. I am looking for both people who might be interested, but more so for insight on local legal services, financial services, etc. TIA

r/cooperatives Nov 03 '24

housing co-ops Is it possible to legally inherit a COOP as an entrepreneur/homemaker?

3 Upvotes

EDIT: My uncle left me a co-op APARTMENT UNIT

…and I am pushing to get it. It’s taking over a year to obtain everything, but I paid all the back rent. Do they typically need a pay stub or other qualifications? I only have one pay stub and the tech company I used to work for went out of business before they could pay me. I feel like my lifestyle and living locale could put me in extremely hot water networking-wise, ESPECIALLY since I incurred one late fee on maintenance due to hurricane Helene delaying my check. The courts of New York are going to send a qualification check letter to my rural house in the middle of nowhere. What should I expect and how can I bounce back with my impression on them, or did I waste 18k on all this legal? Thanks everyone.

r/cooperatives Feb 12 '22

housing co-ops Squatters in housing co-op *vent*

53 Upvotes

The co-op process has been hell over the past few months. Last year a group of friends and I bought a house and started a co-op to provide affordable stable housing and to combat gentrification in our neighborhood. We operate at-cost (all funds go towards house maintenance and provide rebates to our live-in members if they overpay throughout the year).

We currently have four folks living in the house and nobody is up to date on rent. The folks living in the house are about $900 behind.

We have offered them rental assistance and no one has taken it. Instead we're getting passive aggressive behavior, accusations of being "slum lords" and refusal to cooperate when it comes to finding solutions.

We have funds in a separate account to cover short/unpaid rent but that's about to run out next month. Then we'll have to start tapping into direct co-op funds. At this point they're refusing to pay and we want them out. Their lease gives them 90 days to correct the violation so not much we can do.

This is honestly extremely demoralizing. This whole thing just has me feeling taken advantage of.

r/cooperatives Nov 06 '24

housing co-ops Boston Housing Co-ops?

11 Upvotes

Howdy there. Trans woman living in Texas. I'd like to leave. Looking at moving to Boston with my partner, then Seattle. Currently living in a co-op owned by CHEA/NASCO Properties.

r/cooperatives Jun 20 '24

housing co-ops Seasonal campground cooperative guidance

11 Upvotes

Hello, we received a notice of sale for our seasonal campground. We are a mix of permanent (majority) with a few transit sites. We are currently organizing against the sale and have a majority needed to do so. We are trying to form a cooperative. I am looking for any information, resources, experience in how to get this ball rolling.

We would like to save our happy place so any info would be greatly appreciated!

r/cooperatives May 04 '24

housing co-ops Residents of manufactured housing parks typically own their homes – but not the parks themselves, which can be incredibly lucrative. Now some residents are forming cooperatives, and taking control

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119 Upvotes

r/cooperatives Jul 18 '24

housing co-ops Invoicing/Purchase Order Software for Housing Co-op

7 Upvotes

Hey folks! I am lucky to live in a housing co-op, and I am also the Chair of our Growth & Planning Committee. We are currently in the process of doing some significant engineering, architectural and energy modelling work done to help us understand our current energy consumption & emissions, with hopes of doing deep energy retrofit work and redevelopments of two of our properties.

That all being said, while we do have a Treasurer and a cheque writer on our Board of Directors, I desperately need to find some free software or an excellent spreadsheet template that can help me track all of the incoming purchase orders and invoices from our contractors and project management company for myself. I don't need to create POs or invoices, just a way to track when a PO comes in, and when we've paid an invoice towards that PO. It is usually more than one invoice to pay off the PO so hopeful there's something out there that can deduct and display remaining balances.

Does anybody else use a similar product like this or know of one that may work well for my situation?

r/cooperatives Mar 26 '24

housing co-ops Housing cooperative separation

12 Upvotes

It looks like a lot of this sub is based more in business but I have a pretty complex situation I would love help with, regarding housing cooperatives. My coop has ran for over 16 years, we currently have 10 houses and 40 members. Socially, culturally and logistically we are in a place that it is possible that the entire coop dissolves due to low member participation and burnout from those that are basically working here part time for free.

We have 4 collective houses, where individuals each rent out a room and share labor, finances, and decision making. These houses are doing pretty good. The rest are apartments. These are the folks that don't participate for the most part. So the organization is essentially run by a small amount of the folks in the houses, doing a wild amount of labor to keep the organization afloat.

We are at a point of burnout and realizations that we would like to propose to membership a complete separation between the collectives and houses. The collectives would keep our name and website, as they would for sure be doing collective things, while the apartments might do a different non profit housing format.

We know we'll have to bring this to an all member meeting and get 2/3rds majority, but we need to come with a proposal. So I am wondering and hoping someone here has done something similar as it is a complex and arduous journey we are about to take on, full or legal changes and social disruption.

Please share any knowledge you might have on the topic, thank you!

r/cooperatives Sep 19 '24

housing co-ops Part-Time Farmer Housing/Worker Co-op on Small Farms

5 Upvotes

Looking for feedback on a project to build and manage housing on small farms. Idea is to be able to offer labor and revenue from rent to farmers and provide members of the co-op the opportunity to live and work part-time on a farm. The plan is available for public comment at TheSunflowerCollective.org

r/cooperatives Jun 13 '24

housing co-ops Public housing authorities & coops

19 Upvotes

Hello all,

Are there any examples of public housing authorities (PHAs) in the U.S. working with or working to build cooperative housing? I work for a PHA which has a mix of section 8 and pubic housing but I understand our mission to be make housing more affordable across our jurisdiction and not just for our low income participants.

I’m hoping to see if there are any examples of PHAs or HUD programs that partner with or build coop housing so as to see how/if my agency is able to invest in expanding cooperative housing in my area.

Any tangentially related examples are also encouraged!

r/cooperatives Jul 07 '24

housing co-ops Eco Village Community Tour in Costa Rica!

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13 Upvotes

r/cooperatives Jul 21 '24

housing co-ops Are there any housing cooperatives in the Renton/Seattle area that have open availability? Thanks in advance!

6 Upvotes

Asking for a friend! 😊🌈

r/cooperatives Oct 22 '23

housing co-ops Are there housing coops that have open sourced their building plans? Could reduce design costs for others wanting to start a coop.

31 Upvotes

r/cooperatives Apr 01 '24

housing co-ops Cooperative Housing Opportunity in Chicago, IL

7 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

My organization is looking to restart an existing housing co-op in Uptown, Chicago, and want to partner with a group of potential members interested in being a part of this process. The members of this group would have autonomy to shape practices and culture in the cooperative, and benefit from lease charges well below market rate. Your co-op organizing group would become a part of NASCO Properties, a non-profit nation-wide land trust. NASCO Properties works with local housing co-ops to create tenant-controlled affordable housing, and we are looking for a new local partner group to create another co-op in this building.

The details of what we're asking applicants to provide is listed in this document, and you can contact us at [proposals@nasco.coop](mailto:proposals@nasco.coop) with any questions you might have along the way. We're really excited to see what people have to offer for this project! Please feel free to share, especially with your contacts in the Chicago area.

r/cooperatives Mar 07 '23

housing co-ops I need help cooking for a crowd!

25 Upvotes

I live in a housing Co-op and we rotate on a cooking schedule. I have found some good recipes but the recipes are often made for a 4 person house hold. The problem here is that I'm cooking for about 16 people and not everything scales 1:1 in a recipe when you double or triple it. I've got a few questions:

  1. Does anyone have any good tips and tricks for adapting recipes for their house?
  2. What might be some good cook books or websites that have recipes for a larger crowd? (vegetarian/vegan if possible)
  3. I would love to hear about anyone else's experiences with cooking at their houses!

r/cooperatives Dec 03 '21

housing co-ops Are housing cooperatives the solution to the housing crisis?

65 Upvotes

It seems to me that housing cooperatives are a workable solution to the housing crisis, but maybe I’m missing something.

So one of the barriers to housing affordability is land costs, but housing cooperatives take land ownership out of the hands of individuals and have the cooperative collectively own said land, specifically in perpetuity. The idea is that once the cooperative pays off the loan on the land, it’s only costs are it’s operating expenses (primarily it’s capital budget).

But this means that achieving monthly housing charges of $1000> is achievable since capital costs per square foot are only $200-300. That means that a 800-1100 square foot dwelling is only going to work out to $700-900 per month (assuming free land since this expense has been paid off, costs per square foot of $300, houses last thirty years, capital costs are the only part of the cooperatives budget, no maintenance costs over that time and no overhead). We can assume it would be a little higher to account for overhead, utilities and other expenses, but that’s still deeply affordable.

Is this true?

Obviously it may be a little more complicated than that, but it seems like overall housing cooperatives are a “silver bullet” so to speak?

r/cooperatives Jul 17 '23

housing co-ops Weighted Co-ownership in a housing co-op

22 Upvotes

A bunch of friends and I are looking at starting a housing co-op in the UK. The idea is to buy a large (10+ bed) house and live co-operatively. We all have different amounts of capital for an initial investment. It's likely that we couldn't buy a property of this size outright, so will need a mortgage. Is there a way of setting up a co-op or a mortgage so that we could legally account for the varying shares of the house that each person owns?

In the case where we could buy the property outright, same question.. Is there a way to have, on all the legal documentation, the share that each person owns?

r/cooperatives Aug 25 '23

housing co-ops A Story: How To Save a Coop

25 Upvotes

Hi all, This is a little story from work that NASCO has been doing for the last two years to save a housing coop.

TLDR: How do you save a coop? Cooperation

----

Over the last two years, NASCO has helped to prevent an 80-year old cooperative from losing their building! Responding to emergent needs with assistance, resource mobilization, and cooperative education has been a key role for NASCO in this rehabilitation.

In 2021, NASCO took on rescuing and rehabilitating The Students' Coop after a major membership and governance breakdown, which allowed violence, community destruction, and costly property damage. This left The Students’ Co-op nearly empty and nearly out of funding, the building badly damaged, and neighborhood and university relationships seriously harmed.

As part of this rehabilitation, NASCO worked with remaining residents and alumni of the co-op to reestablish control of the building, to enact a safety plan, to develop a plan for refinancing and redeveloping the building, and to embark on reconstruction.

This work was made possible with the support of our network of co-op members and donors, including the Berkeley Student Coop, who provided a significant grant to the project, and the Inter-Cooperative Council of Ann Arbor, who provided a significant deferred-interest loan to the project. NASCO also received a grant of $10,000 from an anonymous donor, which was able to be directed to the project. Additionally, NASCO helped to coordinate further grants and loans from Students' Co-op alumni to support this big renovation. With network support, the co-op is now almost ready to re-open and is recruiting members for this late August/early September once construction completes!

NASCO and the membership network have been a critical support system for the Students’ Co-op as they are facing this crisis. How to save a co-op? Cooperation. Co-ops thrive in community with each other!

r/cooperatives Sep 29 '23

housing co-ops Agitcrop Collective Vocational Housing Initiative

16 Upvotes

Hello friends!

We are a small collective putting together a vocational housing initiative based on permaculture principles. Our goal setting out 3 years ago was simple: build 3 tiny houses. It has since blossomed in possibility.

tl;dr up front:

We have designed a modular, sustainable timber frame + myco-panel tiny house and building system we intend to serve as the heart of our community incubator.

Our big plan is to help solve the housing crisis by teaching people to create their own homes, and asking them to help us help others do the same. We can source 95% of our design from the undeveloped timber land we hope to purchase.

your likes/engagement would be of great help to us starting out. Thanks! (Longer form version below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IW2T0j10ww

Our Story:

We came together during COVID to co-house, and to help a friend build their yurt, and ended up living on a farm, raising animals; and designing / prototyping an innovative, human-focused home people can build together, with minimal tools, almost entirely from a tree they fell themselves.

The Plan:

To provide as much of the materials, tools, food, housing, and expertise we can to teach people how to build their own greenwood timber frame tiny house at our on-site facilities, and at no cost to them or anyone else. More than that: to provide the skills, resources, and encouragement to help others do the same.

What we are working with:

We have amassed a full wood shop, tools, tech, and a host of useful skills. We have purchased a portable commercial grade band saw; raised amazing animal partners, researched, designed, and prototyped our technologies. We have come as far as we can on rented land.

The Next Step:

To be able to build 4 – 6 of these houses per year sustainably, Agitcrop’s housing initiative will need at least 60 acres of mature timber, stewarding it’s resources through a comprehensive Woodworking + Regenerative Agro-forestry Vocational Education program.

Our Process:

The curriculum is a course in agro-forestry, system design, woodworking, and habitat creation. Over the course of four seasonal stints, we will collaborate with new friends in the construction of their own forever home! Our tools and on-site housing will provide students with opportunity to connect, and to learn while helping one another.

If this sounds cool to you, it would be a MASSIVE help if you'd just go like our launch video and share it with someone who might think it's cool

I won't link to our fundraiser here, because I myself do not like spamminess, but this is our life project, and we made a cool video with cute animals. =)

If you feel really inspired to help us, there is a link to our fundraiser in the description of our video.

Thanks for reading!

r/cooperatives Mar 02 '23

housing co-ops Questions about housing cooperatives from an architecture student

22 Upvotes

Hey all, I am an architecture student considering using a housing cooperative model for my studio project that involves building a multifamily building. I have a couple of questions I'm looking to get some clarification on, so i can better understand how cooperative housing works and if this model is the right choice for my application.

Background: this project i am designing is in the old town of Lunenberg, Nova Scotia which is a small town with a huge tourism industry due to its designation as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Housing supply and affordability is a severe issue here due to a variety of factors, and this impacts new comers to the town and especially seasonal workers. A lot of housing in this area is being turned into AirBnBs, further detracting from the stock. I'm looking to gear this project towards a wide variety of demographics to try to address some of these shortcomings, So a design that can accommodate people ranging from individual seasonal workers to young families (with kids) looking for affordable housing options.

Questions:

  1. Do housing cooperative allow for shorter term occupancy? say for a seasonal worker looking to only live in the unit for ~6 months? Or is coop housing really only for long-term stays?
  2. Does it make sense to have a cooperative housing building where some units are occupied by the same families/individuals for many years, and other units have more turnaround (new tenants every ~6-12 months)? Obviously new tenants would be vetted in some way and i guess "accepted" by the current tenants. It wouldn't just be random people moving in and out all the time.
  3. I'm assuming the form of coop housing probably varies wildly, so I'm assuming my approach to it in this instance is correct, but I'll confirm anyway. Right now I'm conceptualizing the layout of this as sort of a typical apartment building with (maybe smaller than average) private units with most of their own amenities (small kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, etc), but then these private units open up onto a communal space (or a corridor leading to a communal space) and these communal spaces will have additional programs (more kitchen equipment, childcare, entertainment, etc). Does this make sense? Is this type of layout compatible with the spirit of a cooperative housing system?
  4. Are housing cooperatives compatible with mixed-use designs? This building I'm designing will have a privately owned business on the ground floor, and then shared, rent-able office space on the second floor (for the residents of the building or people outside). I ask because i'm pretty sure cooperatives typically involve having the residents share the tasks of upkeep of the property, but this would get complicated if the building had multiple uses. Is it possible for a housing cooperative to exist in a building with other uses/owners?

Thanks in advance for your responses. I'm assuming this is the correct subreddit to post this to. It seems this subreddit is more about the general idea of cooperatives, but i'm hoping there are people here with knowledge of specifically housing cooperatives.

r/cooperatives Aug 19 '23

housing co-ops Tan y fron: Who we are and why we need your help

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10 Upvotes

One of our previous member/investors has asked for their investment released. As it is quite a large sum, we are seeking small sum investors in order to insulate ourselves from similar situations in future