<\/p>\n
Rent being absolutely out of control and everyone struggling to afford housing from the poor to the upper middle class, I'm kind of surprised that I never hear anyone talk about cooperative housing as an option.<\/p>\n
Where I live, there are multiple co-ops, and not only is the rent incredibly low for members, but it also helps to keep pricing down in the area.<\/p>\n
Personally, I didn't even know it was something that existed until a social worker mentioned it to me as a potential option when I was looking for a new apartment (at the time I was a jobless single parent taking fulltime vocational studies so things were as tight as they could get). I applied to 3 different coops and luckily I managed to get a spot in one.<\/p>\n
For reference, I am a member of "Les Co-ops de habitations des Cantons de l'est" in Sherbrooke Qu\u00e9bec. Our co-op consists of 244 units in multiple buildings across the city. I live in a fairly large 2-bedroom apartment that is in, I think it's called a quadplex? My rent contract is for about $770 per month, and as a member of the coop, this is reduced an additional $230 per month (ish). Electricity, water, heating included.<\/p>\n
The organization is non-profit. There are no landlords. The rent pays for overhead and also is invested back into the buildings we own. Every coop functions a bit differently, but generally all decisions and work on the property are the responsibility of the members. Functionally, all the residents are partial owners of their building. <\/p>\n
Sure, dealing with expectations of your neighbors to be responsible and participate comes with its own problems and annoyances, but it's still a viable option to the alternative. For myself, this really gives me a good chance to get out of debt and provide for my kids after a very difficult period during the pandemic, and I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity the coop has provided me. <\/p>\n
I know housing coops exist across the country, but again I just never hear a single word about it from anyone, and after my experience, I just don't understand why it isn't at the very least part of the conversation when discussing the issue of housing in Canada.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
submitted by \/u\/throwawayQuebecer <\/a> Rent being absolutely out of control and everyone struggling to afford housing from the poor to the upper middle class, I'm kind of surprised that I never hear anyone talk about cooperative housing as...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewwbradley.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
[link]<\/a><\/span> [comments]<\/a><\/span>Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"