this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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establish ๐ tenant ๐ owned ๐ cooperatives ๐
So condominiums essentially?
The idea is sound but for most places I've heard of (ie in my city), condos just pay a management company to do all the landlord stuff, so even as an owner, I still have to call some crabby woman when the roofers drilled a hole in my A/C and fight with her -- and then also fight with the roofers -- to get it fixed
There are self managed condo associations, in fact mine is discussing it because we hate our management company. The problem is the stuff the management company was doing now falls on us. Someone has to volunteer to handle repairs, maintenance, document management, bills, etc. some of this stuff amounts to a full time job and you're doing it for free. If youre the guy who handles critical stuff like leaks or heat, now you're on call 24/7 in addition to your actual job that pays the bills.
In a coop setting you would agree on collective individual responsibilities so everyone has to contribute and spread the burden in a way that doesn't silo people into unequal jobs.
As someone who lived in a condo - the main issues were that because people individually own their flats - I feel there's a distinct line between private and shared ownership, making it easy to disregard communal duties.
Furthermore, because existing residents have little say in who gets to live in their building - you can end up in situations where someone can repeatedly break rules and norms (ie had a person smoke in the elevator for years despite being told not to) and nothing can really be done apart from trying to sue them which isn't an effective way of dealing with problems.
In a coop setting people can democratically discuss and as a last resort even decide to part ways with individuals who won't contribute (from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs obv) since on a hyper-local level everyone is immediately involved with the living conditions of everyone else around them.
Or you could own a regular single family home, have no management, AND have nobody to split the responsibilities with! It's great! I'm not bitter at all!
Every time I consider buying a house I'm like nah fuck shovelling my own snow
That's what paying some neighbor on Nextdoor to bully their kid into doing it is for
That and racist dogwhistles, going by my neighborhood
Eli5 can an apartment complex do that?
Depends on your region, but in general if you can find at least 3 people you want to live with, you can apply to establish a cooperative.
Do note that securing a mortgage would probably be a bit harder than buying on your own, but with more people you can acquire a larger space and split the costs that way.
Fundamentally, it's unlikely it will be cheaper than buying outright - however you'll have a community of people to rely on if at any point you become temporarily unable to pay your installments, which can make it safer than self-ownership.
But the biggest plus comes when the mortgage is paid off, as then the coop can decide if you'd rather slash prices to include just bills, or keep the same monthly amount but put the extra towards a shared coop fund that can be used to convert more landlord owned properties into cooperative housing.
In my area - non-mortgaged coop properties have about 40% lower monthly payments.
How does it work if a member of the coop stops contributing their share?
If the coop was smart, and it's not a temporary situation or something along those lines, you pay their equity out and wish them luck, but yeah the problem with any coop is always the cooperative part.
Yep, the idea is that because the people living at the coop decide who they want to live with (both for existing and new members) the org would have an incentive to cooperate and resolve issues, instead of relying on a third party to be an arbiter that doesn't have a direct stake in your living conditions.