Empowering Communities Through Cooperative Housing

Pitch

What if your landlord wasn't looking for profit? What if you and your neighbours were in complete control? What if you couldn't be renovicted or surprised by a rent increase? What if you could have a permanent reliable home without paying Toronto real estate prices?

We have an opportunity to do something new, that was illegal for 60 years. We're going to create potentially endless amounts of ideal housing, homes that will raise our quality of life.

We're building co-ops. New co-ops, in the inner suburbs. We're also building multiplexes, the incredibly popular (and recently legalized) small buildings with 4-6` homes per building.

Co-ops are housing where the residents (members) are in charge. Rent is decided (democratically) at a rate just enough to cover for expenses, not to pay for someone else's retirement.

A modern apartment building with multiple floors, white exterior walls, and dark brown roof edges. Each unit has a balcony with black railing, and large windows that reflect the blue sky.

A transformative housing experience!

Residents

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a man riding a skateboard down the side of a ramp

Principles

The fundamental purpose of this proposal is to build housing. To do this both effectively and ethically, there are several principles it will adhere to.

There is a development organization which will continuously develop buildings to be incorporated into the operating organization.

Both organizations are not for profit, this is critically important for the operating organization.

Both organizations are co-operatives. This form of organization is the best mechanism for aligning goals with control. See Rochdale Principles.

Transparency is an important principle, this needs to be true to the point of them being described as radically transparent. This will be helpful for both members and others who are deaaling with these organizations.

Scale is also one of the principles. The intention is to build a lot of housing by continuously building small scale developments. To this end we will target single lots large enough to build multiplexes. This puts us in the suburbs.

We have to stay within the rules. Most development in Toronto needs to go beyond the precise rules, there is a process to do that but it increases time, money, and risk. None of which do we have a great capacity to absorb.

To the maximum extent possible, these organizations are designed for independence, both from government and private institutions. They will join with other organizations with aligned goals. This is important to maximise scale and minimize time, and, in general, to improve efficiency.

In order to raise money these organizations must be seen as manifestly not scams. This will be eased by not being scams. The principle of radical transparency will help in being manifestly not a scam. Financial regulators are somewhat exempt from the principle of independence in order to increase clarity about not being a scam.

Executive Summary

The primary objective of this proposal is to build a lot of non profit co-operative housing in Toronto.

A secondary objective is to improve the livability and effiency of the suburbs.

The proposed method to achieve these goals is to build an ecosystem of organizations to plan, finance, build, and govern the housing. Some of these will be existing organizations (notably builders) while others will be new.

This will be a long running continuous process.

It is not clear what the limits to scale will be. The real open question is the effective demand. Given that this is an unsubsidized building, it will not meet any definition of affordable housing.