Cohousing and cooperative housing

    Although the terms 'cooperative housing' and 'cohousing' are frequently used interchangeably, there are distinctions between the two.

    Housing cooperatives are structured so that individuals share ownership  of and responsibility for the whole.  Although an individual has the right to use a given unit, the individual's ownership is not linked to that specific unit. Housing cooperatives may, but need not, include the community focus that is an integral element of cohousing.   

    Conversely, even though the concept of cohousing grew out of the housing cooperative movement, cooperative ownership is not an integral element of cohousing.  In fact, most cohousing communities in the United States are not formally structured as housing cooperatives, tending instead to be structured in the form of a condominium association, where the individual's ownership is tied to a specific unit of the whole.  Alternately, individual cohousing residents may not have any ownership at all, but may instead be renters, with the property owned not by them but by a non-profit organization.

Comments

[matthieu]

Hi, we just published a documentary on the cohousing phenomenon. It won an award at the 34th Ekotopfilm festival 2007 and was designed to show what is cohousing "from within" as a complement to the existing books.
The trailer can be watched at http://notsocrazy.net/video.html
Enjoy!
Matthieu
Director of "Voices of Cohousing"