A co-operative is a venture jointly owned and controlled by its members. Unlike businesses, which are for profit and sell shares, co-operatives often redirect profits back into the welfare and needs of those who use and own the project. Most people in the United Kingdom know the term from the chain of supermarkets. However, co-operative housing is becoming increasingly popular and may be a green solution for the UK’s housing shortage.
York’s Co-Operative Housing
One of these green housing communities is situated just outside York. An expensive city to live in, the concept offered by Yorspace is based in Acomb, outside the city. Consisting of 14 houses, each is built to high energy efficiency standards and kept off the open market to make them affordable.
With many people sharing the same co-friendly attitude, the concept of the community is just as strong. The small village has car sharing and shared child minding, solving many modern problems in one go. The land is owned by Yorspace, and the house belongs to the Lowfield Green housing co-operative. This means they will always be kept at 70% of the market value.
With many people choosing to sell up and move to these places, the only barrier may be trying to sell house quickly when space in a co-operative becomes available. Luckily, there are services in the UK that will provide cash offers on any property. With speedy turnaround times, they are an alternative to the lengthy estate agent route. This can let people buy into co-operatives quickly and without fuss.
Liverpool’s Co-Operatives
Source: Pexels
Liverpool has the highest number of co-operative housing associations outside of London. Some of these are the oldest in the country, with around 50 of them across the city. Some of them are bound together by quirky external features, such as red doors that show the co-op houses on Lodge Lane.
Many of them were created in the seventies and eighties, in the face of some quite modern-day problems. These included slum landlords and a lack of quality housing. At this time, there was an excess of unoccupied property in bad condition, which could be transferred to the cooperatives.
Could Co-Operative Solve The Housing Issue?
It seems that co-operatives have already begun to solve not just housing issues, but in the case of the York settlement, social ones. What many require if they are to work in existing towns are favourable regulatory conditions, such as grants for renovations. While this may be harder in cities that now demand high property prices, it could be used in some of Britain’s abandoned towns. An example could be places like Horden in the north-east, where houses go for as little as 40k. While the council has submitted a planning application for redevelopment, a more satisfactory solution could be cooperatives.
Cooperatives may seem like an old concept. Yet they have distinct advantages, allowing green homes to be built to high standards. With people as opposed to profit at their heart, more people may move towards them in the near future. They say it takes a village to raise a family, and UK co-operatives may make the old adage come true.
