Co-operative Housing Association
of Eastern Ontario

Co-ops and Housing Issues in the News!

Co-op housing is one of the neglected possibilities for Ottawa, which faces a waiting list of 15,000 singles and families seeking affordable low-cost homes.

Councillor Alex Munter recently said the city needs "a housing-first policy for surplus municipal property." Some of that property should be ear-marked at below-market prices for new and non-profit co-ops.

Would-be co-op home builders also should get breaks on planning fees, development charges, building permits and similar construction costs—the kind of help Rideau-Vanier Councillor Madeleine Meilleur is seeking for developers who build affordable rental accomodation for profit.

Ottawa now has 55 co-op housing projects with 3,707 dwelling units providing lower-cost accommodation for some 10,000 individuals. In Ontario as a whole, about 80,000 people live in 550 non-profit housing co-ops. About 15 per cent of Ontario's community-based housing providers are co-ops. In Canada, 2,200 co-ops are home to about 250,000 people.

At present, all Ottawa-area housing co-ops have waiting lists, another indication of the demand for such housing and the need to build more of it.

For this reason, some co-op residents have been pressing Mayor Bob Chiarelli and his officials to give some priority to new co-op housing.

Many people are unaware that the Ontario government, by its recent Social Housing Reform Act, dumped responsibility for social housing onto Ottawa and 46 other municipalities. In 1999, the federal government transferred most federal social-housing programs to the province. These, in turn, have been dumped onto Ontario municipalities.

Ottawa officials therefore face new tasks in managing existing social housing, including the city's 55 co-ops. However, much more urgent in terms of human need is the task of building more homes that are affordable for those on medium and lower incomes. Co-ops should be included in city plans.

This leads to the huge question of where to find money for social housing. Not from the new City of Ottawa administration, newly burdened with added transition costs. Not from the present Ontario government, wiping social responsibility off its slate. Perhaps from the new federal government. But will it favour for-profit developers who have failed so far to produce low-cost homes?

The federal government stopped funding new social housing, including co-ops, in 1993. The Ontario government did likewise in 1995. It even cancelled 17,000 units being developed. Politicians say that we can no longer afford social housing, but many recent opinion polls show a big majority of Canadians support increased spending on affordable housing to end homelessness.

For the future of co-op housing in Ottawa, therefore, a key question is what Alfonso Gagliano, federal minister for housing, and Claudette Bradshaw, federal minister for homelessness, think about co-op housing.

Co-op members own their homes collectively and control them democratically. As direct stakeholders, they make the management decisions that affect their pocketbooks. They are never merely tenants forced to pay rising rents or leave.

The Ontario Co-operative Corporations Act sets out rules for housing co-ops as member-controlled corporations, including a special landlord-tenant system that recognizes that a co-op housing member is both landlord and tenant.

A Statistics Canada study published in 1990 noted that co-op homes met the policy goals of governments at that time. The program gave Canadians of low and moderate incomes a chance to own a home on a collective basis, with security not found in rentals, but without the high equity requirement of private homes.

Moreover, with a policy aim to achieve an economic and social mix, co-op homes avoided becoming urban ghettos like some public housing projects. One-third to one-half of co-op households pay market rents, while the rest receive rent-geared-to-income (RGI) assistance.

Similarly, a 1992 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation study found that co-ops have lower turnover rates than rental housing, and co-op residents are more satisfied than public-housing tenants and other renters. It reported survey results showing that 31 per cent of renters said they would move into a co-op if available at market rent, and 13 per cent said they had actually made enquiries about co-op living.

Instead of being just a neglected possibility, more co-op housing should become an actively pursued goal in the new Ottawa.