We demand collective ownership. The legal, cultural, and financial systems for housing in c\a\n\a\d\a have been biased to privately house the nuclear family. As a result, it is near impossible to obtain funding for collectively owned housing. We demand that all levels of government incorporate policies that encourage co-living – cohousing and cooperatives over speculative real estate development and that credit unions and banks remove roadblocks and create pathways to collective financing models.
Collective action and collective ownership is marginalized and rarely utilized in c\a\n\a\d\a’s private, profit driven housing system. And even when they are deployed, they are often done so in isolation, unrealizing the synergistic benefits that they can provide in unison. The result is the unrivalled dominance of speculative housing that is at once unaffordable and socially isolating. Co-operative housing, cohousing, and co-living are all, in varying ways, vital in the fight against housing alienation.
The barriers to realizing the full potential collective ownership are systemic on multiple fronts. While cohousing and co-living models are experiencing a resurgence, they have been co-opted by the market and repackaged as for-profit friendly. This process has swept the radical, mutual aid roots aside and flattened their potential. Indeed, most cohousing utilizes a condominium or strata model. At the same time, financial institutions are reluctant to fund co-ops, cohousing, and co-living projects, presenting a major hurdle for more widespread deployment.
To overcome this systemic bias against collectivity, we demand that both government and financial institutions adopt policies to support a bold new vision of collective ownership that leverages the best attributes of various collective housing approaches – what we call Co-Co-Mo. Co-Co-Mo combines the cooperative tenure model with the cohousing delivery model of participatory design and development with the socio-spatial arrangements co-living. To achieve this requires a regulatory approach for policy changes at all levels of government and an end to the roadblocks within the financial sector.
To demonstrate the potential of Co-C-Mo, we have developed a case study project in the specific cultural context of the City of Richmond within Metro Vancouver. Diversity is concentrated in Metro Vancouver’s suburbs. The “ethnoburb” of Richmond is 80% visible minority and 60% immigrants and its concentration of Chinese and East Asian people has fostered cultural preservation, including a thriving shadow economy of goods and services rendered from private homes and disseminated through personal networks and cash payments. This vibrancy persists despite the prevalence of single-family houses on large lots. However, this low-density, car-oriented urbanism isolates people from their neighbours and younger generations from their elders and contributes to cultural loss over generations. It also has dogged inflexibility in the face of a housing and climate change.
The site for our case study is a leftover from Richmond’s agrarian past, a large lot with double street frontage in a largely developed area. Richmond’s unique history and cultural mosaic includes a large number of working- and middle-class families, resulting in a rich opportunity for diverse intentional communities. To develop critical design criteria, we held an expert-led workshop that incorporated layered “personas” based on demographic data, interviews, and direct observation. Through this process we developed a housing scheme that accommodates diverse residents and their varied needs and desires. The result is a micro-campus of medium density forms that respond to varying familial conditions and ages, from senior’s cohousing to families with children, interwoven with collective eating, working, and socializing spaces.
Collective Ownership Contributors:
Region: Vancouver
Advocate: Kathy McGrenera, Canadian Cohousing Network / Réseau canadien de cohabitation
Architect: Travis Hanks, Shirley Shen, Katherine Co, Lukas Ewing, Alena Pavan, Jorge Román, Haeccity Studio Architecture
The post Architects Against Housing Alienation – Not for Sale!: 8. Collective Ownership appeared first on Canadian Architect.
