Fully Mutual Housing Coop

Discussion

Chris Cook:

"we’ll be looking at what’s called co-ownership, and in a sense it’s co-ownership between people who invest in the property and the people who live in the property. We’re dividing the property rights – the fruits of use and the rights of management – we’re dividing them up in a different way, a simpler (and more radical) way. But in fact, the idea has deep roots, that go back thousands of years.

* Are you talking about something like housing associations or housing co-ops?

It is essentially a co-operative model. I’ll give you an example. I was a member of a housing co-op in London for ten years. I didn’t have a freehold, or a leasehold, or a tenancy agreement. I was a member of a beast called a friendly society and through membership participation in the friendly society, I had the right to be there, and I had complete security of tenure, for as long as I paid my rent, and was in line with the rules of the co-op. That’s called a fully mutual housing co-op, and the model still exists. There’s a big one in the south of Glasgow called West Whitlawburn Housing Co-op, with 350 members, and people queueing up to join it.

* To answer my brother’s question – would he be able to buy a house outright, so that he owns it?

He could say he co-owns it. I mean, if he has a mortgage now, does he own it, or does the bank own it? If he’s acquired all of the rights of investment in the property, then yes, he’d own it 100%. He’d have the right to occupy it and he would be the owner of all the future rental value. The economic interest in it, he would own."

(https://www.lowimpact.org/storing-value-in-a-mutual-credit-world-chris-cook/)