“PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — When Gadiel Galvez learned that the owner of his mobile home park south of Seattle was looking to sell, he and other residents worried their largely Latino community would be bulldozed to make way for another Amazon warehouse.
“So, they decided to form a cooperative and buy their park in Lakewood, Washington. With help from a nonprofit that advises communities like theirs and helps them secure loans, they bought it for $5.25 million. Since becoming owners in September, everyone’s worked to make improvements.”
Read the rest of the story on the AP News website. Thanks to Tim Marsh for a link to the story.
Without knowing all the details, this seems to me to be a good answer for the housing shortage in our area.
A neighborhood “co-op” is really another name for community.
It’s best for that community to deal with issues they’ve chosen to take on with their neighbors, like making their payments and keeping their place in order, rather than a government bureaucracy, funded by tax-payers, building, maintaining, and perpetually running the project.
When I was young and had very little money, a bunch of us rented a house together, and paid our share of expenses based on the size of our room. Common space and utilities was shared.
We all got along most of the time, because we had to, and we got along with the greater community around us.
We were all able to save money with this arrangement, and eventually moved out and got our own places.
We all had jobs and did this 100% with money we earned.
Privately owned housing, gives the occupants a stake in the game of life, and responsibilities that a government program never can.
Perhaps tax payers are still often times on the hook for subsidies to the people living in this type of co-op, but at least we won’t also have to fund the ever-growing bureaucracy that typically goes with public projects.