A possible way Devine and others could restore their neighborhoods, or create new ones, is through cooperative housing developments. About a dozen cooperative housing experts toured Grand Forks Monday and talked with city officials about how cooperative housing could possibly help solve the many problems facing the local housing market. The city will take it very seriously, and I will take it before the Tri-Chairs, the mayor and the City Council. Cooperative housing projects are not new in other parts of the country, but several experts said they would be to North Dakota. More than 1 million cooperative housing units exist in the nation, most in major urban centers such as New York, Chicago and Washington.
Housing cooperatives are similar to other business cooperatives because they are member-owned.
In a housing cooperative, the owners are the tenants or landowners. There are several ways to structure a cooperative, said Barry Silver of the National Cooperative Bank in Washington, which finances housing cooperatives. The cooperative concept is appealing for several reasons, Manske said. Grand Forks has a large number of residents who rent, around 42 percent of the population. In a cooperative, those renters would instead have some ownership and could gain equity through the years.