Potential Rises as Co-Op Housing Sector Eyes Stratospheric Growth

After decades of hibernation, Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada executive director Tim Ross says his sector has built up a development pipeline of 33,000 homes in just a few years. And a fresh government commitment of CAD$1.47-billion announced on September 22 “will also enable our sector to acquire 7000 new homes within the next few years, and many more after that”. “After a long winter, there’s an opportunity for growth to emerge…and our best growth may still be ahead of us,” Ross said. Speaking to local communal housing sector stakeholders at the Australian Co-operative Housing Alliance (ACHA) summit on September 24, Ross said about 250,000 Canadians already lived in the 2200 housing co-operatives largely developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Although that represents just 0.6 per cent of the market, the importance of co-ops to Canada means that the sector has political champions. Toronto mayor Olivia Chow met her late husband, the former Opposition leader Jack Layton, while both were living in a co-op. Secretary of State and Olympic gold medallist Adam van Koeverden grew up in the Chautauqua community. A CAD$1.5-billion commitment in the 2024 budget allowed development activity to recommence, leading to 33 projects representing 6000 homes ready to proceed, and another 27,000 homes at earlier stages of feasibility. “There were a lot of people who also doubted us,” Ross said. ▲ Toronto's Kennedy Green project broke ground in November, 2025 on 918 homes, of which two-thirds will be co-operative rentals. “[Doubters said] ‘You guys are just a niche. You’re a funky thing from the ‘70s, a nice experiment, but not really ready to scale today. “The program helped us to rebuild capacity and greater sector solidarity. We rebuilt the development expertise, we developed stronger, more resilient models, we created a real pipeline and we began to mature our approach. “The painful lesson from our history is that you can’t build capacity and then turn off the taps for 30 years and expect it to simply be there when the opportunity strikes again.” Griffith University researcher Sidsel Grimstad told attendees that the Norwegian housing stock was about 15 per cent or 280,000 co-operative homes, including 28 per cent in Oslo. About a million Norwegians (of a population of 5.5 million) are members of a co-operative, including about half-a-million members of OBOS, the country’s largest co-op. ▲ OBOS has been developing co-operative housing in Norway since 1929. “But the next line is very important, because in the past five years we’ve had a revolt among members, saying that our equity-based housing hubs are not affordable,” Grimstad said. “So they have just recently decided, in 2024, to implement a shared equity model of up to 50 per cent.” Australians set target as rental market hits critical situation ACHA chair Liz Thomas is advocating for policymakers to set a target growing co-ops from less than 1 per cent to 10 per cent of Australian housing stock. To achieve that, Thomas said that the sector knows it must “move beyond sharing stories and anecdotes”. “To move away from being niche, being cute, being folksy.” Thomas pointed to research demonstrating that co-op housing has similar establishment costs to community housing, but greater social and economic outcomes. NSW Rental Commissioner Trina Jones said that her state had about a million rental households and that housing affordability was “putting many, many households under significant pressure”. “In terms of the rent to income, it’s sitting at about 33.5 per cent in greater Sydney and about 41.9 per cent in the rest of NSW,” Jones said. ▲ Common Equity NSW's 13 co-operative homes at 3 Lasa Street, Cabramatta, are designed for Vietnamese-background seniors. “Just a couple of weeks ago, I met a woman who was living on a balcony in Haymarket ... having to clean the house and pay $400 per week for the privilege. SGS Economics &amp; Planning principal Alison Holloway said that 46 per cent of co-op tenancies in NSW were still operating after a decade. In the private rental market, “tenancies of 10 years and more were almost non-existent”. “Within the co-op sector, residents stayed an average of just under eight years. And that’s compared to 2.3 years in the private market,” Holloway said. “So, that’s a real challenge as we’re seeing more people renting for longer. “At the same time that we’re seeing a lot more households renting, we’re seeing the affordability of renting decrease as well.”

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Patrick Lau
Fri 25 Sep 26

Potential Rises as Co-Op Housing Sector Eyes Stratospheric Growth