HOUSING CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY APPROACH TO HOUSING DELIVERY
According to Dogarawa (2005), Co-operative Societies emerged as an option explored by the majority which are mostly low income group and are somewhat alienated by the privileged minority that control the resources of an economy. The Societies have become a strong, vibrant and viable economic alternative in a period when many people feel helpless, powerless or disenfranchised to change their living conditions. Co-operative Societies are formed principally to meet peoples’ mutual needs based on the idea that together, a group of people can achieve goals that none of them could achieve alone. The formation and goal of Co-operative Societies is not to meet unessential collective or individual needs. Rather, it is aimed at providing basic needs which otherwise might take a long time to realize or completely unaffordable without assistance.
The UN-Habitat (2002) identified co-operatives as an important way of achieving the two goals of Habitat Agenda which are “Adequate Shelter for all” and “Sustainable Human Settlement Development”. Also, the Global Strategy for Shelter to the year 2000 states that implementation of a shelter strategy will involve the redistribution of responsibilities to a variety of actors and stakeholders, including individual households, cooperative groups, informal and formal private producers, governmental agencies and ministries (UN-Habitat, 1989).
Co-operatives are people-centred and are owned, controlled, used and invested in by their members, who have a responsibility to support their co-operative by being an active member. In return, the co-operative must ethically service the needs of its members (Cooper 2012). Members are the heart and soul of a co-operative. The main purpose of a co-operative is for all members to join with a group of like-minded people to share in the benefits of co-operation, which are designed to meet the social, economic and cultural needs of its members. Co-operatives promote member development through their participation in governing the organisation, and usually provide local social or economic development, such as providing employment, goods or services that would not otherwise be available or affordable to the members.
Whether the term is used as co-operative housing or housing co-operative the literature on the subject matter is extant with conceptual clarifications (Wikipedia 2013, Sazama, 2000; Fasakin, 1998; NCHAA, 2001; Kennedy, 1996). The different definitions however reflect varying typologies rather than kinds of co-operatives. For instance, Wikipedia defined Housing co-operative as “a legal entity, usually a corporation, renting own real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings, and that, it is one type of housing tenure”.
According to Sazama (2000) housing cooperative is one in which member-residents jointly own their building, democratically control it and receive the social and economic benefits accruable from living in and owning a cooperative. Housing co-operatives are often established to meet the needs and visions of certain groups of people, such as people from low income households, of specific ethnic or religious background, artistic persuasion, age, sex, sexual preference, disabilities, or environmental awareness.The general objective function of the housing co-operatives is to provide for the low and medium income class, decent and affordable housing. In terms of structure and function, they are mostly set up by civic organisations or private realtors with partial funding from governments which in most cases act as policy maker or facilitator (Adeboyejo & Oderinde, 2013).
In Nigeria, co-operative housing is not new, as the principle is embedded in the customs of many Nigerian ethnic nationalities. Among the Yorubas of South-western Nigeria, for instance, informal co-operative means, known as aaro in local language, have been used to achieve aspects of home ownership. This involved pooling physical efforts of relatives and friends, and obtaining loans, aajo or esusu from saving societies. However, there are very few, if any formal, or real housing cooperative movements in the country (Adeboyejo & Oderinde, 2013).