Focus sur: NASCO Properties

Chaque semaine, le Réseau CoHabitat vous fait découvrir un projet d’habitat participatif documenté sur la base de données cohabitat.io.

NASCO is an alliance of group-equity housing cooperatives helping to build a world where every community benenfits from resident-controlled housing by educationg and organizing youth and emerging leaders to create and carte for co-ops in the US and Canada.

This "co-op of co-ops" was created in 1988 as a property holding and management corporation to assist new student housing cooperatives with financing and management.

It was formed originally as a way of saving the Inter-Cooperative Council in Austin from bankruptcy. Borrowing money from the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, NASCO Properties purchased a house from the Inter-Cooperative Council in Austin and then leased it back, keeping total membership and income to them at the same level while giving them a cash infusion. This kept them alive until the housing market recovered a few years later. Building on this base of property ownership, NASCO Properties found ways of buying houses in other places and then leasing them back to local cooperatives.

Since then, NP has become an important development tool for student and community groups that want to start group equity co-ops but do not have access to sufficient resources.

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