Permanent Affordability
Through Community Ownership
Increasing rents and risk of displacement are making life harder in. We are working to buy properties for permanent affordability.
We think ownership matters. Our members live, work, or are connected to Waterloo Region. Learn about membership and investing for local impact.
Union Co-operative is a new model for permanently preserving affordability. Learn more about the Co-operative, its members, supporters, and board.
In the News
Ottawa launches $1.5-billion fund to protect existing rental apartments
April5, 2024 by Rachelle Younglai and Erin Anderssen in the Globe and Mail
“We know we are losing affordable apartments faster than we can build them,” said Sean Campbell, the executive director of Union Co-operative, a group that recently purchased a 58-unit apartment building in Kitchener, ON and committed to holding rents to allowed provincial increases even if tenants left.
A radical response to the housing crisis
August 2023 by Jon Parsons in the University of Waterloo Magazine
“We think Union Co-operative is the first of its kind in Canada, using a co-operative to raise funds from community members, charitable foundations and institutional partners to address the affordable housing crisis,” Campbell said. “The way it works is that community members — folks like you and I who care about affordability and local ownership — can become members of the co-operative and invest.”
Could land trusts help solve Ontario housing-affordability crisis?
February 15th, 2023 by Kelsey Rolfe in TVO Today
“The CLT movement has brought attention to the critical importance of community preservation and acquisition of existing affordable housing,” says Kamizaki. “We’re losing more than what’s being supplied. The question becomes, how can we protect existing affordable housing? Because the implications are huge: Once we lose it, what options do we have for existing tenants?”
Permanent affordable housing? This grassroots co-operative just bought 58 units in Kitchener
November 18, 2022 by Robert Williams in the Waterloo Region Record
Union: Sustainable Development Co-Operative announced this week it has bought two apartment buildings on Lancaster Street totalling 58 units, with plans to build an additional two accessible units in the building’s ground-floor garages.
