Solutions to the housing crisis? Co-operative living 1970 to today

The housing crisis plays an increasingly decisive and effective role in everyday life. It also plays a prominent role in academic and public policy debates. While the private rental sector is the focus of significant academic and public debate, the interactions between the housing crisis and housing co-operatives, and the experiences of members of housing co-operatives, has been less documented. Using a critical framework, I will foreground the experiences of members of housing co-operatives to understand the social impacts of co-operative living on members and the wider community, and the interaction of this with the housing crisis. I will be focused on the experiential value of gender in co-operative living and the housing co-operatives of Brighton since 1970, with a comparative look at housing co-operatives in Manchester and London in the same period. I will aim to produce research which foregrounds the role of housing co-operatives in social policy solutions to the housing crisis. In particular, this research will focus on the ways in which cooperative living can provide social policy responses to the housing crisis that will undo the uneven impacts of the housing crisis on low-income women.