National Co-op Community Services

Helping organizations locally and nationally serve and grow the co-op community.

UHAB can help your organization or city agency explore limited-equity co-ops as a viable affordable housing model. We have decades of experience consulting with municipal groups to successfully expand affordable homeownership opportunities, assisted lenders to learn how to finance co-ops, and trained nonprofits that gained necessary skills to support limited-equity housing co-ops in their neighborhoods.

We have been championing limited-equity co-ops for almost 50 years, and we have the tools to help your organization do the same. Contact dean@uhab.org to learn more about our incubator series and other consulting services we offer.

UHAB is currently providing consulting and/or training services in the following cities:

  • Chicago, IL
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Nashville, TN
  • Portland, ME
  • Rochester, NY
  • Seattle, WA
  • St Paul, MN
  • Waterbury, CT

Limited equity co-ops protect affordability long-term.

We believe housing works best when residents are in control.
Why Limited Equity? →
Common Questions →
What is an HDFC co-op? →

For generations, limited-equity cooperatives helped provide housing stability for low-income communities, immigrants, working families and people of color. There are currently over 320,000 units of limited-equity co-ops across the United States, but the interest in and demand for community controlled affordable housing goes far beyond what exists today.

In the 1920s, immigrants streaming into Lower East Side tenements sought refuge in some of the earliest limited-equity co-ops. Garment workers and other trade unions took the model and developed tens of thousands of units to serve low wage workers across New York City. But this isn’t just a New York story– neglect and abandonment in redlined and distressed urban neighborhoods across the country was the start of a new wave of co-op development in Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, Detroit, Cleveland, Oakland, Des Moines, and Omaha. Limited-equity co-ops created from abandoned, tax delinquent properties were an opportunity for low income residents in communities of color to become homeowners and with the support and services of the co-op, stand as a bulwark against deterioration, crime and poverty and a foundation on which neighborhoods were rebuilt. Today, these co-op communities can stay in place as neighborhoods gentrify and the speculative real estate market keeps housing out of reach for so many.

Today, there is a serious affordability crisis in housing. More than ever, people are turning to community land trusts and limited-equity co-ops as an affordable housing solution; one that provides the mutual support and co-op services that residents need to succeed and prosper.

Cooperation among Cooperatives

The 6th Principle Coalition is a group of practitioners who are committed to serve and grow the limited-equity housing cooperative sector. Embodying the spirit of the 6th Principle of Cooperation, “Cooperation among Cooperatives,” the Coalition’s membership unites the national limited-equity co-op community of over 165,000 units of housing, 40 organizations and more than 100 practitioners who serve those co-ops across the USA.