Co-operation · Ch 9 — Housing Co-operative Society
Meaning and Definition of a Housing Co-operative Society
Meaning and Definition of a Housing Co-operative Society
A house is one of the three basic needs of every human being, along with food and clothing. Yet in a growing town or city, owning a home of one's own is far beyond the reach of an ordinary salary-earner. Land is scarce and costly, building materials are expensive, private builders demand large sums at once, and the whole task of buying a plot, obtaining approvals and constructing a house is complicated and full of risk for a single person of small means. The housing co-operative society was created as the ordinary person's collective answer to this problem — by joining hands, many people of moderate income can together achieve what none of them could achieve alone.
A housing co-operative society is a voluntary association of persons of small and moderate means who join together to solve their housing problem by pooling their resources to acquire land, and to build or arrange houses or flats for their members at a reasonable cost. Its single guiding idea is once again self-help through mutual help — the members are at the same time the owners of the society and the persons for whose benefit it works. Profit is not the driving motive; the real aim is to provide members with a decent, affordable home and to free them from the high prices and unfair dealings of private builders and landlords.
The Core Idea in One Line
A housing co-operative society lets many people of small means pool their money to buy land and build homes together, so that each member can own a house or flat at a fair price that he could never have afforded on his own.
Because it is a co-operative, it is registered under the co-operative law of the state (in Maharashtra, the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960), it enjoys a separate legal existence apart from its members, and it works on the settled principles of co-operation — open and voluntary membership, democratic 'one member, one vote' control, and service before profit. In the Maharashtra Std XI Co-operation course, the housing co-operative society is studied as one of the most important non-credit co-operatives, because it meets a need felt most sharply in fast-growing towns and cities.
A voluntary association of persons of small means, registered under the co-operative law, that pools its members' resources to acquire land and to build or arrange houses or flats for them at a reasonable cost on the principle of self-help through mutual help.
The guiding motto of co-operation — members solve a common problem (here, the need for a home) by helping one another and pooling their limited resources, so that together they achieve what none could achieve alone.