Q.Define a housing co-operative society and state any four of its features.

A housing co-operative society is the small person's collective route to a home of his own, built by pooling resources.

Definition. A housing co-operative society is a voluntary association of persons of small and moderate means, registered under the co-operative law (in Maharashtra, the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960), which pools its members' resources to acquire land and to build or arrange houses or flats for them at a reasonable cost. Its guiding idea is self-help through mutual help, and its aim is to provide members with an affordable home and to free them from costly private builders and landlords rather than to earn profit.

Four features:

1. Voluntary and open membership — Any competent person of small means who needs a home and accepts the rules may join freely, without discrimination on grounds of caste, creed or politics.
2. Special object of housing — Unlike other co-operatives, its purpose is to solve the housing problem of members — obtaining land and building, allotting or maintaining homes for them.
3. Capital from members plus long-term loans — The working capital comes from members' shares and contributions, supplemented on a large scale by long-term loans from co-operative housing bodies, banks and government schemes, because building is costly. …

Students often give only the definition and forget the required number of features, or list general co-operative features without connecting them to housing. Always give exactly …