[WS:] Absolutely. But it may well be that we are like blind men touching different parts of an elephant and telling what the animal looks like.
I was for some time involved in housing cooperatives, and my experience was that this was a hard sell to most people outside certain ethnic groups (mainly Blacks and Eastern European Jews.) More to the point, the coop that I was a part of was created as an anti-dote to problems with public housing and it was very successful comparing to many failed attempts of "urban renewal" - at least in Baltimore. I was surprised that the example was not emulated. I understand that many of these "urban renewal" projects were driven by developers trying to make a buck, but that hardly explains why coops were not emulated. From a construction point of view, housing is housing, regardless how it is owned, so developers would make their money anyway. The coop that I was a part of consisted or row houses rehabilitated by developers - no different than privately owned rehab homes in Baltimore. It is also my understanding that DC coops face a similar problem despite much higher housing prices which, one would think, would make housing coops more attractive.
However, it would be nice to have some more systematic study about the prospects of and obstacles to housing and other forms of cooperatives in the Etats Unis. Or maybe they exist, but I a not aware of them.
Wojtek