Building, Dwelling, Sustaining: Learning from Women’s Cooperatives

Abstract

Amidst today’s housing crisis, there is much to learn from the large-scale cooperative housing experiments that occurred in Canada throughout the 1980s. In Toronto, the Beguinage and Constance Hamilton—two cooperatives for women— developed from urgent calls to reimagine single-women households. Like the Arauco, housing for Chilean refugees, these identity-led initiatives remain successful examples of non-profit housing. By analysing the participatory processes involving politicians, academics, and architects, as well as activist collectives that spurred and emerged from these projects, this paper draws upon the notion of expanded commons to illustrate the broader socio-poli-tical discourses surrounding women’s cooperative housing. Using the framework of the “carescape” proposed by Sophie Bowlby, the paper explores the socio-temporal dimensions of informal care practices and reveals the processes of maintenance that are required to support long-term and flexible care exchanges and to promote the accessibility of collectivity. Follow-ups with current cooperative members, architects, and advocates for these initiatives show that cooperative housing has built communities and provided financially viable modes of housing, although more meaningful efforts are needed to sustain continuous participation and community cohesion, over time, so that a cooperative can be a lifelong home.

Image: Women Plan Toronto (WPT) poster, derived from collaborative workshops, 1986. © University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections.