4 ms·

Are any HNers members of any co-ops? What have your experiences been like?

luckylion 4y ago
I'm a member of banking coop (but don't personally use them), and I'm renting from a housing coop. It's cheap, but they're also much more tolerant of deviance than commercial landlords are so you have to deal with loud neighbors, smoking in the stair case etc. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who can afford to pay 30% more, quality of life is important. I should've moved already, but I'm lazy and inertia is a beast.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  "I'm renting from a housing coop. It's cheap, but they're also much more tolerant of deviance than commercial landlords are so you have to deal with loud neighbors, smoking in the stair case etc." In your opinion, its equal or worse when compared to renting? Your coop situation sounds like my experience renting apartments.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    It's worse than at the places where I rented before. I might've been lucky with friendly neighbors and it's a small sample size, but I've heard similar experiences from friends. You could still get a bad experience with a commercial land lord of course (like you seem to have, you have my sympathies, problems at home suck). What I did understand is that higher rent works as a filter. People with signification socialization problems usually aren't making a lot of money and can't afford high rent, so a building with high rent will filter them out. That's not to say that you'll have great neighbors there, but they probably won't throw trash out of the window or be overwhelmed by concepts like airflow or sound propagation, and they'll have at least some amount of impulse control. I'd avoid properties with government-subsidized apartments if I ever looked for an apartment again.
    - shanebellone 4y ago
      "so a building with high rent will filter them out" This is probably true. I mostly rented houses, but the few apartments were nightmares (and cheap!). In my experience, small to medium landlords were the worst. 1- or 2-unit owners are easier to deal with but (sometimes) slower to fix problems as they arise. "Mom and pop" rentals were by far the best experience all around. I now own a house in a small city. I've noticed each street varies in quality and safety. Streets with densely packed multifamily homes have littered streets and more crime. Single family neighborhoods have less trash (none on mine) but are more likely to fall into disrepair than income producing property. I've also lived in the bad area of my city. I stayed there longer than anywhere. My landlord and neighbors were great. That street was special despite being densely packed multifamily homes. There are many variables affecting livability. Though, I do wonder about the efficacy of modeling apartment/condo/street satisfaction. Pricing seems less like a filter, and more like a KPI representing maximization of some hidden variables (those affecting housing satisfaction). Also, I wonder if a dollar value could be placed on "good neighbors".
      - luckylion 4y ago
        I don't think that there's a hard number anywhere that you can say "this will be good, that will be terrible", and you can always have good or bad luck. I've noticed the littering too, maybe that's an indicator -- but in the end, it could be one person doing the littering, so it's probably not super reliable. The dollar value is hard to estimate. I'd pay a few hundred extra to only have neighborly neighbors, but I probably wouldn't if my budget was tighter. Would I pay 2x or 3x the price? It depends. When my one neighbor was escalating hard, I totally would've, but when he's mostly normal? Probably not.
- tyingq 4y ago
  > much more tolerant of deviance Not dismissing your point, but there's probably also less of the bad side of landlord/owner-association overreach.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Absolutely, most of that is just gone. You have to really misbehave to get kicked out (i.e. violent crime against neighbors or constant partying over months will do it, but that's about it), and they're not looking for profit maximization. They'll do modernizations, but rents increase very reasonably, and they're very accommodating around special needs (e.g. for someone who had an accident and ended up in a wheelchair, they created a paved path from the parking lot to his balcony where a 1m lift will take him up). But on a personal level, would you prefer a landlord always looking for ways to raise rents, or a paranoid drunk guy hammering on your door at 2am accusing you of spying on them and yelling that they'll cut your fingers off? I'd take a rent hike to avoid that.
- hungryforcodes 4y ago
  Personally, I don't see any problems here. I guess it just comes down to taste. Also I enjoy colorful neighbour's:)
  - luckylion 4y ago
    "Colorful neighbors" also varies in meaning. I've heard that claim before, but none of the people lived in a crime hotspot even though it doesn't get more colorful and is extremely cheap. There's "my neighbor works for the Indian consulate and invited me over to celebrate something" colorful and then there's "my neighbor beats his wife" colorful.

I'm a member of banking coop (but don't personally use them), and I'm renting from a housing coop. It's cheap, but they're also much more tolerant of deviance than commercial landlords are so you have to deal with loud neighbors, smoking in the stair case etc. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who can afford to pay 30% more, quality of life is important. I should've moved already, but I'm lazy and inertia is a beast.

shanebellone 4y ago
"I'm renting from a housing coop. It's cheap, but they're also much more tolerant of deviance than commercial landlords are so you have to deal with loud neighbors, smoking in the stair case etc." In your opinion, its equal or worse when compared to renting? Your coop situation sounds like my experience renting apartments.
- luckylion 4y ago
  It's worse than at the places where I rented before. I might've been lucky with friendly neighbors and it's a small sample size, but I've heard similar experiences from friends. You could still get a bad experience with a commercial land lord of course (like you seem to have, you have my sympathies, problems at home suck). What I did understand is that higher rent works as a filter. People with signification socialization problems usually aren't making a lot of money and can't afford high rent, so a building with high rent will filter them out. That's not to say that you'll have great neighbors there, but they probably won't throw trash out of the window or be overwhelmed by concepts like airflow or sound propagation, and they'll have at least some amount of impulse control. I'd avoid properties with government-subsidized apartments if I ever looked for an apartment again.
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    "so a building with high rent will filter them out" This is probably true. I mostly rented houses, but the few apartments were nightmares (and cheap!). In my experience, small to medium landlords were the worst. 1- or 2-unit owners are easier to deal with but (sometimes) slower to fix problems as they arise. "Mom and pop" rentals were by far the best experience all around. I now own a house in a small city. I've noticed each street varies in quality and safety. Streets with densely packed multifamily homes have littered streets and more crime. Single family neighborhoods have less trash (none on mine) but are more likely to fall into disrepair than income producing property. I've also lived in the bad area of my city. I stayed there longer than anywhere. My landlord and neighbors were great. That street was special despite being densely packed multifamily homes. There are many variables affecting livability. Though, I do wonder about the efficacy of modeling apartment/condo/street satisfaction. Pricing seems less like a filter, and more like a KPI representing maximization of some hidden variables (those affecting housing satisfaction). Also, I wonder if a dollar value could be placed on "good neighbors".
    - luckylion 4y ago
      I don't think that there's a hard number anywhere that you can say "this will be good, that will be terrible", and you can always have good or bad luck. I've noticed the littering too, maybe that's an indicator -- but in the end, it could be one person doing the littering, so it's probably not super reliable. The dollar value is hard to estimate. I'd pay a few hundred extra to only have neighborly neighbors, but I probably wouldn't if my budget was tighter. Would I pay 2x or 3x the price? It depends. When my one neighbor was escalating hard, I totally would've, but when he's mostly normal? Probably not.
tyingq 4y ago
> much more tolerant of deviance Not dismissing your point, but there's probably also less of the bad side of landlord/owner-association overreach.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Absolutely, most of that is just gone. You have to really misbehave to get kicked out (i.e. violent crime against neighbors or constant partying over months will do it, but that's about it), and they're not looking for profit maximization. They'll do modernizations, but rents increase very reasonably, and they're very accommodating around special needs (e.g. for someone who had an accident and ended up in a wheelchair, they created a paved path from the parking lot to his balcony where a 1m lift will take him up). But on a personal level, would you prefer a landlord always looking for ways to raise rents, or a paranoid drunk guy hammering on your door at 2am accusing you of spying on them and yelling that they'll cut your fingers off? I'd take a rent hike to avoid that.
hungryforcodes 4y ago
Personally, I don't see any problems here. I guess it just comes down to taste. Also I enjoy colorful neighbour's:)
- luckylion 4y ago
  "Colorful neighbors" also varies in meaning. I've heard that claim before, but none of the people lived in a crime hotspot even though it doesn't get more colorful and is extremely cheap. There's "my neighbor works for the Indian consulate and invited me over to celebrate something" colorful and then there's "my neighbor beats his wife" colorful.