> ... new residents buy shares to gain admission to the building ... > When a resident moves out, their shares are returned at face value. There is no capital g

> ... new residents buy shares to gain admission to the building ... > When a resident moves out, their shares are returned at face value. There is no capital gain. That sounds a lot like renting but with a deposit. This article is annoying, because renting isn't fundamentally different because its a non-profit renting out the units. Edit: just read a bit further, and it says: > The couple needed to buy shares for around 25,000 francs ($31,000) ... That's a lot of money, and this explains why it's possible to offer such a lower rent. > ... the rent: 2,400 francs... We realized that a commercial apartment of the same size would be around 1,000 francs more expensive The co-op could rent out the apartment without the large deposit for 1,000 francs more, so if you look at the deposit as a loan, this means that the co-op is paying about 1,000 / 25,000 = 4% interest on the deposit. If we look at the past performance of a European stock index (I arbitrarily chose STOXX Europe 600) we can see that the annualized return over the last 20 years was ~3.5%. The anualized return for your money converting to USD and buying S&P 500 20 years ago, then converting back to EUR is ~6.4%. Because your "investment" into a co-op isn't diversified, it is conceivable that these co-ops are riskier than investing in an index. So it's not clear that this is actually a good deal for the renters. > The city of Lausanne gave the co-op a 90-year lease that was cheaper than other housing projects, and bought shares in the co-op for lower-income residents. Natacha Litzistorf, the city councilwoman in Lausanne in charge of housing, architecture and the environment, said cooperative housing can help forestall the extreme segregation of rich and poor and help a city live “at peace with itself.” The capital requirement is fulfilled by the government for poorer renters. This fact, together with "gave a 90-year lease that was cheaper than other housing projects" makes this work like a rent subsidization scheme.