The co-op we needed
I was disappointed that your recent cover story (“Residents Plots a New Direction for the North Side,” 7/14/2016) did not reference the Northside Community Co-op, an attempt by residents to start a homegrown food cooperative in 2005 in the model of Regent Street Co-op, Yahara River Co-op and the south side’s Allied Community Co-op — all neighborhood-driven markets that have received financial support from the Willy Street Co-op to foster truly local food sources.
A decade ago, the Willy Street Co-op chain chose not to invest in the Northside Community Co-op, saving their resources for multimillion-dollar expansions in less blue-collar areas. Now that the Great Recession has paved the way for the arrival of wealthier, young professionals, the $42 million-a-year Willy Street brand will swoop into the north side, trying as well to reach out to affluent shoppers in Waunakee, DeForest, and Sun Prairie and capture commuter traffic on Northport.
We north-side residents need a store that works like the Northside Farmers’ Market, not like a supermarket chain. We need local products that don’t travel so far and drive up costs. We need a local store where neighbors come together after church and before the game to catch up. We need a store that welcomes all north-side residents by lowering prices, like the farmers’ markets do by doubling the dollars of shoppers with food stamps.
Jackson Foote (via bicycle)
Alternative living
It is interesting that when discussing cooperative living, articles tend to focus only on the larger-scale formal cooperatives when there are easier ways to do it (“A Forever Home,” 7/14/2016).
In the 1970s, faced with the high costs of housing in Chicago, my family and another family decided to buy a two-flat together. Each would have their own living space but share maintenance, garden and the common areas. We wanted to do a co-op, but the legal fees and bank hesitation caused us to instead buy it as tenants in common (yes, the bank made us communists).
When we moved in we were surprised to find a wide range of similar cooperative living arrangements on the block. Some were like us, friends sharing a two- or three-flat. Some were more traditional arrangements, multigenerational families (often Chinese or Middle Eastern) co-owning and sharing a living space. There was also a house of gay men and a three-flat totally inhabited and redesigned for people who were deaf.
If approached thoughtfully, there are a lot of benefits other than economic to cooperative housing: working together on maintenance, children having more adult role models, etc.
George Hagenauer (via email)