A Brief History of Affordable Housing Cooperatives in the United States

For over 75 years housing cooperatives have been a source of affordable housing. Currently, the 376,000 dwelling units of affordable cooperatives is equivalent to seventeen percent of the rent reduction units owned by publichousing authorities. Understanding that affordable cooperatives have been developed under varying historical circumstances provides insights on how they could play a role in the future supply of affordable housing. The history of affordable co-ops starts during the 1920s and after World War II with the ethnic, union, and New York government financed co-ops. Through the 1960s and the early 1970s cooperatives were financed by various federal direct assistance programs. Since the late 1970s co-ops have been sponsored by nonprofit organizations and by federal and municipal government privatization programs. A workable institutional structure for affordable cooperatives has developed as a result of this historical evolution.

The Old Ball Game: Organization of Nineteenth Century Professional Base Ball Clubs

The first professional base ball clubs came in two varieties: stock clubs, which paid their players fixed wages, and player cooperatives, in which players shared the proceeds after expenses. We argue that stock clubs were formed with players of known ability, while co-ops were formed with players of unknown ability. Although residual claimancy served to screen out players of inferior ability in co-ops, the process was imperfect due to the team production problem. Based on this argument, we suggest that co-ops functioned as an early minor league system where untried players could seek to prove themselves and eventually move up to wage teams. Empirical analysis of data on player performance and experience in early professional base ball provides support for the theory.