Fledgling federation

By Marianne Moershel

Saturday, July 09, 2005

We launch our history project with the First Annual Report, April 1976, Toronto Non-Profit Co-operative Housing Federation. It is one of my favourite 'historical' documents among the many archive boxes we've filled over the years. This is partly because during the late 1970s, Bruce and I both worked at what eventually became the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto (CHFT).

Nostalgia is not the only reason for starting with this annual report. Of course, it documents the organization's goals, finances and activities and serves a benchmark for measuring the growth of co-op housing in Toronto and neighbouring regions. In April 1976, there were eight member organizations providing access to affordable, non-profit, co-operative housing. Today, CHFT represents 45,000 people living in more than 160 non-profit housing co-operatives located in Toronto and York Region.

The document is notable because it:

• Manages to wag a finger or two at politicians and bureaucrats for problems with the design and implementation of housing programs. Thirty years later one government or another still manages to delay or prevent implementation of joint programs that could help Canadians obtain and operate stable, non-profit housing that they can control. And thirty years later, people who have never stepped inside a housing co-operative still purport to know what is best.
• Describes the non-hierarchical staff structure we adopted in those early days. "This does not mean that we do not have a structure; we just do not have an authoritarian structure."
• Highlights the desire to "present a unified voice" and to "undertake co-operative action in order to benefit each member group as well as the third sector as a whole." The 'one-for-all, all-for-one' spirit still energizes the co-operative housing movement today.
• Demonstrates what accountability really means. The report goes into great detail about where every dollar came from and how each dollar was allocated. Scrounging together funds from various government initiatives (it was the 1970s after all) we managed to employ the equivalent of 7 full time people with $117,000 in annual revenues.
• Emphasizes the importance of delivering services that are supported and governed by the housing co-operatives that benefit from the services. The third-sector is not just about being non-profit. Community ownership or community control are equally important elements.

The document effuses optimism and less naivety than you might expect. There are some delightful nuggets, such as the 'we have not made the same mistake again' comment on page 22. The middle section includes one-page summaries of the federation's ten members and names the executive and staff for each. Some of those names are still on staff or volunteer rosters of co-op housing organizations in Canada!

Send an email with your comments or a story to HistoryProject@Snowonder.ca.