Cope Housing Association, the Section 21 company that pioneered cooperative housing in South Africa, is set to close at the end of the month.
Residents of the company’s seven cooperatives in the Johannesburg inner city — Newtown, Troyeville, Bertrams, Tswelopele, Everest Court, Philani Ma-Afrika and Hadar Court — fear eviction and blame the imminent closure on poor management and the negligent use of donor funds. Cope, on the other hand, says the company’s closure is a result of residents’ non-payment of services and the fact that a funding contract with the Norwegian government ended in June.
Hailed at its inception in 1989 as a solution to South Africa’s housing problems, Cope’s cooperative housing model is based on a Norwegian concept devised for low-income earners, which recognises the landlord (Cope) and the member (resident) as co-owners of the project. To become a member of the local cooperatives, applicants have to be South African citizens and qualify for a housing subsidy.
While residents say they have been assured at residential board meetings that they would not lose their units, uncertainty remains. “We are not sure what’s going to happen — but if it happens that we are forcefully evicted from our units, we’ll fight to the bitter end,” said one of a group of young men, who did not want to be named.
Cope maintains residents will not lose their units. Operations manager Alison Wilson told the Mail & Guardian a new property management agent would be appointed to oversee maintenance, payment for services and other administrative responsibilities.
Those who would be asked to leave the cooperative, said Newtown board chairperson Zachariah Matsela, would be rental defaulters.
In response to claims that funds had been misused, Wilson conceded that “in the past, the NGO ethos did not put sufficient emphasis on business, and donor money was used negligently”. But she added that the failure of residential boards to conduct the association’s business properly had contributed to Cope’s closure.