Co-Op Life

When Claire and I first moved to Vancouver and were looking for accommodation, we were told to look into co-ops. A community living cooperatively together that share resources, support each other and take on responsibilities that akin to improve the space and conditions of everyone in the collective, not the individual. Sounded like some weird hippie commune. 

Last year, we moved into one of those “weird hippie communes” and it turns out to be just a little weird, just the right amount of hippie and the only thing about it that comes close to commune is the community.

We don’t have coooperative living in Ireland, so it’s not something I grew up around. But living in one does feel oddly, reasssuringly, familiar. 

Growing up in the countryside in Ireland, we knew everyone. I had three grandmothers as a child, only one of whom was actually related to me. The other two were people in my community that I held as family. We had a big commmunity for support and safety. If my family needed something, there was, and still is back home, always someone who could help, or at the very least, someone who knew exactly who to contact. 

Living in a co-op, you know all your neighbours. You get to meet them daily in the shared spaces like the laundry room or popping across the courtyard to pick up the mail. The first week we were here I was a short an onion for dinner. Moving is always stressful, and shopping was the last thing on my mind until it was too late and I was halfway through meal-prep. I went downstairs, knocked on our new neighbours door and kindly asked if they had an onion spare. We returned the favour a few months later with something else. But even if we hadn’t been given that chance, it wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t the physical good or the act itself, but the community cooperation making life better for everyone, in small ways as much as the big ways. 

When I was a kid my family went to Trabolgan Holiday Village nine years in a row for our summer vacation, usually around the end of May. We almost always went with the same group of families, friends from around home, and we tried to always get house’s that were close to each other. From the front door of our little holiday home we could see the doors to our friends homes for the week, and we could go over, meet up and head off to whatever activity we had planned that day. I have countless fond memories from those years. Especially the wave pool. 

Ada’s best friend lives mere feet away. From our front door we can see his and regularly bump into each other coming and going. During the summer, Ada can talk to them directly from the balcony. As they grow up and become more independent, they’ll have that safety and freedom that comes with living in a small, supportive community. We don’t have a wave pool though. I’ll bring that up at the next general meeting. 

Living in a co-op is different than what I was used to after years of renting. Ever since I moved out of home and started renting, I’ve rarely known the people renting around me, even if they’re next door in the same building. Now I know all of our neighbours to see and say hi too, and most by name. Renting, you have no control over the building, but in a co-op, we decide on everything together. Anything that might affect the co-op as a whole has to be voted on by the membership. My voice counts. That doesn’t mean I’ll get my wave pool. 

And as members, it’s in our interests that the co-op is well looked after, so we have committees we can join that look after everything from financials and maintenance to social events. Claire and I both are on committees, but also contribute in our own way. We help out at social events like Thanksgiving, and the big community wide cleanup weekends, and I contribute regularly to the monthly newsletter. 

To an outsider (like, way outsider. Non Canadian), co-op living does sound a bit strange. But we are much more secure here than when renting and have a community that can support us and that we can support back, which is definitely something both Claire and I miss from home. And given the cost of housing here and elsewhere, co-op living is certainly the brighter option for us, and we’d recommend anyone to look into it.