What it is
A scoping review by Carolina Alday-Mondaca and Rebecca Schiff, published open access in Social Sciences & Humanities Open (2025). It asks how cooperative housing affects physical health, mental health and wellbeing, drawing on research in English and Spanish published between January 2004 and April 2024, following PRISMA guidelines.
How it was done
The authors searched 12 academic databases, including Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO, Redalyc, Dialnet and SciELO, and included 35 studies. Most come from Spain (11), Canada (8) and the United States (5), and most were published from 2020 onwards (22). About half are qualitative and only a handful quantitative. Cohousing was deliberately excluded as a different housing model.
What it finds
Cooperative housing is associated with social inclusion, less isolation and better mental and physical health. The benefits reported are strongest among older people and in intergenerational communities, and the review also points to low-income families. The mechanisms are social and emotional support, mutual aid, security and collective empowerment. Examples include cooperatives designed from a feminist perspective to reduce women's economic dependency, and Buenos Aires cooperatives that combine housing with social services.
Where the evidence stops
The studies differ widely in design and population, and most are cross-sectional, so they cannot show cause and effect. Diverse populations are under-represented, and qualitative and quantitative methods are rarely combined. The authors call for longitudinal research.
For policy
The authors see expanded, inclusive cooperative programmes as a tool against housing insecurity, supported by public-private partnerships and new financing, and name the barriers: limited public support, governance challenges and socioeconomic inequality.