Resource overview and provenance
This resource is an article published by Shelterforce and written by David J. Thompson. It examines the housing supply crisis facing low- to moderate-income households in the United States and argues that Sweden’s cooperative housing sector offers a replicable model for expanding permanently affordable, moderate-income homeownership.
The problem: a missing financing lane for moderate-income households
The article distinguishes between U.S. subsidy approaches for renters and owners. It notes that programs such as the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit help expand rental supply for lower-income households, but there is no comparable, targeted funding stream for households earning roughly 80% to 120% of Area Median Income (AMI). With limited supply aimed at this band, demand rises and, in many urban markets, moderate-income households are priced out of homeownership altogether.
Sweden’s cooperative housing scale and institutional architecture
Sweden is presented as having the highest number of housing cooperative units per capita in Europe (among countries reporting data via Cooperative Housing International), and cooperatives make up almost a quarter of all housing in the country. Two national cooperative organizations are highlighted: HSB Riksförbund (about 350,000 cooperative units) and Riksbyggen (about 200,000 units). These organizations both develop new cooperatives and convert existing multifamily buildings (public and private) into cooperative ownership.
HSB membership, waiting lists, and savings as development capital
The article details HSB as the largest cooperative organization. As of 2022, HSB’s cooperatives had more than 675,000 active members across over 4,000 tenant-owned cooperative housing associations. These associations own and manage almost 350,000 apartments and over 25,000 rental flats. Access to units is often mediated by waiting lists, which tend to be longer in large cities and shorter in small-to-medium cities. A key mechanism described is HSB’s savings plan: prospective residents can improve their priority by joining HSB and depositing savings. Around 125,000 people are saving for cooperative apartments, with total savings of 4.8 billion kronor (nearly US$500 million). The article states that most of these funds are used by HSB to develop new cooperative housing, and that pre-owner savings ultimately roll into ownership shares when residents move in.
Market stress test: recession, sell-offs, and financing pressures
The article links Sweden’s cooperative ecosystem to broader housing-market dynamics. In 2023, Sweden entered a recession and housing-sector disruptions followed. Prior to 2023, some municipalities sold municipally owned apartments to private investors to balance budgets, reducing the pool of reasonably priced municipal units for moderate-income households. It discusses SBB, a major private real estate company that acquired many former municipal rentals, then faced rising interest rates and sharp equity declines (shares losing about 90% of value), prompting asset sales and restructuring to reduce debt. The article frames these developments as a test of the long-standing (about 100-year-old) cooperative model’s stability under downturn conditions.
Lessons proposed for U.S. cooperative development capacity
The article argues that Sweden’s approach combines scale, patient capital, and institutional capacity: a national organization with regional structures, the ability to marshal significant savings-based capital for development, and sufficient political influence to access government housing funding on par with private, nonprofit, and municipal actors. In the U.S., it points to limited-equity housing cooperatives (LEHCs) as a vehicle for permanently affordable ownership, where households purchase shares rather than individual titles and governance is member-driven. It describes typical LEHC share prices in the range of US$5,000 to US$30,000, with returns around 3% to 5% per year, and notes that resale restrictions often keep equity limited by law.
Historical precedent and current gap
The article identifies a concentrated U.S. development period for cooperative housing between roughly 1950 and 1970, supported by government financing tools (including Section 213 mortgage insurance and Section 221(d)(3) below-market mortgage insurance) and major development organizations such as the United Housing Foundation (noted for building the 15,372-unit Co-op City in the Bronx) and the Foundation for Cooperative Housing. Outside of a few citizen-based efforts in places like New York City and Washington, D.C., it characterizes today’s cooperative housing presence as minimal, and concludes that expanding LEHCs would require renewed institutional development capacity plus well-funded local, state, and national programs aimed at moderate-income homeownership.