Missoula Housing Co-ops Celebrate Anniversary with Documentary

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - This year marks the anniversaries of two Missoula limited equity housing cooperatives, the Wolf Ave. Collective and River Rocks Cooperative, which led to a new documentary about the projects.

I spoke with Hannah Kosel, Stewardship Coordinator of the North Missoula Development Corporation about what she termed ‘the limited equity housing cooperatives’.

“These are limited equity housing cooperatives in Missoula,” began Kosel. “So far, it has been folks renting their homes in Missoula, and then maybe that home or their building goes up for sale, and instead of that going to another buyer, maybe another investment or home for someone else, the residents themselves, who are living in them collectively buy the building.”

Kosel described the structure of the two Missoula housing cooperatives.

“They collectively govern themselves, and they make community rules,” she said. “They might hire a property manager to keep up with landscaping or financials, and they also get the agency to make decisions on larger improvements for the home or just maybe things that might have had deferred maintenance, and again, to make those more individual choices that you would get to do as a homeowner.”

Kosel described some of the projects the co-ops have tackled together.

“We have two different limited equity housing cooperatives here in Missoula, both of them have been able to replace some windows to be energy efficient, no longer having as many drafts in the cold in the winter, and thus lowering their heating bills,” she said. “Some have been able to replace roofs on their home that needed replacing probably 10 years ago, and we've been able to add improved insulation in there as well.”

Another forward-thinking project had the cooperatives remove old trees around the residences, a move that kept them from experiencing major damage from the July 24 storm.

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“One of the big things was that one of the communities noticed that a lot of trees needed some maintaining and trimming and some cutting down, and fortunately, they were able to do that work early this summer, so when we had those hurricane force winds, they likely saved a whole roof on one of the homes in the cooperative," she said. "It was really cool to see them pool their resources and do more of that preventative maintenance and repair on their homes.”

Kosel said a new documentary was produced to highlight the success of the cooperatives as they celebrate their one-year anniversary, funded by the Headwaters Foundation.

You can watch the documentary by clicking here.