madison, wisconsin’s housing cooperatives appeal to residents for their sense of community and affordable rent. but they also serve as an example of how housing can become more sustainable, according to damontae january, membership coordinator of madison community cooperative.

mcc operates 11 cooperatives that currently house a total of 142 members, according to january. the group provides logistical assistance and a financial safety net for expenses such as maintenance and renovation. members vote on policies for their individual buildings and participate in mcc-wide decisions. depending on which mcc house a member lives in, rent and utilities combined cost between $360 and $710 per month.

in a housing co-op, members live in separate rooms in the same building, sharing utilities and common spaces such as kitchens. according to claire oleksiak, the executive director of madison environmental nonprofit sustain dane, more dense housing like apartments and cooperatives are generally more energy-efficient than single-family homes, producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions per person.

recent gas and electricity use data wasn’t available for three of mcc’s buildings. out of the eight others, madison gas & electric data show that all use less natural gas and most use less electricity per person than the madison average for all forms of housing.

building back better

zoe bayliss cooperative, madison’s largest co-op with 47 student members, will move into an mcc building on langdon street this summer. 

the university of wisconsin-madison will demolish the building zoe bayliss has rented from the university for decades after this academic year. after frustrating uncertainty about the future of the co-op, angela maloney, a uw-madison senior and zoe bayliss board member, said the move into mcc’s building “feels more like we are joining a partnership.”

zoe bayliss’ new location on langdon street has the potential to become uniquely efficient even among mcc co-ops, according to january. mcc will replace the building’s damaged steam boiler system with a new, all-electric heating and cooling system, reducing its reliance on fossil fuels. 

heat and air conditioning are some of the largest contributors to household natural gas and electricity usage, according to valora gutierrez, sustain dane’s efficiency navigator and naturally occurring affordable housing outreach specialist.

improvements like those planned for zoe bayliss can be costly – january said the more efficient heating and cooling system and the electrical upgrades necessary to support it will cost $750,000.

for the project, mcc received financial and logistical assistance from sustain dane and elevate, a chicago-based nonprofit that aims to make utilities cleaner and more affordable. the organizations helped mcc secure a grant to cover $288,000 of the new system’s installation.

sustain dane and elevate assist with similar — though typically smaller — projects through their efficiency navigator program, which aims to make energy and resource-efficient upgrades to affordable multifamily rental housing more accessible.

“we, throughout the process, hold their hand and coordinate the contractors for them, coordinate the contractor bids and set up all the necessary logistics,” gutierrez said.

gutierrez said the program also helps affordable housing stay affordable by directly funding upgrades to old buildings, helping owners keep rents low. upgrades such as more efficient insulation and window sealing can also reduce gas and electric bills for renters.

january expects the replacement and other renovations to be complete by the end of may, allowing members of zoe bayliss to move in for the next academic year.

january said mcc also encourages member houses to improve insulation, particularly in the winter. “those smaller things, that can have a big impact,” january said.

location, location, location

while older buildings often require renovations to increase efficiency and drive down energy costs, sustain dane’s oleksiak said renovations have a smaller environmental footprint than constructing homes from scratch.

“think of all the materials that go into building a house. the concrete to pour the foundation, the wood and drywall,” oleksiak said. “reusing an existing building can be a benefit to the environment.”

housing co-ops typically occupy large, old houses downtown. many, including zoe bayliss’ future building, inhabit former fraternity or sorority houses. 

january said older houses are often either rented out to students as-is or occasionally demolished to make way for new construction. but he said converting them into co-ops can accommodate more people and still “keep the whole house out of the landfill.”

converting old buildings in the city into more densely populated cooperatives also allows co-op members to take shorter commutes to downtown jobs. according to a city presentation on building sustainability, residential buildings create 17% of madison’s greenhouse gas emissions, while transportation creates 41%. 

steve vig, a member of mcc’s hypatia cooperative, said being part of a community also reduces members’ transportation needs and waste compared to living in separate apartments or houses.

“i make one shopping trip a week and do the food shopping for 14 people,” vig said, adding that other members are responsible for recycling and composting. “if we weren’t all living together and organizing it together, probably not all of us would do that wherever we were living.”

rejenerate housing cooperative aims to further reduce its emissions from transportation by installing charging stations for three shared electric vehicles, according to the co-op’s website. members may opt-in to use those vehicles instead of owning their own car.

rejenerate should house 25 units in two adjacent houses on jenifer street once ongoing renovations are complete in the spring, according to abby davidson, one of rejenerate’s developers and a former member of an mcc co-op house.

while making housing less harmful to the environment may be a burden on homeowners and out of the control of many renters, january said madison’s housing cooperatives show sustainability doesn’t have to be a solo project.

“as we look at how our changing climate is going to start affecting how people live, where they live, i think co-ops can be at the forefront,” january said.

right around the corner from the apartment i moved into happened to be a small cooperative grocery store where i applied for a part-time job, mostly for the sake of paying for rent and food. i started at the tail end of september that year, and just over three years later to date, i’ve moved up from part-time cashier to full-time produce manager.

while a community may crop up out of any situation where a group of people are inherently intertwined, there is something particularly special, potentially revolutionary, about adding a co-op to a community. it brings with it awareness and advocacy, and it acts as a needle weaving the threads of the community together.

the first co-op was started in 1844 by a working class group in england dissatisfied with hazardous working conditions and inadequate pay. they had little access to food and household essentials as individual families, but they realized banding together could afford them more communally than they could afford separately. in the 1960s, similar plans for food access along the west coast of the united states were known as food conspiracies. the strategy continued to metamorphosize, but always remained primarily focused on community support.

nowadays, co-ops remain a counterattack against inequality and social injustice. a modern day cooperative, or co-op for short, is a member-owned business. no one entity owns the building or any of the rest of its assets: the co-op members own it all, cooperatively. there is also a list of 7 co-op principles guiding co-op creation and operation:

1. open and voluntary membership: anyone is allowed to become a member.
2. democratic member control: decisions regarding how the co-op operates are made taking all members’ input into equal consideration.
3. members’ economic participation: capital of the co-op comes from but also belongs to the members, who decide how it is reallocated (store renovations, patronage dividends, donations, etc.).
4. autonomy and independence: co-ops are controlled solely by their members; any collaboration with other entities is approved by members and allowed continued autonomy.
5. education, training, and information: co-ops spread information and make it accessible to the general public.
6. cooperation among cooperatives: co-ops work together with and help sustain other co-ops.
7. concern for community: co-ops support their communities by listening to local members’ needs and desires and working alongside local residents to satisfy them.

all co-ops have their different methods for exercising these principles. some have a board of directors elected by members who make decisions for the store on behalf of the members. some require volunteer work hours as a condition of membership. some have guidelines for the percent of locally-made products they carry.

at syracuse cooperative market, we put all of these co-op principles into practice in a way our members have agreed upon and signed up for. sustainability, buying local, and supporting the community help us fulfill our role. 

as a community resource dedicated to fostering a healthy society, we practice sustainability throughout the store, from food waste management to supporting the community. our food waste management system keeps edible and compostable food out of landfills. expired and damaged grocery and produce goods are donated weekly to assumption church food pantry on the northside of syracuse. any non-edible food, excluding meat and dairy, is thrown into compost bins, which are picked up by a local farmer who uses them to feed her animals. we throw out as little food as we can, so as to waste as little as possible of resources that can be salvaged and made use of.

our selection of bulk food provides opportunities for customers to use minimal disposable plastic when shopping and instead reuse containers they’ve brought from home. we have sections for dry and liquid goods, as well as a separate spice and herbs section.  customers have gotten creative and reused plastic bread bags and plastic yogurt containers, influencing each other to follow suit.

buying local is a function of sustainability at the co-op, as well. by sourcing products from local businesses, we keep money within the community and cut down on co2 emissions from food transport, supporting small-scale farmers over industrial farms and avoiding contributing to air pollution. 

community support is another part of our co-op’s mission. we table at events to reach out to people who may not know they have a local grocery store within walking or biking distance. we make donations to local non-profits, businesses, and other projects contributing to the same mission of sustainable community reformation. we also buy local products as much as possible. gabe, the grocery manager, places local orders through distributors such as regional access, headwater, and fingerlakes farms, which source products from businesses in central new york, the finger lakes, and sometimes other regions of new york. as the produce manager, i place local produce orders through regional access and headwater, too, as well as several other individual farms that deliver directly like gillie brook, wyllie fox farm, and frosty morning farm.

our previous produce manager, stephanie, is in charge of the co-op share, which is another way we support local farmers. from mid spring to late fall, steph puts together boxes of local produce every friday. the share operates like a community supported agriculture program, but instead of coming directly from one farm, the variety of fruits and vegetables we put in the boxes are sourced from a selection of farms every week. the system allows us to put together a diverse assortment of produce, which encourages more hesitant customers to get on board with supporting local farmers.

in march of 2020, our co-op’s mission was tested by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. the food system was dealt a blow, along with a threat to the stability of community resources. in grocery and department stores, entire paper product aisles were empty from panicked toilet-paper purchases, canned food was wiped out from fear of not being able to shop for weeks or months. even perishable and produce coolers were full of empty spots of out-of-stocks.

at our co-op, keeping the shelves stocked was a feat. our distributors were low on product, due to other clients over-ordering. for a couple weeks, entire sections of our shelves were cleaned out almost every other day, if not daily. members and non-members worried, asking questions we couldn’t provide definitive answers for. the choice was either to give up and let our community down, or work hard and fast to bring stability back. as if there wasn’t a choice at all, we did the latter.

while big grocery stores panicked, with employees being harassed by scared customers and customers feeling uncomfortable in crowded shopping areas, the co-op remained calm and acted with swift precautionary measures to assure the safety of our staff and customers before state or federal guidelines and systems were put into place or demonstrated elsewhere. we started providing curbside pick-up orders, for which we’d take shopping lists and payment from people over the phone and allow them to pick up their groceries contact-free. jen, our social media manager, streamlined this service, creating an organized process for how to take and shop orders, as well as formatting tags to label grocery bags. customers asked regularly showed concern and gratitude toward employees, and employees reciprocated it. a board member and a few other residents within the syracuse community made masks for us. later on, hazard pay was added to payroll for all staff. the sudden disorder was challenging, but we sorted through it with teamwork and dedication.

our co-op community’s response to the pandemic provides a perfect example of co-ops’ influence on communities. we were unified and supported, and there was a sense of social responsibility to maintain that. not only did i find a sense of purpose in my community by being classified as an essential worker during a crisis, but the additional responsibility of being in charge of ordering produce at a co-op made me feel all the more connected. i felt so grateful to go to work every day with a team of people who weren’t just going to work to pay their bills; all of us felt some level of commitment to each other and the community.

now — months deep into the same crisis we’re still living with and supporting our community through — sitting at my computer in the office putting together orders, prepping lettuce and cilantro in the kitchen, stocking local apples and squash on the sales floor, talking with regular customers in the aisles, i never cease to feel a deep-rooted connection to a community i have a place in.

our general manager, jeremy, told me that once, in a coaching session, he was asked: “what do you do to celebrate a job well done?” a little thrown off, he responded: “do more work.” it’s become a joke amongst the staff at the co-op, but in all seriousness, it feels like a summary of our co-op’s and other co-ops’ mission statements. improvement may be a cause for celebration, but improvement doesn’t have a ceiling. that’s the whole point of working toward a better and more just society. there’s always more work to do — and co-ops help rally their communities together and encourage participation in that work. co-ops don’t stop at enough food security, enough community resources, enough education; we continue to expand and improve without bound, tirelessly working for social betterment.

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