Affordable Housing- Co-ops

For all who are interested yesterday there was an article in the Post about Sursum Corda and the plans for the area to save it from foreclosure and rebuild mixed income residences. The resident’s will get $50K (per household) which they can use to purchase units, or whatever, and they also will have the right to rent there. This does bring up some other questions, but since I’m not a resident of that complex or area, I’m not going to ask them.
Sursum Corda is a bit odd, it is a cooperative, as is Truxton Circle’s Northwest Cooperative that sits in the 200 block of Q and R Streets. I’m going to take an educated guess here and say that if it is a co-op then there are people who “own” shares in the apartment complex and “rent” their unit. They are a condo alternative and there are tons of them in New York City, a few here in the District. Once I tried renting a unit in a SW co-op, the people sub-leasing the unit were fine with me, but I made too little money for the co-op board and they said no. But I digress. I’m a bit confused though of how it all works with HUD funds and Section 8 vouchers. Can you be a co-op shareholder and a Section 8 recipient? Is everyone living in the co-op owners of the co-op? I don’t know. Probably would help if I asked somebody.
Like Sursum Corda, the Northwest Cooperative in Truxton (there is another NW Co-op on 400 block O & N) is affordable housing. And as far as non-market rate complexes go, it seems to be fairly maintained. If the walk though during the Flower Power walk proved anything, some residents there do try to make their area nice. Investing a little fertilizer and a little water here and there does go a long way.