Spartan Housing Cooperative (SHC) is a nonprofit member owned and operated

housing cooperative A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distin ...

. The SHC was formed as in 1969, as a federation of existing student housing cooperatives in East Lansing. Since the first of the SHC's member houses formed 69 years ago, SHC has accumulated more than 4,000 members.

Houses

The Spartan Housing Cooperative currently maintains 17 houses in East Lansing, Lansing, and Okemos.

Current Houses

* New Community * House of Apollo (previously Avalon) * Beal * The David Bowie Memorial Cooperative * Hedrick * Howland * Toad Lane *

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

* Orion *

Phoenix Phoenix most often refers to: * Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore * Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States Phoenix may also refer to: Mythology Greek mythological figures * Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...

*Raft Hill * Vesta *

Bower Bower may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' Catherine, or The Bower'', an unfinished Jane Austen novel * A high-ranking card (usually a Jack) in certain card games: ** The Right and Left Bower (or Bauer), the two highest-ranking cards in the ...

Zolton Ferency Zolton Anton Ferency (June 30, 1922 – March 23, 1993) was an American lawyer, political activist and Professor of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University (MSU). Ferency was born in Detroit, Michigan, in a Hungarian-American family. He ...

^# In 1971, the MSU SHC became a collective

land trust Land trusts are nonprofit organizations which own and manage land, and sometimes waters. There are three common types of land trust, distinguished from one another by the ways in which they are legally structured and by the purposes for which th ...

with donations of property from Bower, Elsworth, and Hedrick cooperatives.

Houses No Longer A Part of the SHC

Atlantis Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...

*Eleutheria (located at 125 Evergreen Street, it was destroyed by fire in June 1972) * Hillsdale House Cooperative *Montie

A Chronological History of the SHC Houses

A Brief History of Campus Cooperatives

Some of the earliest student

co-ops A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

in the United States were established around the turn of the century. In Austin, Texas, and in Gainesville, Florida, students began by providing themselves with meal plans. These programs eventually led to early housing co-ops. These co-ops continued, observing and participating in the rise of the Cooperative League of the USA (CLUSA), and weathering the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

and the

Red Scare A Red Scare is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism, anarchism or other leftist ideologies by a society or state. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which ar ...

of 1919. As the twenties came to an end and the Great Depression set in students, like most people in the US and Canada, were barely able to get by. However, the co-op activist and religious leader

Toyohiko Kagawa was a Japanese Protestant Christian pacifist, Christian reformer, and labour activist. Kagawa wrote, spoke, and worked at length on ways to employ Christian principles in the ordering of society and in cooperatives. His vocation to help the ...

provided the nation's students with a renewed vision of social and economic cooperation. With the spark of Kagawa's enthusiasm, the 1930s saw the establishment of such long-standing co-ops systems as those in Berkeley, California; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Toronto, Ontario. The Second World War slowed much of the momentum of this period; many co-op members were drafted for the war effort. However, the end of the war, with the introduction of the

GI Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

, saw new demands for student housing and the establishment of co-op systems in Ithaca, New York; Oberlin, Ohio; and Lincoln, Nebraska. The late forties also saw the first attempt at a national student co-op organization: the North American Student Cooperative League (NASCL). Although quite successful at first, NASCL lost its major funding source, CLUSA, who cut support in the mid-fifties. In the sixties, the political fervor over the free speech movement and the antiwar movement brought new enthusiasm to student cooperatives, this time as a social and political alternative to the postindustrial capitalist system. Government support in the form of low-interest housing loans in the US and Canada also contributed to the new boom in student co-ops. In 1968, the new NASCL, the North American Students of Cooperation ( NASCO), was formed. Since that time, NASCO has served as the main networking and support system for student co-ops.

Notes

References

*"A Chronological History of the MSU SHC Houses", msu.coop.

External links

SHC HomepageNASCO Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Student Housing CooperAtive At Michigan StAte University Michigan State University Student housing cooperatives in the United States Residential buildings in Michigan