A Cooperative Comeback? A study of the recent return of cooperative housing development in Vancouver through the 3-I's Framework lens.

This thesis examines two of the first cooperative housing developments built in Vancouver, British Columbia since a resurgence of development began in 2012. This case study sought to understand what changed to make cooperative housing a viable and attractive development option again after nearly two decades of no development. Utilizing the 3-I's Framework of policy change as a conceptual framework, this research investigates the Ideas, Interests and Institutions related to this recent resurgence, as well as consider the "valence", or attractiveness, of cooperative housing as a policy intervention over time. Through this investigation, I argue that cooperative housing development returned to Vancouver not because it is an inherently more affordable or easier to build and manage non-market housing type, but because it has widespread public approval as a programmatic idea and affordable housing type, and that the attractiveness, or "valence", of co-ops and the influencing impacts of Interests, resulted in the recent resurgence since 2012. This research is situated in the broader context of social and non-market housing development in Canada and builds on the academic literature of the 3-I's Framework of policy change.