A housing cooperative is a legal entity - usually a corporation
- that owns real estate; one or more residential buildings.
Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right
to occupy one housing unit, sometimes subject to an occupancy
agreement, which is similar to a lease. The occupancy agreement
specifies the co-op's rules. Cooperative is also used to describe
a non-share capital co-op model in which fee-paying members
obtain the right to occupy a bedroom and share the communal
resources of a house that is owned by a cooperative organization.
Such is the case with student cooperatives in some college
neighborhoods in the United States.