Universal Housing Co-Operative Ltd - Edmonton

HISTORICAL RESEARCH OF THE UNIVERSAL COOPERATIVE

It is very pleasant to have the opportunity to make a brief review of the history of the Universal cooperative. In a meeting of friends of Mr. Edgar Garcia, Francisco Cajina and Gerardo Rosales; came the idea of starting a Cooperative whose purposes would be:
1-Solve the housing problem for members in a way that contributes to the benefit of society and realizes multiculturalism.
2-Provide residential accommodation on cooperative bases to future members.
The above mentioned persons took the initiative to investigate the process to be followed and at the same time the institutions and organizations that should be contacted for the organization of a cooperative that achieves the above-mentioned objectives. After talking with representatives of AMHC, CMHC & COMINITAS, they discovered that the organizations with which they would have to work would be the CMHC and F & S with which telephone communication was established.
We invited different families that were interested in the idea of cooperativism, therefore, to the integration of the cooperative group and that was how the first meeting was held in the Hotel NEIGHBORHOOD IN in the month of January 1991, at this meeting attended by representatives of F & S and a group of people representing 16 families. In this same meeting the cooperative was organized with the name of UNIVERSAL and in the next meeting that took place the same month of January in the house of Mr. Gerardo Rosales, the original board was named, of which only two of its members are currently functions.
The original idea was to create a Housing Cooperative for a group of 22 families = o – 2, which would be located in the community of Millwoods.-
The proposal of two different lots located in the
South, owned by the city of Edmonton, one is located between 66th street and 34th ave and the other one is located at 50th street and 31th ave. After making a tour of these lots the board decided to buy the one that is located at 50 street and 31 ave. for gathering better conditions for the purpose of the group having a capacity for 48 units, this was how the board had to expand the number of families. Since then the board has met every week to obtain project approval, analyze applications and construction designs etc.

In the month of June of the same year a general meeting of the members of the Universal Cooperative was held with representatives of the CMHC and F & S.
Then the presentation of the project before CMHC was made through the
consultants leaving our cooperative as a project on the waiting list. Thanks to God and to the efforts of the CMHC, F & S and the Universal Cooperative Board, the approval of the second and third stage of the project was achieved, and the approval of the pianos by the MILLWOODS COMMITTEE was still pending. changes to the original pianos.
Then the construction phase began after long months of waiting where the board and some members organized in committees made a hard work both in their meetings and in the task of inspecting the project under construction, arriving in this process on the 27th. June 1992, when the start of the second stage was celebrated with the FIRST PIEDRA PLACE ceremony, with the presence of representatives of CMHC, AMHC, MLA, F & S and all the members of the UNIVERSAL Cooperative. , finishing the ceremony with a reception in the Hotel RIVIERA having as master of ceremony to Mr. Fernando Solano of F & S.
All this work and dedication of those who actively participated was made reality with the transfer of the first families in the first days of the month of November of 1992 ending the transfer in the last days of the same month and year.
One of the stages of our objectives was culminated with the official inauguration of the project on November 28, 1992 with the presence of representatives of the AMHC, CMHC, MLA, MILLWOODS COMMITTEE, MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSAL COOPERATIVE and other persons who collaborated in the realization of the project.
Up to this date it can be said that one of the basic parts of the objectives that moved us to the realization of the Cooperative project has been achieved, facing us the challenge of realizing our daily life in cooperative bases that commit us to develop the rest of the objectives for our own benefit and also that of the community and the Federal Government that will give us their support to be able to demonstrate that Cooperativism is a reality.