There are a number of different subsidies that people living in Co-ops can get from the different levels of government. Municipal and Provincial are pretty simple, and the municipality actually manages who lives in their units, as part of TCHC. So, we (I live in one) say that we have X number of spots that we make available to TCHC tennants, the TCHC sends them to us, we place them in whatever appropriate unit is available at the time, and TCHC pays all or a portion of their housing charge. Province is much the same, although I don't know how who gets it is managed, in that the province just pays all/some of the housing charge for the people who have those spots.
Now the CMHC subsidy is a bit different. CMHC gives us a bucket of money in an amount based on our mortgage payment. It's not 1:1, but a couple years ago when our mortgage payment went down, our CMHC grant went down too. We use that as subsidies for low income people in much the same way as for municipal and provincial subsidized residents - we get them to pay based on their ability, either all or some of the housing charge. the CMHC subsidy pays the rest. In some cases, like when our CMHC subsidy dropped, we then made up the difference to those residents by paying it out of our general revenues.
All other residents/members pay the full housing charge, which we call market rent, but really isn't based on the market, just based on how much cash we need for mortgage/operational costs/capital costs etc. Effectively, for us, 100% of all our costs are funded by our housing charges and other misc income like parking and investments, the CMHC money is used to help pay for the housing charges of some residents who need the help, and the full housing charge is paid by the rest of our tenants. Our market rate actually ends up being significantly lower than what an equivalent rental would be, but the only real difference is that we aren't paying for any profit. I pay market rent, and I can honestly say that I am using up zero subsidy.
(I've removed my speculation here, because I did more research and it was wrong)
Here's what then happened:
O&J then, 3 months before the star story broke, voluntarily started paying an extra $325 a month to the coop to make up the difference between the 'market rent' and how much equivalent apartments around there cost. Basically, they were donating extra money to the coop because they could, and probably to counteract any suggestion that they were taking advantage of the situation. Which they never were.
