This stuff is also known as a cooperative, and is a very common concept for democratic companies – almost all housing in europe is owned like this.
Did you mean social housing rather than housing in general? Because home ownership exceeds 50% in most European countries, just like the US.
Social housing is often managed by cooperatives, but decades of neoliberalist thinking caused a lot of the larger of these cooperatives to invest in boondoggles and grandiose development projects completely unrelated to their core task rather than build more affordable housing. Coupled with the immoral self enrichment of upper management, mentioning European social housing cooperatives may not exactly support the point you are making.
Some or all of the flat owners are directors, and company accounts have to be filed in the usual way.
They're not co-ops in the usual sense, but they're not so different in practice. Obviously these companies aren't run for profit, but it's not unusual for companies to accumulate rainy day reserves and to make a little from interest.
I actually like the notion of grocery stores being run this way, but members participate in a grocery co-op primarily so they can get less expensive organic groceries and even have a say in what the co-op carries. Really it's just buying in bulk with strangers.
But then I look at a corporation where members are ultimately voting on their best idea for making the corporation profitable, and presumably also mixing in ethics as well, that's where things could get hairy.
A regional chain, not national or international, but sizeable.
And it works, mostly because people aren’t members to become rich.
A few years ago the sibling chains in other states (which were organized in the same model) fused into one public corporation, quickly focused on profits, and ended up with corruption, and bankruptcy.
So, we’re not going to focus too much on profit anytime soon.
Kind of a shame, seems like a nice way to work.