PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

We transform the housing model


The cooperative housing in right of use wants to promote new, more communal forms of coexistence, which enhance the interrelationship between the people who live in the building and also with the neighborhood or with people outside the cooperative, managing to build projects that live in their environment, while collaborating in its active dynamism.

These interactions can be created to different degrees, with collectives or neighborhood entities that participate in some of the project spaces, such as neighbors who make use of some of the facilities in the community spaces (laundry, workshop , multipurpose room...). In short, it is intended that the social project of cooperative housing go beyond the boundaries of your plot and positively influence its environment as a dynamizing agent of social initiatives.

We also consider that a model of coexistence that favors cooperative housing can become a solution to the problem of access to housing. In addition, promoting this model has a multiplier effect generating impact on the development of the city and the territory, as has been seen in precedents in other countries. It is the bet for one transformative project that claims the permanence of cooperative values ​​and the social and solidarity economy: equality, equity, democracy and self-organization.

The collaboration between the cooperative and the Local Administration is necessary to be able to meet the shared challenges of integrating a new model of housing together with an active community and have an impact on the fabric of the social economy and on the associative dynamics . We work for one social transformation towards a more just, supportive, sustainable context to make effective the right to housing through public-cooperative cooperation.


Public-cooperative collaboration


The advantages of the cooperative housing model in right of use are many and varied! Collaborating with entities like Sostre Cívic to promote cooperative housing, the Administration can…

    • Generate affordable and permanent housing from a public-cooperative and non-profit initiative.
    • Reduce public spending on housing, since management is transferred to the cooperative and, at the same time, it has the guarantee that access to these homes will be socially fair.
    • Contribute to the reactivation of disused heritage or that requires rehabilitation, without losing public ownership of the land or building. Socially favorable and sustainable disused heritage can be given new life!
    • Ensure the maintenance and continuous improvement of the heritage: the responsibility rests with the cooperative and the users.
    • Promote the social mix and the positive transformation of the neighborhood or municipality.
    • Participate in the creation of spaces for social and economic collaboration between society, administration and financial entities.


Strategies and actions


How to promote cooperative housing in right of use from the local administration?

1. Disseminate the model of cooperative housing in right of use.

      • Organizing talks, debates, work tables to bring the model in right of use closer to the public.
      • Promoting in the housing offices alternative models of access and ownership of housing.
      • Distributing the informative documents made by Sostre Cívic with the support of the Administration.
      • Identifying groups interested in promoting a collective housing project.

2. Identify and register heritage opportunities.

      • Looking for disused heritage of interest: obtaining plans, planning information, price, photographs...
      • Promoting a catalog of protected heritage or rural heritage.
      • Generating a report on empty or disused housing.
      • Opening a stock exchange of owners willing to start a collective project.

3. Promote co-operative housing in right of use to the municipality.

      • Promoting previous feasibility studies on heritage opportunities in the municipality.
      • Constitutive of a right to the surface of a piece of land or property owned by the municipality in favor of the cooperative for an agreed period of time (maximum 75 years). Land allocation can be direct or through a public tender.
      • Signing a collaboration agreement with the cooperative to promote a joint project in the municipality.
      • Exercising the right of trial and retraction to recover assets from banking entities as a result of mortgage foreclosure and transfer them to the cooperative.
      • Advising and accompanying groups promoting new projects.
      • Financing the purchase of land or property by the cooperative.
      • Giving aid to the use fee and the entry contribution to the cooperative housing project in right of use.

4. Contribute to generating a network with local agents, public administrations and private entities (municipal associations, cooperatives, Regional Council, Provincial Council, Ateneus Cooperatives, Generalitat, Catalan Housing Agency...).

      • Promoting the creation of housing tables in the region or municipality.
      • Organizing training activities in cooperative housing for Administration workers and/or interested people.
      • Encouraging the generation of relationship spaces between the different agents of the territory, such as meetings or conferences.

We put at your disposal the documents and guides that we have available at the downloads section because you help us to spread the model of housing in right of use.

If you need us to send you any other specific material, you can contact us at comunicacio@sostrecivic.cat