Our project "Cooperative homes for young adults" that we presented together with the organization Punt de Referència has been one of the 9 initiatives selected to receive the support of Lliures.

This is another step to power incorporate people in a particularly vulnerable situation in housing projects and ensure that the cooperative housing model in the right of use also provides an answer for access and the right to housing for people who live in a more vulnerable situation. 

Social inclusion as a value of our model

Since the birth of Sostre Cívic, one of our principles is the inclusion of people in situations of special vulnerability, as is already evident in article 14 of the Social Statutes.

Along these lines, the 2019 General Assembly approved a proposal foragreement on social inclusion floors which defined the amount of housing for groups of people in a situation of vulnerability that each general initiative project will have to reserve according to its size. We thus guaranteed that, in projects with 10 or more homes, there is at least one social inclusion home, and at least 3 homes in projects with more than 50.

In addition, in this agreement it is marked as a general objective of the cooperative that at least 5% of our total housing stock it must be addressed to people in a particularly vulnerable situation.

To facilitate the fulfillment of this reservation, we also created one directory of possible profiles to incorporate, as well as collaborating entities, other resources or public programs that may be compatible with this measure, facilitate its management and can minimize the economic impact on the project.

What is the Free Project?

It is now when all this previous work of definition and intentions begins to materialize and become reality thanks to the Free Project! Lliures is an initiative born in 2016 to build a solidarity fund that supports projects that work to act against the growth and chronicling of poverty and social exclusion in Catalonia; driven by Coop 57, Òmnium Cultural and ECAS (Catalan Social Action Entities).

This year, and with the social emergency situation generated by the COVID-19, Lliures has started a extraordinary recruitment campaign to allocate the funds collected to social projects that combat the structural deficiencies among the most vulnerable population that this crisis has once again demonstrated. .  

97 proposals were received, which were evaluated by the social bodies of Lliures, and 9 projects were finally awarded. Next to our initiative, there are social proposals as interesting as the Blanket Top, of the People's Union of Street Vendors, or The truck, the community school for adults in the Sants neighborhood.

Cooperative homes for disadvantaged youth

The ostracized youth must emancipate in record time with a very fragile starting point: they are asked to do so at the age of eighteen, while the average age of emancipation in Catalonia is twenty-nine . 

With this project, we want to bring co-operative housing closer to marginalized young people, which, due to its community dimension and its possibilities of developing a long-term life project, can contribute to responding to these situations. We present it from the hand of Punt de Referència, an association that fights to improve the quality of life of this group, guaranteeing equal opportunities in their incorporation into adult life. 

The joint proposal consists of, for 75 years, to transform a conventional cooperative housing from one of our projects into a housing that is intended for young people who have been out-guarded. Punt de Referència will be in charge of providing socio-educational support to the young people, who will later join the dynamics of our cooperative, and will be part of the work committees and the assembly of the housing project.

Thanks to the funding and support of Lliures, this will be the first experience in the sector of cooperative housing in right of use that will permanently incorporate people who live in a situation of vulnerability aggravated by an emergency situation. The will is not to respond only to solve the emergency, but there is a goal of permanence and durability. This project reduces the economic barrier which makes it difficult for people with less financial resources to access cooperative housing in right of use.