It is the first emergency apartment in the entire state that was agreed with social services through a Cooperative housing project in right of use

Together with Palafrugell City Council we have already delivered the first emergency housing of Ponent, the cooperative housing project in right of use from the municipality. The person awarded the flat, who until now lived in substandard housing situations, has been selected by the Emergency Committee of the Catalan Housing Agency (ACH), and will join the rest of the members of the cooperative who since 2020 have lived together in the property located on the street Ponent. In this way, it will be the first emergency flat in the whole state that was agreed with the Housing Agency of Catalonia through a Cooperative housing project in right of use.

This agreement is the result of the agreement signed in November 2019 between Sostre Cívic and Palafrugell Town Hall. As a cooperative we bought the building owned by a banking entity which, despite the fact that its sale had already been agreed with an international investment fund, we were able to rescue through the right of first refusal. This was the second building acquired with this process making use of Decree-Law 1/2015 on extraordinary and urgent measures for the mobilization of homes from foreclosure processes, which allows the right of preferential acquisition in favor of administrations or of social promoters (as it is Sostre Cívic). In accordance with the agreement, the municipal contribution intended to partially finance the purchase was €40.000 (between the years 2019 and 2020). The acquisition cost for a Sostre Cívic it was €345.200 which were financed by the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF). 

The building of Ponent consists of 6 homes of different types and qualified by Official Protection (HPO). All the homes have been allocated to cohabitation units for people registered in Palafrugell and with incomes no higher than 3,5 times the IRSC. However, through the aforementioned agreement, 2 of the homes were reserved for people at risk of residential exclusion, and managed through the Emergency Board of Catalonia and the social services of the City Council itself.

For us, this pioneering agreement in the state proves that cooperative housing is a successful model for guaranteeing the right to housing for people at risk of exclusion, at the same time as it allows the recovery of disused assets by removing them forever from the speculative market. We are already in negotiations with different councils to replicate this model in other places in Catalonia.