100 members of Sostre Cívic they already live in cooperative housing.

The building with 8 floors and 32 homes with community spaces, is the tallest wooden structure in Catalonia and the state.

The city of Barcelona already has a new cooperative housing building in right of use! An alternative model of access to housing that fights against speculation, making individual profit impossible, while promoting new, more communal forms of coexistence. With the inauguration of the building yesterday Cirerers, there are already three of our projects located in Barcelona, and is the second new construction project on municipal land granted by Barcelona City Council via competition.

With this new project, we already have more than 1000 members i we manage 6 projects in coexistence that include 86 homes and a total of 100 partners living there. In addition, we are developing 11 projects, which would add 200 homes and more than 100 partners over the next few years.

Yesterday, Thursday 31 of març, therefore, it was a day of celebration, despite the showers that marred the event in which we finally handed over the keys to the 45 members who have been filling the building since yesterday Cirerers. An event where we wanted to thank all the entities and institutions that have made it possible to move forward with the project and which had the participation of the mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the director of Fiare Banca Ètica Juan Garibi, the Josep Vidal, director of the Generalitat for Social Economy, the Third Sector and Cooperatives, before moving on to the well-deserved party on the terrace where the symbolic giant key of Cirerers conquered the sky of Barcelona.

City Council, Generalitat and Banca Ética together for the affordability of cooperative housing

In a few short meetings in the rain, the Mayor of Barcelona has vindicated the municipal housing policies of the Barcelona City Council, but underlining the public-community alliance with cooperatives that have been fighting and working for years to guarantee the right to housing: "They told us it was impossible, however Cirerers is a new example of how to change the rules of the game. It is a successful model that paves the way: there are already 1000 cooperative housing in the city”. 

Josep Vidal, representing the Generalitat, also highlighted his Department's commitment to the Social Economy. the pioneer HabitatCoop subsidy program has contributed to Cirerers 125.000€ and has thus allowed the initial contributions of the project to be reduced below €19.000. A very important step forward for the affordability of the model. But the financing of the project is sustained, above all, with a loan of 3 million euros provided by Fiare Banca Ètica. Your director, Juan Garibi, also present in the parliaments, stressed how ethical finance is key to making cooperative housing possible.

Collective and social housing open to the neighborhood and engine of the ESS

Located in Plaça de les Dones de Nou Barris, in the Roquetes neighborhood, Cirerers and an eight-storey building, thirty-two homes and community areas. With reduced housing (50 m2 on average) to give them to the common spaces (771 m2), the whole building, designed by the cooperative of architects Celobert, is thought globally from a community logic with the intention of resisting the loss of community life generated by the commercialization of housing. 

Cooperative housing is a project open to its environment! That's why the opening party took part Roquetes Entities Platform, representing the associative fabric of the neighborhood, who greeted the group of new neighbors who have been participating in the local associative movement for years. They also took the microphone to explain their project theSocial Treasury, a work cooperative dedicated to supplying ecological and local products to its members, and which they found in the basement of the building Cirerers the ideal space to open its second headquarters in Barcelona (also in Sants, in the commercial premises of La Borda, another cooperative housing building). The synergy between cooperatives was the protagonist with the project of The purple, who also enthusiastically and excitedly took part in the event. This group of LGBTI women hope to build their cooperative housing project on a lot right in front of the building of Cirerers, acquired by the La Dinamo Foundation.

Thus, in the same way that traditional real estate developments are the engine of capitalism, cooperative housing developments in right of use have an impact on many areas of the social and solidarity economy (ESS) and contribute to creating an authentic Catalan social market . In the works of Cirerers most of the services and providers that have made it possible are non-profit entities that work with ethical values ​​that want to transform society: from their own construction, at the hands of La Constructiva, the first non-profit cooperative oriented towards the construction of cooperative houses in right of use, up to the architectural design of Celobert and the financing of Fiare Banca Ètica, passing through Arç, building and works insurance, Matriu with the group accompaniment, the Col·lectiu Ronda with legal advice and Gestió Integral to support in the economic and fiscal field.

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