Last Friday in Olesa we inaugurated La Xicoira, in an event headed by the president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès, who claimed cooperative housing as an essential tool to grow the affordable housing stock.

Last Friday, October 6, in the afternoon, we handed over the keys to La Xicoira, our cooperative housing project in right of use in Olesa de Montserrat (Baix Llobregat). The inauguration ceremony consisted of an institutional visit to the building, located in the center of the new Eixample nou d'Olesa, headed by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragones i Garcia and the mayor of Olesa de Montserrat, Jordi Parent. After the visit, the opening ceremony had the leading role of the 30 members and neighbors of La Xicoira, with the delivery of the symbolic key from the hands of the authorities.

During the visit some of the 25 homes were visited La Xicoira, with different characteristics between 42 and 75 m², all fully equipped, and the large complementary collective spaces. It is the first home of this type in the municipality and the second in Baix Llobregat. It is also the largest project of this type in the country, outside of Barcelona.

But the project of La Xicoira it is not only singular because of its dimension, but because reclaims a building that has been disused since the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, with only the structure, basements and exterior walls already built, that the work has been completed to build affordable housing outside the speculative market. In March 2022, the works began, which have lasted 15 months. The work has focused on improving the building already built with better distribution of the homes and accessibility, also energy efficiency and the increase in insulation, centralized installations, and photovoltaic panels, and work on the finishes of the housing for the entrance to live.

An example of public-cooperative collaboration

All the homes of La Xicoira are qualified as Official Protection (HPO) and, thanks to the support of Olesa de Montserrat City Council, priority has been given to young people under 35 and elderly people over 65 registered in the municipality. The collaboration and support of the Generalitat have also been fundamental. The financing of this operation has been provided by the Institut Català de Finances, the public bank for the promotion of Catalonia, through its line ICF Social Housing Promotion which is intended to promote the construction of social rental HPOs. This line has a financial cost bonus from the Housing Agency of Catalonia. The CEO of the ICF, Vanessa Servera, present at the inauguration ceremony, emphasized that "access to financing for social housing projects is one of our strategic priorities that contributes, with other actors, to vulnerable families being able to access decent housing". During 2022, the ICF allocated 65,4 million euros to finance social rental housing construction initiatives.

"From the Government we want to build 10.000 social rental homes in ten years and the housing cooperatives in right of use, as Sostre Cívic, they are accomplices to make it possible"

Pere Aragones, president of the Generalitat

The President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragones, took advantage of his intervention at the end of the inaugural event to thank the residents of La Xicoira that "you have opened your home to us" and addressed them to affirm that “the institutions present here are your home to be able to carry out projects to make a better country". After declaring that it is necessary "remove housing from the pure logic of the market if we want to guarantee rights", announced that the Government is committed to promoting 10.000 social rental homes in ten years. For this purpose, the housing cooperatives in right of use, com Sostre Cívic, "they are accomplices to make it possible". In the words of the president, La Xicoira "it will be another example of a new way not only of understanding housing, but of understanding society, where we want to recover collective living spaces for people without always being dictated by the market".

Community life and open to the municipality

“This is a good example of how public services can be managed in many different ways. Cooperativism is an example of public and community management that we can extrapolate throughout the country"

Guillem Llorens, president of the Catalan Social Economy Association

Beyond the institutional parliaments, they also participated during the inaugural event Guillem Llorens, theAssociation for the Social Economy of Catalonia (entity that brings together the XES and the main federations of cooperatives and mutuals in Catalonia), which made use of all the agents and collaborators of the social economy who have made it possible La Xicoira: from the works, in the hands of La Constructiva, the design of the architects The Baula and STEM, the water service of the Olesa Mining Community, others. “This is a good example of how public services can be managed in many different ways. Cooperativism is an example of public and community management that we can extrapolate throughout the country", declared Llorens.

"We recover private land, we develop rural projects, we do social inclusion, environmental criteria, gender and feminist policies around housing. We are ready to take a leap of faith and be part of the solution to guarantee the right to housing"

Eva Ortigosa, member of the Governing Council of Sostre Cívic

Embracing this last idea, he insisted on it, representing the Governing Council de Sostre Cívic, Eva Ortigosa, which claimed the cooperative as "a more than valid instrument to contribute to a strong public housing policy in our country". With La Xicoira, they are already 12 projects in coexistence a Sostre Cívic, which add up to more than 170 homes. In 3 years, we aim to add 18 projects and a total of nearly 500 homes. A third of these projects are developed on cooperative heritage. "We have recovered private land, we also develop projects in rural environments, we incorporate criteria linked to social inclusion, environmental criteria, gender policies and feminism around housing", summarized the representative of Sostre Cívic, before proclaiming that the from the cooperative "we are ready to take a leap of faith and, therefore, be part of the solution to guarantee the right to housing with all of you", addressing entities, partners and administrations.

"We reject a capitalist system that wants to isolate us in our homes, that we are afraid of our neighbors and of tomorrow. We have decided to recover the ties of neighborhood community that have been broken during the last decades"

Isabel Caparrós, partner and neighbor of La Xicoira

At the end, the members of La Xicoira they read a piece written together and read by the neighbor Isabel Caparrós. We explained that La Xicoira born by "to be part of a housing model that is outside the speculative logic of the market, both for us and for the following generations", and that its impellers approached it “running away from abusive rents that no one puts a stop to. That is why we are committed to the right of use and cooperative ownership, not only for economic reasons, but also for relational reasons”. And this, community life, is an important factor for the new neighbors: "We reject a capitalist system that wants to isolate us in our homes, that we are afraid of our neighbors and of tomorrow. We have decided to recover the ties of neighborhood community that have been broken during the last decades". The building of La Xicoira it has, in addition to the spaces intended for community life, two premises on the ground floor of multipurpose use that the community of partners wants to make available to the associative fabric of the municipality.