With the collaboration of the Calonge and Sant Antoni City Council, we are recovering a disused building to offer an affordable and dignified alternative to emancipate the young people of the municipality and region.

This morning, together with representatives of the City Council of Calonge and Sant Antoni, we presented a new cooperative housing project in Girona land: a newly built building, disused and then owned by a financial institution, which has been rehabilitated to make it available at cost price for young people under 35 years of age in the municipality. The Calonge project is part of our cooperative's strategy recover private and already built heritage that is in disuse to return housing to its social function from a collective management, with a public and non-speculative vocation. 

At the presentation to the media today of both the building and the campaign, Mayor Jordi Soler stated that "this project is a first step in the development of the housing plan for Calonge and Sant Antoni, approved in November of 2020 and is a clear example of the will of this government to solve the housing problem that some people in our municipality suffer from, and specifically young people, for whom the pressure of tourist rent makes it difficult for them to find housing". He also congratulated himself on the fact that "we are the first public administration in Catalonia to promote a project of this type aimed specifically at young people through a cooperative such as Sostre Cívic".

Recover disused heritage and guarantee the right to housing

The building, with ground floor and 2 floors built in 2008, is located 2 minutes' walk from the town hall and the bus station. It has parking spaces in the basement, a lift and 14 complete homes: with a hall, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a dining room and also a kitchen with utility room. In 2021 the reform project was started with the main objective of rehabilitate homes and common spaces so that they recover the conditions of habitability and use and provide the building with facilities and community elements, aimed at obtaining a greater energy efficiency and an optimization of resources through sharing them.

The homes will be managed under the cooperative housing model in right of use: a model straddling ownership and rental, in which the ownership of the property belongs to the cooperative and the neighbors who are partners participate and enjoy it of an indefinite right of use, transmissible and at an affordable price. This mechanism, in the case of the Calonge project, makes housing affordable: the fees for the use of the homes are between €280 and €400, and members must make a partially refundable initial contribution of a maximum of €5.500. In addition, four of the fourteen homes are aimed at people with lower incomes with lower fees and down payments. Homes preferably will be allocated to the young people of the municipality and secondly, by young people from other municipalities in Catalonia. To access all the homes you must meet official protection requirements.

The total budget for the promotion, including acquisition and rehabilitation costs, was €1.560.000, financed entirely with a mortgage loan from the Catalan Institute of Finance of the Generalitat de Catalunya and with a subsidy contribution of €300.000 € from the City Council of Calonge and Sant Antoni. 

A housing project for social transformation

At the presentation to the media today of both the building and the campaign, the vice-mayor and councilor for housing, finance, contracting and economic promotion, Arturo Prades, insisted that "the average residential rental price in Calonge and Sant Antoni is very high, and this makes it very difficult for the young people of the municipality to find a flat. That is why this project is the beginning of a very ambitious housing plan that it must allow the young people of the municipality and the region to be able to develop professionally and personally in the village, and that they don't have to go outside". 

Mandi Domingo, technician of Sostre Cívic, has remarked that the project is planned "from a community logic and as the seed of an alternative model of access to housing in Calonge" The cooperative, with its projects, not only seeks more affordable housing but also "to recover networks that allow us to live in common freer from doors in and doors out".

Calendar and additions

Today, the campaign to find interested young people, who are expected to be able to move into the building during the month of July this year, was presented. The registration period for the project opens from today May 2 to May 29, and during the campaign there will be three information sessions and two visits to the building open to all interested people:

• Saturday 07/05 | 11 a.m. Informative talk + Open Doors (+ info and registration).
• Wednesday 11/05 | 18 p.m. Online briefing (+ info and registration).
• Saturday 21/05 | 11 a.m. Informative talk + Open Doors (+ info and registration).