The project of La Balma is the first to be inaugurated in the competition for municipal plots promoted by Barcelona City Council in 2016

The works have gone hand in hand La Constructiva, the first cooperative and Social and Solidarity Economy construction company in Catalonia

It is the first cooperative housing project to include a social inclusion program for two out-of-school youth

Co-operative housing in right of use continues to grow in Barcelona with the inauguration of La Balma, at Carrer Espronceda 131-135 (Poblenou) one of our cooperative projects that handed over the keys to its members yesterday Thursday. It is the first new construction project of Sostre Cívic, which for this and future projects he constituted La Constructiva, the first cooperative oriented to the construction of cooperative housing, with the aim of favoring the social economy by promoting ethical, social and sustainable construction.

This is also the first project to complete the works on a municipal plot of all those awarded by the City Council in 2016, in the first public competition called by the council aimed at promoting co-housing, after the first experiences in Ciutat Vella with Princesa49 and Sants with La Borda. In total, in Barcelona, ​​between the completed developments and those in the initial stages, there are 16 cooperative housing developments on municipal land and with the support of the City Council, which add up to a total of 422 homes, which means an off-market, non-speculative home for over 1.000 people.

In the building of La Balma, with five floors, thirty members of the cooperative already live there in twenty homes of different types, between 50 and 80 m2. The homes reduce their surface to share services such as the laundry, the study, guest rooms or storage rooms, thus allowing a community life that means both economic savings and a gain in useful surface area and quality of life. In order to live there, each cohabitation unit has had to make a returnable initial capital contribution that ranges between €28.000 and €38.000. Monthly fees, which include services and supplies, range from €512 to €800 per home. Prices well below the average current market price in the city of Barcelona, given that the cooperative housing model in right of use eliminates the desire for profit.

Community life with social inclusion

The neighbors of La Balma they are a heterogeneous and intergenerational group with very diverse family types. To this diversity of the group is added a pioneering social inclusion project in the Catalan cooperative housing movement: one of the homes will be intended for two young people who have been fostered. Within a joint program with Punt de Referència, an organization that works to promote the emancipation of this young person in a vulnerable situation, and financed by the Free Project (Coop57, Òmnium Cultural and ECAS) two extutelal young people will share housing. Besides, they have participated in the entire design process of the project and will participate in the democratic management of the building. It is, for Sostre Cívic, a further step to be able to incorporate people in a situation of special vulnerability in their projects and to ensure that the cooperative housing model in right of use also responds to access and the right to housing for these collectives.

📋 Free Project: First "cooperative home" for excluded youth, an example of inclusion

Act of delivery of keys

On the afternoon of Thursday 15 July, we handed over the keys to the homes to their partners, in an event in front of the building in which the mayoress of Barcelona participated Ada Colau and the Secretary of Housing and Social Inclusion of the Generalitat Carles sala, in what has been his first public act since he was appointed to the new position. In her parliaments, the Mayor wanted to vindicate the municipal housing policies of the Barcelona City Council, being today the administration that is doing the most public housing in the whole state, but stressing that "We can't do it alone, and we want to do it in alliance with cooperatives that have been fighting and working for years to guarantee the right to housing with a model that can already be proven to be a success". While the representative of the Generalitat has highlighted that "the diversification of alternative forms of access to housing, beyond buying and selling and renting, will be fundamental in the future to satisfy this basic fundamental right". 

He has also participated in the parliaments en Guillem Llorens, president Confederation of Cooperatives of Catalonia, and the Sonia Molina, director of the delegation in Barcelona of Fiare Banca Ètica, entity that financed the project. Llorens highlighted the trajectory of Sostre Cívic within Catalan cooperativism "in order to achieve that a new productive and reproductive model, based on sustainability and care, also reaches housing". The director of Fiare recalled that ethical banking was born to support initiatives that have a good social and environmental impact, and "we want to continue working to encourage projects that promote social transformation". 

From Sostre Cívic, our president Carlos Alcoba has mentioned that the building of La Balma "it says a lot and we can be very proud of co-operativeism and the Social and Solidarity Economy of our country which shows that if we want, and they let us, we are capable of erecting buildings". The event was closed by the neighbors of La Balma Sil Bel i Maria Bay, representing the whole group, who before entering the building wanted to share a very poetic text about the coexistence model that they can start right now "to break with hyper-individualism and respectfully combine intimacy and community". 

Sustainability and energy efficiency

Housing cooperatives in Catalonia are pioneers in the promotion of ecological multi-family buildings with minimal energy demand. The material used in La Balma it is mainly wood, but also the clay for air conditioning with radiant panels, in order to get the maximum performance from the geothermal system. They are all material biodegradable and with a low ecological footprint, since its production, transport and recycling involve very few CO₂ emissions. The building has an energy rating A, and active and passive strategies will be implemented to achieve a reduction in energy demand, savings in consumption and collective management of energy production.

The culmination of the project of La Balma consolidates the commitment of housing cooperatives to social and environmental innovation, which in 2018 was already able to promote the La Borda building, in the Bordeta neighborhood of Barcelona (with 7 floors, also made of wood) and Cirerers, in the Roquetes neighborhood (8 floors of wood, being the tallest building of this material in the state) currently under construction.

Cooperative housing: a boost for the Catalan social market

The cooperative housing model in right of use aims to transform the real estate market by promoting new, more communal forms of coexistence and avoiding speculation, given that the collective ownership of housing makes it impossible for individual profit from the rental or sale of the housing Thanks to its size, its promotions have an impact in many areas of the social and solidarity economy, thus contributing to the creation of an authentic Catalan social market, which can solve all needs without going through the capitalist economy.

With this idea was born, La Constructiva, but practically all the companies that have collaborated to make it a reality La Balma they are cooperatives of the Social and Solidarity Economy: the cooperatives of architects The cabbage i La Boqueria have carried out the basic and executive projects with the participation of the same group of neighbors, Arkenova i Organic Society have taken charge of the facilities and the environmental strategy, Arç of building and works insurance, Matriu of the group accompaniment, the Col·lectiu Ronda of legal advice, Gestió Integral of support in the economic and fiscal field, and all thanks to the funding granted by Fiare Banca Ètica. 

📰 Sostre Crític: La Balma, the endorsement of the job well done by La Constructive