This cooperative housing project in Sant Cugat del Vallès it's a little closer to becoming a reality! Today, after quite a few hiccups, we have definitively received possession of the Casas dels Mestres buildings, located in the La Floresta neighborhood.

A pioneering project begins in Sant Cugat, which through public-cooperative collaboration can offer social housing at an affordable cost, well below the barriers of sheltered housing. To make this project a reality, the City Council has set up a surface right in favor of Sostre Cívic for 75 years. During this time, we will rehabilitate and expand the property to allow access to all the homes and increase the living area. We want to realize a cooperative housing project that promotes community life inside the building and outside it: therefore, the project is born from neighborhood action and actively participates in the neighborhood network to have a positive impact on the environment . 

The signing ceremony was attended by the mayoress of the municipality, Mireia Ingla; the deputy mayor of Urban Development and Housing, Francesc Duch; the manager of Promusa, Jordi Núñez; and several people from the driving group of Clau Mestra and other representatives of our cooperative.

Six years of neighborhood struggle, management and collective work

The Houses of the Masters, which had been abandoned years before, have been the protagonists of the neighborhood struggle for the right to housing in La Floresta for some time. After a series of occupations, in June 2014, given the property's general state of deterioration, it was occupied again by the 6 Claus collective (which later became Clau Mestra).

During the following year, a process of negotiation took place Sostre Cívic we acted as a mediating agent between the collective and the City Council. Employment ends on març Part 2015, at the time when an agreement was reached between the parties and the conditions were signed for the constitution of a future right to the surface of the building in favor of the cooperative to promote HPO housing under a transfer regime of use The agreement includes the participation of the users in part of the construction and the collaboration of the city council to reach a lower cost than usual for the housing of official protection.

Since then, we have met with various bureaucratic and administrative problems (search for the property and purchase of the access lot to the road, approval of subdivision licenses, registration, agreement on capital increases at the general meeting of Promusa shareholders, etc.) that delayed the delivery of possession of the project until today.

And now... what are the next steps?

Clau Mestra it already has an approved architectural project, for the rehabilitation and extension of 11 homes and a collective space, and with a building permit. We are also about to close the financing with the Catalan Finance Institute, deepening the public-cooperative collaboration model.

Regarding the start of works, La Constructiva SCCL is already working on the preparations: it is the first non-profit cooperative construction manager in the country, and it is already constructing the buildings of other of our projects, such as La Balma i Cirerers. It is also foreseen, as stipulated in the agreement signed with Promusa, that the partners who will live there will participate in some of the rehabilitation tasks in the form of assisted self-construction, to reduce costs and as a tool for empowering the group.

In addition, very soon the registration process for vacant places which currently has the driving group of the project. The start of this process will be communicated to the more than 900 members of the organization via email and, as indicated in the Social Statutes of the cooperative, the criteria for access to the homes will be in order of membership seniority. However, due to the characteristics of the project, it will also be essential that the successful bidders are duly registered in the Sant Cugat HPO applicant register and, therefore, registered in the municipality.

If you are interested in the project and are not yet a member of our cooperative, you can join by filling out this form!