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The year 2023 has meant for Sostre Cívic a stage of conquering challenges, establishing alliances and consolidating commitments with cooperative housing. We already have more than 1400 members (we have grown by 300 this year alone!) and 180 already live in their own cooperative housing. The international recognitions of January have marked a turning point. Since then, each month has meant a fundamental advance, laying the foundations for a leap of scale in cooperative housing. A necessary leap to consolidate itself as a solid alternative for access to housing for large sections of the country's population.
JANUARY
International recognitions that open a new stage
In January a Sostre Cívic we received two international recognitions, from the European Commission and the United Nations, the most important of our career. On the one hand, the Housing Silver Award awarded by the United Nations, the most prestigious international housing awards; and, on the other hand, we were winners of the European Social Innovation Competition (EUSIC), awarded by the European Commission and the European Innovation Council and the Executive Agency for SMEs (EISMEA).
Already in February, one festive event with nearly 200 people at Nau Bostik, under the title "A New Roof", served both to celebrate these two recent international recognitions and open a new stage, as well as to present a new podcast series with Crític to spread cooperative housing.
FEBRUARY
New project referring to Barcelona
We present a new project in Sant Andreu (Barcelona) that will house an inclusive community. Will be one of the projects that will serve as a benchmark for the cooperative housing sector and for the cooperative. Not only because of its size (it will be the largest in the country with 60 homes) but because of the public collaboration it entails (it will be built on a municipal plot of land owned by Barcelona City Council ceded through the ESAL agreement) and inter-cooperation in inclusiveness (the inclusive community will be managed by the TEB cooperative group).
MARCH
New coexistence projects in La Floresta (Sant Cugat), Terrassa, and Valls
By 2023 we will have reached the figure of 180 members living together in cooperative housing projects. This year, in the month of març, we released three. A 'Clau Mestra’, in La Floresta, they began the stage of coexistence after nearly 10 years of fighting to rehabilitate the old houses of the town's teachers (they have even done self-construction!). Also in the month of març, in Valls i Terrassa we inaugurated 'La Redolta' i 'La Mola’, respectively. Both projects have been built on already constructed buildings that we have rehabilitated to offer decent and affordable housing in the municipality.
APRIL
New construction projects next to town halls in Manresa, Granollers and, later, Vilafranca
In April we announced two new cooperative projects of new construction that arise from the collaboration with councils that transfer public land to facilitate housing affordability. In Manresa we will build one of the biggest projects in Catalonia (with that of Sant Andreu de Barcelona) with 60 homes, i in Granollers we won the municipal competition to build 29 more homes in a sustainable building open to the local social fabric. Another project, already presented in November, of new construction with similar characteristics will be in Vilafranca: 24 homes on municipal land in collaboration with the City Council and the local association La Bastida.
MAY
Success of the first meeting of partners
We close the year with over 1400 members. This growth poses a participation challenge that opens up new meeting spaces. With this spirit in May we celebrated the 1st meeting of partners in Nau Bostik. With a successful participation with more than 100 partners and a festive atmosphere, it was a space for training on cooperativism, climate change and feminism, at the same time it served to meet expectant and project partners, to facilitate new links that strengthen our organization
JUNE
The main international congress of social housing takes place in Barcelona and we go there to claim cooperativism
Sostre Cívic was overturned at the International Social Housing Festival (ISHF) held in Barcelona last June 7-9. The most important social housing congress in Europe brought together more than 2000 people from all over the world at its edition in Barcelona, and Sostre Cívic participated in more than 10 activities, organizing and collaborating in relevant conferences and seminars. We took advantage of this international meeting to show our cooperative housing model, claim the Catalan cooperative way as an international reference for accessing the right to housing in a comprehensive and sustainable way, optimizing energy efficiency and facing social challenges, economic and environmental.
JULY
150 partners participate in the General Assembly deciding the immediate future of Sostre Cívic
Last Friday, June 30, in the afternoon, we held the Ordinary General Assembly of Sostre Cívic at the headquarters of the Social Hub in Barcelona. It is our most important annual corporate event and the basis of our operation as a cooperative, where all members are invited to participate without exception. Was a successful participation with nearly 150 people participating in person and virtually to take important steps forward to consolidate our cooperative housing model.
SEPTEMBER
Sostre Cívic and the Tenants' Union unite for the right to housing
We opened the beginning of the academic year by presenting a pioneering agreement that unites our social base with that of the affiliates of the Tenants' Union. Is the first agreement in our country between cooperativism and housing unionism, which must serve to promote struggles and alternatives with the common goal of defending the right to housing for everyone and building an alternative to real estate.
OCTOBER
We inaugurate La Xicoira in Olesa: a unique project of which we are proud
We end the year with a new big project that begins its coexistence stage. La Xicoira, in Olesa de Montserrat, is one of our most unique projects in terms of what it entails: we acquired a half-finished project as a result of the 2008 real estate crisis in order to complete the construction of 25 cooperative homes. In addition, we did it thanks to public financial support from the Generalitat de Catalunya through a soft loan from the Catalan Institute of Finance. The visit of President Pere Aragonès on the day of the inauguration shows that cooperative housing already has an important place on the map of public housing policies in the country.
NOVEMBER
We deploy our protocol against sexist and LGBTIQ-phobic violence
2023 was also the year in which the Plan and first Protocol to prevent and address sexist and LGBTIQ-phobic violence was completed, approved and deployed Sostre Cívic. On the occasion of 25N, international day for the elimination of violence against women, from Sostre Cívic we claimed our plan and protocol as another step towards new dynamics of coexistence and a new way of relating more respectfully, based on cooperative values such as mutual respect, the inclusion of diversity and above all the rejection of sexist and LGBTI-phobic violence.
DECEMBER
We close the year of mobility in Sostre Cívic
This 2023 has been, thanks to Unique Projects together with bike, We are Connection, We are Mobility i Granollers Pedal, the year we promoted and established sustainable mobility in our cooperative housing projects in coexistence. Throughout the year we have carried out several specific actions with the aim of promoting the bicycle as a sustainable means of transport among our coexistence partners: training, mobility studies in the projects, creation of safe parking lots and a system of Bicycle rental. Still wondering what housing has to do with mobility?
- Let's pedal towards the future: how does cooperative housing promote sustainable mobility?
- Report to Crític: why does housing also have to do with mobility?