In June 2014, residents of the Floresta neighborhood in Sant Cugat joined together to denounce the lack of accessible housing and the collective 6 Keys occupied Les Casetes dels Mestres, a disused building owned by the municipality. Within this process, Sostre Cívic reached an agreement with the City Council and pushed Clau Mestra, a cooperative housing in right of use managed by Sostre Cívic. Antonio is one of the people who has lived there since the beginning of this 2023, he is fifty-seven years old, works as an industrial maintenance technician and has been one of the key people in the self-build housing project.
FOUR THINGS
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Favorite place at home
Dinner room -
Cultural recommendation
The Balkan music of Kayah and Bregović -
your refuge
Home -
The best of living in La Floresta
The bosc -
Some mania at home
I am very tidy
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What moves you to live in cooperative housing?
I had been hearing about these projects for a long time and I thought it was a good formula for me and my type of life: I live alone, without a partner, I don't have children... In my case, living in cooperative housing is the way to have a similar environment of people with whom to collaborate and cooperate. Also, I found myself in need of housing: I was living in a rented house and had changed flats four or five times in an obligatory way, as I found that my rent was raised or they decided to sell the house. The fact that Clau Mestra if it was a house on lease for seventy-five years it assured me that, if I felt comfortable there, I could stay there forever.
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How has your life changed since living in Clau Mestra?
We live in an environment that is not a community of neighbors, but we share a project. In addition, we have developed a process of self-construction and this means that we have to agree on many things: we hold assemblies, we cooperate and help each other and we are more connected on many other levels. I came from living alone for the last three years and it's been a huge change: now I go outside and find boys and girls playing, people doing different things. We have a project to be and to want to share.
The partners and neighbors of Clau Mestra they have been living there since March 2023
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The fact that you are no longer dependent on a rental contract that can be expensive or not renewed makes you think about life in a different way?
It gives me a lot of security to live in a space where I know I can continue there, if that's what I want. Also, the self-construction project has meant that we can design the interior spaces of the home adapted to each living unit. I invested money, as well as effort, so that the house was the way I liked it, taking into account how I wanted my life to be. For example, it gives me peace of mind that I have spent the money on a certain kitchen made to my liking. On the other hand, when you live in a rented house you don't invest money because you know that sooner or later you will have to leave, you are always a little bit out of the way.
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Why did you choose to self-build and how did you organize yourself to carry it out?
In the first surface rights agreement with the Sant Cugat City Council, a series of bases were established and one of the things that was agreed upon was that it had to be a self-build project. It has not been solely an economic issue of contributing to the project and saving money, it has also been a whole process of coexistence, help, collaboration. However, it has also been a challenge, since not everyone had the same availability when it came to sustaining the topic of self-construction. There were people from different contexts: single-parent families, sick people, a pregnant woman... We had to accommodate all these situations and, for this reason, we decided to open a bank of hours where people entered the hours they invested. We had to reach percentages where everyone contributed in one way or another, but not all people had to contribute in the same way.
Documentary about the self-construction process of Clau Mestra
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In what way were you able to contribute to the construction of the homes?
We didn't build the houses. We are not masons and we do not have this ability, but there are many things in which we were able to help thanks to the fact that some of us had certain knowledge. The bulk of the hours we have invested have been in knocking down partitions and walls, which is something more or less anyone can do. We have also cleared the surroundings of the houses, made the temporary water installation and lowered the floor of a basement. In addition, we intervened when the houses were already done, carrying out some painting tasks, installing kitchens, assembling the doors...
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What do you think this process of self-construction has brought you?
There were people who had never done tasks of this type and thanks to self-construction they learned about it. But the great learning has been to agree and see how we integrated the diverse characteristics of people in this process. I believe that the self-construction project is a learning of life, rather than a learning of labor. In this process we learned a lot and saved around 50.000 euros which, although not much compared to the total cost, we were able to invest in other things.
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Does thinking about community life entail rethinking homes in terms of architecture and the distribution and uses of spaces?
Compared to other projects of Sostre Cívic, as Clau Mestra it is not a newly built house, we have not been able to have so many areas to live together. We have a small space that is like a social room with the washing machines and other services, but in the future it will have other uses as a meeting place and for holding assemblies. Anyway, what we will really share is the outside: we have a large green space that is shared, as there are no private spaces outside the homes.
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Designing and building your home with different people, with different ways of thinking, is it a challenge? How do you make decisions?
We are organized by commissions that meet according to their needs and have decision-making capacity. Then, what is discussed in the commissions is taken to the assemblies, which we hold twice a month. From the beginning there has been a process of accompanying the architectural project to decide what type of houses we wanted to live in and what versatility there was in each accommodation. The fact that there are only eleven coexistence units has given us more capacity to participate in the assemblies and everyone has been able to have their say. We had to agree according to everyone's needs and it wasn't easy. We are constantly making decisions and any issue requires a lot of conversation, sending messages, having committees meet, holding assemblies, seeking consensus... It is becoming complex.
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All these discussions to agree also make the project stronger.
Yes, of course, if it had been a lighter process, the tensions would always come out in the end. Now the tensions are falling by the wayside, as any discrepancies, or conflict situations that may exist, are coming out.
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After these months living in Clau Mestra, do you see the cooperative housing model as a transitory stage in your life or as a future project?
I'm fifty-seven years old, so I see it as something definitive. I am always open to the fact that things can change, but I feel very comfortable in the project and with the people I live with. I see it as something stable and that will last.
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Co-op housing is scarce and not accessible to everyone. What needs to be done so that more and more people can consider this model?
Clau Mestra it has had a more affordable cost than other cooperative homes because we started from buildings that were already built and, in addition, the Sant Cugat town hall has contributed to the financing with some money that we will return in thirty years. The basis for the emergence of more cooperative housing is the economic issue. Private entities are not giving us money for this type of project, the banks want to know absolutely nothing about us. We are accessing loans from the Catalan Institute of Finance or cooperative banks such as Fiare or Coop57, but beyond that it is difficult to find financing. It is necessary that the state and the municipal and regional administrations finance or endorse cooperative housing.