Cooperatives in the housing sector

📺 Video Information

**Channel:** Housing Europe • **Published:** Mar 25, 2024 • **Views:** 106 • **Duration:** 123:50

📝 Description

Housing cooperatives provide affordability, community, democratic governance, and promote social equality. Effective governance, member involvement, and supportive frameworks are crucial. Many also play a vital role in promoting sustainability and aligning with renewable energy initiatives, boosting their impact locally and throughout Europe. Housing Europe hosted a session on and for housing cooperatives, our members and partners, both established and emerging.

📹 Video Transcript

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[0:36] B more recording in

[1:17] progress we're just arriving in a new room so making sure all the technology is is worth it I can some of you don't know the organizers here so have in Europe we bring together the public social and corporative housing providers here in Brussels We Are The Voice which is fighting for decent housing for all

[1:58] and around Cooperative housing so what we see is that in many of the the member states where we traditionally so going back 30 35 40 years had very strong membership so if we think of of Poland Hungary czechia we actually see a slow weakening of those structures and they're very often leaving um the housing Arena

[2:34] are not so much seen as a solution by policy makers um anymore in those countries and then it's a very mixed picture because at the same time we see a real Revival in other member states and we also see um much more exchange so the types of cooperatives that we might have seen in some member states for the last even 100 years are now popping up in others so in general we see a renewed conversation around housing in general of course because of the the huge impact it is having on our societies because the lack of affordable housing so we are

[3:10] seeing a renewed appetite looking for Solutions people looking for their own Solutions communities looking for Solutions cities and countries and uh part of that renewed conversation is of course revolving around cooperatives and community-led housing as part of the solution so what we realized is that that we knew a lot of this in the housing Europe office because we've been following but that many of the new cooperatives coming up actually don't know that in other countries you have cooperatives that working for over 100

[3:42] years and still providing Solutions so we think there's much more need for a type of networking coming together finding out okay what's the best legal structure how does your financing work what type of solutions are you finding for young people for older people so that's a little bit the hello you're welcome come on in it's our Communications team we're we're working on bilaterally also in another meting so this is a little bit the idea of today it's um really like a chat a chat

[4:14] between those established cooperatives and um some of the new emerging ones to really see how we can find more synergies and help each other and um of course we will also um take some time to look at some concrete examples so we will have indeed from Spain Portugal Italy France and Sweden we will have some concrete examples of what coroporate servers are doing in some cases but also how countries are re trying to restart the movement The Cooperative movement so we will have a chat around that with concrete examples

[4:50] then we will look to the key part of the key that's the finance so we're really happy that Christian Kik from the European Federation of building societies should could come along I don't think you're going to be able to answer all our questions and Sh um sign the checks today but indeed it's one of the big problems facing existing established cooperatives that often they can't access the funding at European level but also for emerging ones that have really good ideas but they don't have the scale and the size to actually access Finance so again it's going to

[5:23] it's definitely part of the puzzle is that Finance question and Christian is going to shed a bit of light on that for us and then of course H it wouldn't be a meeting on cooperatives without representative one of our colleagues from cooperatives Europe so Lorenzo Navaro has come along thanks a lot Lorenzo it's the first time we meet indeed um in this context and Lorenzo is going to remind us a little bit okay what what's the EU saying about cooperatives what um what financing is it making available what way is it pushing the Cooperative sector so that will we will wrap up just going back to

[5:59] the to the EU and how the EU is treating the sector and if we are fine I know it's always a challenge to get the tech right when it's not your own office but um we're going to kick off indeed with my colleague um the research director altini from our observatory in housing Europe so and eliche has been putting together and actually many of you have already received emails from her and I've been sending her information she's been putting together let's say an overview of the Trends around Cooperative so trying to capture some of the of what's happening on the ground in

[6:34] terms of indeed the larger mature models the newer ones and she's going to give you an update of where she is with that briefing and she will probably also remind you maybe too that there is still an opportunity to contribute to that briefing which will be published in June if I'm not mistaken so please join and at the same time maybe our panelists will join as well so you come up and join so that we can then kick off the exchange so please liia is online M Arondo Vice chair of our social Affairs committee Rosana

[7:06] Zakaria so the president of our um Italian Cooperative member and Michelle G please join us as well from The Cooperative Federation of our French members so thanks a lot for coming us today and of course joa who will come sorry I sure I'm not pronouncing either the first or the last name correctly so will give us um an incident to what's happening in Portugal I think alich is going

[7:47] to indeed we we'll kick off actually with the framing from pcia Toya who is who has recorded a key message from us it's one of the most active members of the European par when it comes to social economy and cooperatives hopefully the out is working the

[8:27] pleasure screen you today and welcome you to the report initiative I also would like to thank housing Europe for organizing and for inviting me I'm sorry I was not able to

[8:57] be with you in person but I really wanted to contribute as as this event brings together two topics I will the very dear one is the right to decent and affordable housing and second is a crucial role of cooperatives in guaranteeing these right and in general for their role in European policies let's start with housing a core priority for the SD group in the European Parliament housing is a fundamental

[9:31] right of every citizen not a privilege without a place to call home people live in the uncertainty they cannot work create a family they cannot imagine and start building their future it is not acceptable that within our Europe of prosperity and opportunities every day thousand of families and thousand of the young European and women also struggle to find affordable

[10:02] and suitable accommodation faing the harsh reality of increasing rents inadequate housing conditions and homelessness is a crisis that demands urgent attention and B old and bold Solutions and the Cooperative housing must be a core part of our strategy moving forward I have always been a strong supporter of the Cooperative model especially in my role of co-chair

[10:34] of the social economy inter group back in 2013 I was the first promoter of a parliamentary resolution recognizing the essential role of cooperatives in the European economy and in European Society over then 10 years later I am glad to be able to say that the importance of the social economy to our prosperity and the wellbeing is no longer in question is on the table thanks to you as pillar of our

[11:08] civil society the dedicate thanks the dedicate colleagues of the group and above all thanks to our commissioner Nia Schmid The Cooperative model is recognized as a different way of making Enterprises one that is B IM mutuality solidarity and democracy these are the values we must put at the center of our economy econom welfare models if we want to face current and future challenges we

[11:43] must put people at the same not as M mere individuals but as part of a collective collectivity the current legislature I believe has marked a new longer overdue era for the social economy with the the with the action plan the council recommendation the social economy gway and many more initiative times are changing but it is you as stakeholders that are the true

[12:15] engines of this change I then invite you and encourage you in keep working in this direction especially this year with the European Parliament election so that we can TR achieve a Europe that is resilient and United a Europe where nobody is Left Behind I look very much forward to hearing about the outcome of today's initiatives and stand ready to support the followup initiatives of the

[12:49] event thank you and I wish you all a flu discussion I am sure with will be a flu discussion with the hope of meeting you in all in person very very soon thank you dear all it's a pleasure to be able to address you

[13:19] today perfect thanks a lot and uh thank you for being here this afternoon and uh glad to hear this encouraging message from uh um a prominent me um so what I'm going to do is just to give you a brief overview of an initiative a research initiative that we are carrying on um with the housing Europe Observatory for those of you who don't know especially those who are joining uh online uh we

[13:50] are the let's say the research um Department within housing Europe uh and we work on a number of uh different Publications and reports and uh we thought it was an especially good and strategic time to focus on the topic of housing cooperatives so why H as a federation we work across the sectors of course um so we have public cooperative and not profit lied profit housing providers within our network but if we look more closely at

[14:24] The Cooperative model we estimate that about 20,000 uh local members of our members are indeed housing cooperatives um we have Cooperative members in uh 12 countries and we estimate that uh they manage about 68 million homes um across Europe uh so it's um a really significant sector within uh our organization natives Europe or uh the international um uh

[14:59] Cooperative uh Alliance why uh a report or why focusing on coopes today uh so um first of all um we uh believe that it's very uh timely um to bring knowledge about the sector uh from the sector uh we already worked on a report a long time ago when it was the European year of coop and we were happy to hear the next year the un has

[15:29] announced will be uh the international year of cooperatives so what uh what best opportunity to to take a closer look to this sector um and also um very important to mention in terms of time and opportunities of course the uh EU elections this year and um we would like to uh as a federation to bring together a reflection of what added value this can mean uh for the sector so so in this

[16:00] report that we're working on that will be published uh in June we try to take a look uh at the different models of housing cooperatives with a with a country approach so for uh the countries that we're we're studying we have um so far uh 10 countries where we've already collected quite a significant amount of information we look at the the history and the different models of housing cooperatives but we also try to question what are new uh Trends Within the sector and the new challenges that uh

[16:31] cooperatives are facing and while doing that as soraa mentioned in introduction we look at well established models of housing cooperatives that are present in many countries but we also want to try to uh connect to new uh and emerging uh realities so just to give you um an idea um here just to give you an idea

[17:03] what uh what the approach that we're taking for instance I put some information on the countries that will not be covered today in the panel we have countries like Germany with a very large Cooperative sector with uh more than 2 million homes managed by housing cooperatives uh in in a rental um formal we have Switzerland again a strong model of housing cooperatives uh in the rental sector with a sign ific aim for from the public sector to support not for-profit and Cooperative housing to become even

[17:35] more important in the years to come and uh we also have countries especially in the noric countries where housing cooperatives are mainly um a way to access home ownership uh with also a lot of innovation on many fronts uh including uh uh trying to GA through new forms of tenures but also um becoming more and more uh environmentally uh sustainable so this is just to give you an idea we're also looking at countries

[18:06] uh from across the board from Southern to uh Eastern Europe and um also something that I wanted to mention is uh that uh we see uh really um major increase uh in the interest towards the Cooperative model I think I've been housing Europe for quite a while now and over the last two years we've received an like an amount of requests around housing cooperatives that we had never seen before and I

[18:41] think this really witnesses an increase in interest interest towards this model uh also as a response to um the uh affordable housing crisis that we see uh across Europe and we will hear some examples today and you will also include more in the briefing of uh um new models for housing cooperatives in Portugal uh in Spain uh also the use in some cases of um um um European uh cooperatives uh as a as a

[19:15] legal form to spread the Cooperative model across countries especially in southern Eastern and central eastern Europe so just to conclude uh um and also as an introduction to our panelist uh today uh we believe that the added value of this model uh is uh especially in terms of affordability and stability of housing tenur so for people we live uh in in uh housing cooperatives and

[19:45] associations it's also a resilience the cooperatives have a really long history in most of the countries where they are present but they're also responsive meaning that because of the democratic because they're really based on the interest of their members they can evolve and offer additional servic according to the local uh Democratic and bottom up which is really typical of this model and other collaborative housing approaches and uh of course the

[20:17] principle of solidarity and cooperation uh across sectors so also with other um of the social economy and I will maybe conclude here and leave the floor to the national and local examples that we will hear more about today thank you so we

[20:52] will okay we will actually start with the person who's who's not in the room Martin liia has your your board member will tune in from Sweden from rckb so hopefully he was online yeah hi Martin hello can you hear me we can we can good um can you see me that's another question we're working on it I think it's I think I have the possibility to turn my microphone on but not my video because you have closed

[21:25] it ah okay but I think if you can um we will work on that and if you want to to start I'm sure we will find a solution yes um thank you for the presentation Alice about uh uh the uh opportunity not all not only for cooperatives but for the society as a whole um because cooperatives represents many uh good ideas that we really need in this time of social unrest and and other problems in our

[21:59] societies uh since they are uh based on ideas of democracy and um uh social inclusiveness uh I would like to show you a video I hope that will work and it's an example of how we in rickb uh which is the Cooperative organization in Sweden I do represent Rick ban is a Federation of Housing cooperatives and we manage uh mostly the the tenant the ownership model uh as were presented

[22:36] earlier but also the tenant uh and we have a special um uh special concept of cooperatives for elderly or senior citizens and uh I um and that's a result of our own ideas but also it's put on the market in cooperation with uh most uh often small municipalities all around Sweden and um uh I Tred to uh show you a

[23:10] video now yes okay we're going to just try and connect the video and indeed this issue of of aging and people being able to age in dignity at home we've heard many of our our members it's one of the key problems um coming up having the right size of accommodation and the right combination with care and with Health Services exactly and uh in my opinion and experience I think many senior

[23:43] citizen they tend to stay too long time in ordinary house before they move to a more um better place better uh better home for them and when they finally do that that uh there will be uh ordinary homes uh free on the market for younger households and younger people so that's very good for the um for the municipality as a whole making sense for the person themselves but also for the for the housing plan so good news is now we we see you perfectly now the next

[24:19] challenge is if we can launch this short video that ah you will share it from your side okay I try yes great let's try let's take the r does it work not yet your

[24:52] screen make sure the video is showing on the screen for yes now [Music] yes

[25:26] yeah um uh don't don't give I think if you press play again it should okay did you did you see it from the beginning we missed a little bit at the start so okay I'm going try again

[25:57] okay fore spee

[26:33] foreign spee

[27:07] [Laughter] for so happy

[27:57] spe spee [Music]

[28:40] there thank you Martin would you like to follow up with a few comments yes first did you add any sound we did yes yeah good then you perhaps catch up some Swedish by the way um I I think this is um very good example what the cooperatives can achieve uh the The Cooperative RIS biging we U manage the the The Cooperative administ Administration and the building and Personnel from the

[29:13] municipality take care of the persons that the elderly that are living in the Cooperative example of the the the people living in this house they can they also have um a Democratic influence because they take part in the board and so on and then the competence of Rick ban is uh doing a very good result in cooperation also with the municipality Martin I would like to just

[29:44] before we we move on to the next example I think it could be nice just to give a few moments if there's any comments or questions about the scheme from the people here in the room or of course we have 30 people online as well um just I know that we we might forget some of the details when we hear all of the presentations together nof there's some questions or something you would like to ask Martin while we have him sh

[30:20] okay I would actually just kick off as well while I do have the microphone and ask if you are developing intergenerational housing as well intergenerational you mean um just ordinary building ordinary um no not specifically but we have um specific cooperatives for for young people if if that what what you were after and then of course we have

[30:51] corporates for young people in the same area and so on as other more ordinary homes okay good to know okay Dar you have yeah hi um I was speaking at a conference in Ireland two weeks ago where they're really struggling at the moment because they they really put basket and that basket was called uh Bild to rent private for profit apartment by large International investors and I I said to them I think you need to look at Sweden I think the corporative model for Sweden could help you to to unlock uh hidden potential let's say

[31:26] particularly accessing funds from from corporate Banks Who currently are not basically lending for for new construction and the reason they don't lend is they have no collateral from the people who wish to build their their home so I'm wondering I know in Sweden the corporate sector is under Pain by this guarantee fund that you that you develop at WSB and also HSB um how solid is that is that fund um and how frequent is it that you actually need to step in and and uh compensate financial institutions for loans for mortgages that not be paid and so

[31:59] on uh well um I'm sorry to tell you that that fund is not longer existing it cooperation between HSB and rickp for some years ago and um but it we're out of date so to speak and now we have other models other methods to secure the U the new construction of Cooperative housing so um in in fact we have to take the risk ourself in the Federation of rban so when we create a

[32:35] new Cooperative housing uh uh we make agreement with a with a corporative that are under construction that those apartments uh which may be not sold uh Rick ban will uh will buy them up so the the local cooperative are secured in the finance situation and uh the risk is taken in Rick's Bon and we have a we

[33:08] have a situation where we can manage all those we do not start any new construction projects without being secured that we can also fulfill our uh commitments to the local uh new housing cooperatives and so far the history of we have had no um what you call it crash in in in a local uh housing corporate here thanks a lot I think you thanks a

[33:41] lot you reinforcing the point made by Al on the stability and also by the by the MEP um so we're going to jump to a very different context now and um might the Arondo is going to give us some insight into what local authorities can do indeed to reinforce um Cooperative housing and and Community Le housing hello good hello okay good afternoon may I

[34:16] have my presentation thank you pass through the slides okay well first of alluce myself this is the first time attend this house in grew up committees as Vice chair of the social uh working group and also presenting this project that I uh was involved uh years ago uh when I was working uh on my personal uh for for basona municipality

[34:51] I'm now the housing director general of Navara which is a region in in Spain just below the B country and I'm now responsible for housing and we just as NADA we have joined this network recently so this is sort of a project I it's very close to to me in sense okay this this project responds to a need especially from cities and regions back then that we found when we were working

[35:21] on setting up a collaborative housing program in Barcelona municipality that we saw like the projects and initiatives were very actively in exchanging and learning from each others but public officials uh staff from municipalities and people working at local level did were lagging behind in in some extent in this exchange and learning from other experiences across Europe so the project uh was uh uh originally an idea that came up in a meeting at your cities the housing

[35:56] working few cities uh when we all cities participates and were asking the same questions and and so on so we created and we uh presented back then as Barcelona the network of cities for collaborative housing to that is integrated by now it's 17 cities across Europe Navara Regional government also uh joined recently and many other cities and regions have approached with the

[36:27] same need to exchange and learn that from the public sector uh side how to design what were the challenges and opportunities to set up these programs where were the which were the models behind and the funding schemes the legal framework the policies and the targets that were uh at the core of these different very different programs um as you can see we have uh well I think there are a couple of points missing in that map but anyway as you can see there's a wide variety and

[37:03] actually diversity is mostly the the common Trend within all the cities uh this is the the last addition as I explained by the Navara Regional government where now uh we want there from Navara to launch a regional program to support collaborative one would be affordable housing mostly directed to young people and and vulnerable communities for senior housing for senior people and also in rural areas that would be uh I

[37:40] we hope by the end of the of this year become uh um in become a law at the and pass at the regional government and we may have one of the most advanced at least in the Spain uh legal framework in in this sense uh uh what was clear uh exchanging and learning from different cities and regions uh within this network was that somehow uh and also there was a common question discussed in the two main

[38:14] events that happened last year this was the European network of housing research and also the international social housing Festival that both took place in Barcelona that this was a trendy topic and that somehow many people was approaching with fresh air so to say and with very big demands and expectations to the topic of collaborative housing thinking that it was a magic box that going going to fix everything and uh also Civil Society had

[38:47] very high expectation thinking that they was going to fill in the gaps that uh and meeting the needs that public sector could not reach and uh and that we needed to to open a definition and keep it wide so um cities uh were could come and and felt that they could fit in as ala you explained before there was a in the recent years we we witnessed that there was a sort to say a third wave for

[39:19] a third generation of cooperatives going on across uh Europe and the main characteristics of of these new initiatives were that they were uh putting very high their agendas the topics of environmental sustainability but also mostly permanent affordability and their link with social and affordable housing uh this analysis has been very well put in in in terms of data by the Del University in the Netherlands with a

[39:55] project project uh uh leaded by darinka I cannot pronounce her surname okay uh there where they are mapping now all the projects going on in Europe just for these countries in the map there are more than one ,900 uh projects that have uh have been appearing in this lately with these characteristics and just in the case of Spain we have also many other examples

[40:25] just that have been appearing lately and it's a Pity because in the region of catalunia is where they are mostly most active and they don't are not in that map well this network called netco the acronym was focused and exchanging and had side visits to different cities where they had a chance to present their collaborative housing programs and learn from each other from the perspective of the legal framework then there was a planned a visit to bolog

[40:58] also uh there was a visit to Barcelona they focus on social and affordable housing through collaborative housing we also visited Berlin to approach and learn from the funding schemes of collaborative housing there and also to Brussels here that we came just recently to many cases and examples the of collaborative housing projects with a very strong social impact um with within this

[41:30] network that was presented actually is going to be presented on the 23rd of April in streaming by the way uh the conclusions the report that will come along with the best practices and lessons learns and recommendations toward cities and European union and there was a there is a collaborative among cities definition of what it means collaborative housing in terms of this third wave of of co- housings going on in Europe and we widen the definition to include

[42:03] social and affordable housing mostly the intention and the requirement by by cities um as I'm not planning to go through all of them but just to explain that Within These two years long that we have been working on all these group of cities and regions uh we have elaborated and we will present a set of recommendations directed to different levels of of government of Pol of decision makers and also to the European Union and uh this is the web page in

[42:36] case you want to to check and and learn from the previous experiences and now we are just about to finish this U project uh in April we will have the online seminar you are all invited just links and contacts to check and register and that we are just now a group of core cities within this network planning how to set up and continue this work because we have been permanently approached by all the cities with the same intention and needs to St on um

[43:08] actually it was clear that from City practitioners and at local level and Regional level there was a also a very strong interest in in this regard thank you thank you very much I have space a little bit later for questions also for those following online please um take a note of your questions and I think it just illustrates indeed what was pointed out and what we see in the briefing that there's a renewed interest from cities from citizens and from countries and um and I think indeed this need for

[43:44] networking is even more clear because we've just heard from from Martin liia that this very effective and sustainable model which perhaps is is your network is not informed enough about and the same our next speaker so Rana Zakaria president of leg hoop abitante will also inform from one of the let's say mature housing Cooperative systems you don't mind I stand up it be easier for me thanks a lot just a little bit Yeah

[44:15] so thanks a lot to housing Europe for inviting me but also for I mean thinking about this session on cooperatives as s has has in in her said in her introduction there is a sort of new conversation uh with the Cooperative model also with the I would say as she said as as Alicia mentioned with the um traditional and mature Cooperative models but also with the new ones so I

[44:47] have a short presentation I think that just to introduce the point I was thinking about that a commissioner Schmid it uh some weeks ago said that about what should come in the next years for the new housing policies uh public private partnership are crucial uh and I would say that cooperatives are a part o

[45:17] of these private non-speculative actors that can be important for this for Designing the new policies at European levels so I was asked a little bit to to say something about uh one of our practices and uh mainly about uh young uh young people and some an example about housing model for young people so yes I will go through very shortly so very briefly uh leg caban is

[45:52] the National Association of housing cooperatives in Italy uh around 600 cooperatives and uh what is important for us is to say that we have more than 250 uh uh, members uh still 14 uh 40,000 uh units of undivided ownership um and uh more than 10,000 units that uh we manage for other social housing operatives and of course I

[46:25] didn't mention here here but uh more than uh 300,000 um um housing in ownership uh so the point uh about young adults and what we call the housing dream um what is the problem in Italy now at present is that more than 2third of young adults are living um with their parents because they cannot afford independent accommodation uh it is important to underline that 40% of these

[47:00] people are workers and what is very difficult um is uh over overcoming the transition from student uh to to status to work uh this phase lasts much longer than it should H and 40% of young people have low wages and strong discontinuity this I think this is quite uh issue uh in in a lot of European countries so uh the analysis uh that we did as cooperatives um around

[47:37] the issue of Housing and young people is that uh the exclusion causes are not only uh an issue of economic accessibility of course this this is one of the most important but also the what we call the rigidity in the housing offers so the format of of the housing offer and the lack and the lack of a system of guarantees um that should be aimed at favoring structurally this precarious Target of of people and uh according to us this is

[48:12] very typical of our Cooperative approach to problems is that the social management model of um of housing for for young people is is crucial and is is essential uh the approach of of one of the best practices I I will present very shortly is that uh for young people we think that affordable and temporary housing is needed uh which allows mobility and

[48:44] change but which is something very different from PR precarious uh housing and then to consider housing as a possibility of informal learning and what we what we mean by informal learning is to create living settings that promote autonomy and networks relationship emancipation Social Mobility that is alternative uh to buying a home so we stress a lot the concept of rental

[49:15] housing in general and for young people uh of course um and uh housing that is an opportunity of including in usion Community Driven processes social engagement of young people um and uh so I was asking today to some of housing Europe members about intergenerational uh approaches and housing formats we we believe this is uh the vision we have to have for the

[49:48] future not only housing for elderly or for uh young people but really intergenerational formats of housing so uh this is one practice that uh shows how the Cooperative model in Italy is working a lot on the uh public private partnership uh in this case uh uh this is a Cooperative that has um realized the project of uh retrofitting of uh public housing

[50:23] um public temporary housing uh uh where here the the let's say one of the the main uh issues and added value of the project is that we have um social mix so the target here is families in housing um emergency uh together with young students and temporary workers together with young people with more fragile profiles so as I said um uh the added value of of this of this project is

[51:00] the uh we have uh 20 young people age between 20 and 35 of eight different nationalities uh 50% are Italian this is the price you see so really uh affordable and then uh 32 families of 14 different uh nationalities so social mix uh and in intergenerational uh approach of course here um as I said the it is quite important uh the the social

[51:37] management uh that is in charge uh by The Cooperative but uh what is important is the tenants engagement so the project asks to young people to get involved in relationship with neighbors and with neighborhoods uh and there is social team that follows the young inhabitants in in this uh challenge um so just to to end my presentation and going back to the points I I touch in in my intruction is

[52:13] that uh we think that uh mutualism is something that can give a huge value to the future of the housing policies um in Europe and what we are let's say observing is that uh young people uh is is again coming to the to the door of the even to the to the mature uh system of cooperatives in Italy uh they were they are quite curious because they see it as a uh

[52:49] possible response to the these housing crisis a possible response to their desire of uh uh let's say self organization uh setting and of response but uh based on an on a mature and stable and affordable and resilient system um thanks inspir we hear increasingly even from commissioner smidth that market is not going to solve the problem and this

[53:23] mutualism approach and relying this um on each other I think uh is definitely part of the puzzle we're going to move to France now I'm really curious to hear from Michelle g h please you're going to tell us a little bit about the recent developments around Community Land Trust in France thank you hi everybody I'm immediately find that I'm not from

[53:53] the north of France but from the south of France I gave you a few words about my Federation first and then about my Cooperative to explain why I'm here I'm a member of the board of the social housing for cooperatives uh we uh present 174 Cooperative working in France as well on rental apartment as well

[54:29] um just a check how you say it in English it's uh home yes its own apartments from own houses uh my cooperative and president is called candelita we are running 40,000 apartment in the south of France and since a while now now we are promoting uh what we call the in English a community land trust but with a French

[55:05] Touch of course I will explain what it is with you in fact uh in the metropolitan area as well as in the touristic region is quite hard and very hard for people to get uh home owners and uh for this we work with the Federation to give Special Touch to this

[55:35] uh Community than trust and we have to use word in French which is uh the organism F solid uh the organism for Sol is the instrument that we developed now since five or six years in France and uh is similar as I said to the Community Land Trust uh in English we found it uh in the South the first uh office for Sol there and is called Cooperative forier

[56:14] mediterran uh we are working on all the Mediterranean French seide including in the interland and we are four cooperative associated in this organism to provide this kind of solution it's uh very social housing scheme based on the land Lees that is attracting more and more of

[56:46] old thanks to its low price Byer acquire only the building and the property of the land is reach mained by the organism this translate into saving for Resident that go from 20 to 50% down to the to the price for the land like the French Rivier for example by the time we are booking by Cooperative is currently marketing

[57:23] 34 homes which are 28 apartments and six detach homes these properties are being offered at 3,320 square m which is in fact 25% below the market price in return the owner pays monthly fee of [Music] 1 63 square meters for the

[58:00] organism uh this town where we do this program today is l l is a very touristic City close to Aven and it's quite impossible for young people including also people having enough resources to own an apartment or a house in this area we do this same kind of program the French Riva I give another example we are working now with

[58:34] the municipality of V which is on and we can provide houses in fact 48% down the price here in the area of the kotu this is because we use effective in fact the off of solid there this mecanism is only way that lowi

[59:06] income householders can buy their own home in areas where market price do not allow them to do so it was at the beginning quite difficult to introduce these kind of tools in the mind of the people because we are in the south of France as well in Italy as well in Spain people want to be owning by their own property the house and the land and it was quite impossible to uh

[59:42] explain divided this one building and the other side the land and so I give to my teams these kind of tips I said explain to the people there they are buying uh mobile home and they want to have set on a camping on the Rivier for year but they do they are owning the camping I mean their mobile home but they have to pay each month to the owner of the campign in fact money

[60:19] for be sure to have the place and in fact then is they one they can we return their camping not in another place but they can sell it or they can give it to their kids and uh this tips is working pretty good in the area to explain uh how uh to promote in fact uh this uh tool to provide owner the solution to have a house or to have an

[60:52] apartment in this very uh very very dense areas most important this Cooperative uh schemes is anti- speculative the capital gain on which sale is controlled and the owner must be approved by the offs by the organism which applies income selling the condition for benefiting from the

[61:26] solution of the organism yes the problem is that when we talk with municipalities I have been electing during almost 30 years as first deputy mayor in Aven my hometown uh the municipality are ready to accept this but what they want as well we want in Cooperative is that people don't have speculative in fact solution in find this imagine that we buy in s at almost

[62:05] 3,000 EUR square meters in little short s you can sell this kind of houses six seven 8,000 square m so we have locked the system and the people are have to S effective effectively to to other owners which also have same kind of on tax

[62:38] ceiling to protect this social solution but uh last but not least homes ofers under this proposal are including in the social housing Cota for the local Authority and what we call in France the S La uh this is also a very important in fact French touch this system in France every

[63:08] municipalities have to provide and between 25 to 30% of their stock as social housing the system we provide with the office F solid is that we are included in this P so in fact the municipalities are appreciating this kind of solution because they provide in fact as

[63:42] well houses as well apartment at a low price for people who are not able to buy it if they don't have the opportunity of this solution therefore our scams represent a significative avantage for the hting municipality as I hope having explaining you quite fair but you will tell me

[64:13] through your questions thanks you very much thank you just uh last Precision if you come into house who can visit us who appreciate who wece you it's go yes the best way to learn in the D see in person I think you've touched on some really key points obviously tourism uh over tourism on sustainable tourism in Europe is really ex exacerbating the the housing crisis in many parts and indeed

[64:46] also the key point of of changing people's expectations because this is what we are seeing models in Europe in the different member states most of them have remained static many many many decades so the idea of Shifting people's expectations of what they expect from a home is a crucial one so it's really here interesting to hear from you your practical experience talking with people on the ground great thanks a lot we're going to hear from from Jo from JIS um Lisbon's public housing provider of the reality in in Portugal before we move on

[65:18] to look at the the finance so D the floor is yours okay thank you very much s um well my name is I come from the municipal um company that manages social housing and Lisbon and what I will present is the the Lisbon strategy to to make the reborn of the cooperatives um in Lisbon um just show you before this is the how how the timeline of the cooperatives in the last 30 years or 50 years sorry so

[65:52] after the revolution there was a a program that was started um with that the the the the the municipality will give the the land and then there will be like a support from Architects and from students to to to make the projects that where people would live so it's like a a very communial commun thing uh so it's with like people Architects students everybody together like in almost in assembly uh trying to to to plan it and

[66:24] then we we the the the next steps were to now this program ended and then the next steps were to to make uh cooperatives that had an agreement with the municipality so there there were two agreements in 1990 and in the beginning of of the 2,000 years um this was made with the national Federation the agreement was was made with the national Federation for cooperatives and then the national Federation would uh distribute let's s like this the the the number of of uh of permits within the the the the

[66:59] cooperatives that were members the objective was to to build um about 4,200 dwellings well we we didn't reach the objectives the the cooperatives didn't reach the objectives mainly because of the mo of the model of the cooperatives that were just like built to sell so they didn't rent most of the almost every units were sell to to the tenants um and of course this ended when

[67:31] the there was the crisis in 2008 the the the housing crisis in 2008 is they act like private developers let's say like that between in a lower price so when the when the the crisis come all most of the of the cooperatives went bankruptcy because they were used to like buy and sell buy and sell buy and sell when when there was no money to to for the the the people to put money in The Cooperative they fall and they they went bankruptcy so most of them disappear nowadays there

[68:02] just one or two um um making something very just real short thing so the municipality has this problem well how can we uh make new cooperatives how can we give a new a new life to this to this uh um sector the the the municipality is acting now in a strategy the housing strategy in the using the the land that municipality has it has cap capacity to

[68:34] build about 7,000 units so it's public lands owned by municipality that can be built these units can be built either by municipalities either by by the by concessions or by cooperatives so the idea is is to give the the big plots like 100 200 300 and plus units in a concession uh to build so uh always in a in an accessible uh way uh and small plots to the to these new cooperatives that the municipality is trying to to

[69:09] organize okay um if we think about this is a big plan as again as I said to you um the municipali is planning to invest until 2028 800 800 million Eur in housing so it's it's a a major investment um most of them are 500 Millions coming from the the European funds and 300 Millions it's it's money from the municipality um well but the pro of

[69:41] course we have a big problem in in Lisbon as you probably know Lisbon is nowadays one of the most expensive cities to rent a house and to buy a house just to give you a number uh nowadays in February the the price of selling a a house in square meters in Lisbon was 5,538 per per square meter so if you consider that the Portuguese minimum income is around 800 and the average income is about

[70:12] €1,100 you can see that most of of the of the of the houses are not accessible to to for for people to buy it or to rent nowadays especially in Lisbon um if you consider this this this value nowadays so 5,500 if you if you look at 2015 so nine years ago it was 2,000 so it's more than the double of the price in that was just nine years ago so um what are very short

[70:47] what are we doing now so as I told you the big plots are not in this in this presentation so we are pro projecting five cooperatives so five plots of land and so this is the city of lisman is not big city as you you know it um and as you can see it's just small uh units and what the municipality is doing well mainly and to be very short uh municipality will give to land well not give it's uh it's um

[71:21] um I would say um it's a a right to use so people The Cooperative will have the right to use for 90 year years the the land so they can build on it and the municipality will give the projects will give everything just like uh just build it so here's the project we've made it we made everything for you you just have to get money to build the houses okay so mainly it's this uh you have to of course you have to build it in according to to the law of the corpor so it has some some

[71:57] limitations on the on the areas of course but that's not a problem for for people come because it's municipality who prepares everything so it's according to the law uh and it's already approved by municipality so it's Absolut just get to con the construct the company construct to construct it and it's it's yours um so to to be very quick um there are just some rules of course um you people have to to to the income of

[72:33] the people have to be according to the what our other programs for uh accessible housing so if you are a rich person you cannot uh apply to these Cooperative uh uh houses um and uh well and there there will be like if there are more than one Cooperative that is forming to to to get this this projects it will be like a a punctuation syst scoring system to then to find who will get the that plot and that can build and the the the only

[73:10] compensation that Municipal the city wants is that they can give an social area on the building for some social purp purpose okay that can be can be after it managed by The Cooperative or or by municipality or by other social entity so mainly it's this just well if I think you and the slides have all the information so let me just pass and just show you one of the um and then you have of course the the fees so this like this is like administrative fees that you would have if you were a private

[73:47] developer and then project into the municipalities it's a lot of money here and then you also the it's it's um it will be exempt for most of the taxes you only have to pay the TVA which is a reduced tax of 6% so it's a lot of advantage and just to show you sorry not see there okay no problem so this is one just the the one that it's ready to to launch it will be launched in

[74:20] June um so it's 18 units uh 22 um parking slots or cars so it's a total cost of 37 million um and this is the average cost for per unit if you can see here the prices of of the of the houses of course it's very very cheap for for Lisbon and this will be like the the project that municipality is preparing so we hope that then that this

[74:55] model works of course now the everything is done so the only difficulty is to get is to get sure that the banks finance the families to join this Cooperative that this new cooperatives thank you thank you Jo we home ownership cooperatives yes and they can be sold on the market it it will be both models there will be uh home ownership and r

[75:26] [Music] they can be sold uh just by the price plus inflation okay so it's a little bit similar to The Community Land TR going in that direction thank you very much and now I'm really happy to join at I think if we can all stay because there will be some time for questions afterwards um but now we welcome Christian Kik a managing director of European Federation of building societies just to here um one approach if we can all stay that because there

[75:58] will be some questions afterwards um um obviously not there's no one-sized fitle when it when it comes to um housing cooperatives in different regions there will be different um needs so we are not pretending that uh we will have the answer Christian to to all of the new and upcoming cooperatives however I think it's um it's great to to have your intervention now so I'll ask you to join my colleagues table or if you prefer to stay standing whichever you want I'm sitting all day thank you

[76:28] sitting stay standing yes so thank you very much for having me so thank you much for the invitation thank you very much for learning your great experience from all over Europe um my name is chrisan Kik I'm on the other side here perfect so my name is chrisan k I'm the European I'm the managing director of the European of building societ building societies you know it from England Ireland but you also know it from Germany from Eastern Europe and C or in Hungary so may I ask

[77:05] you who is from from Eastern Europe so let's say Czech Republic Slovakia Romania Croatia okay probably you haven't heard about this banking system we are um representing at the European level credit institutions while are focusing on Housing Finance so what is common with you is that we Finance our loans by Cooperative funding so therefore I have a presentation somewhere um and I will not go through

[77:36] every page because it's a little bit boring reading what we wrote down so I will explain a little bit more about um what is behind what is our business structure we are of course we are banks so we are doing profit we are supposed to do profit but we not doing profit like doche Bank bank or BMP because we have a social Focus we are here for helping lower and middle income oh thank you lower and middle income to get credit to purchase a property to purchase apartment to purchase a house or to purchase even a corporative share

[78:08] or to even fix and renovate the existing housing stock which is also one of the biggest challenges which we have to face if you look around here in Brussels you can see the buildings here they really necessarily needed to be renovated so this is the biggest part of our I'm not talking about Belgium I mean this is all over Europe some countries are better off than others so what we do is as I said we um I'm I'm a lobbyist based in Brussels not far from here so I'm negotiating with the European commission and the Parliament banking law but my main focus on National level

[78:45] is to promote housing policy how we are able to get people into homes Let It Be rental homes Let It Be ownership uh but this is the main important most important thing we all suffer from high high housing prices and um the inflation and you all know the problems people don't have enough place to live people from Italy right now we heard that you're staying at home not because of the good food but also because of the lack of existing housing so we need to offer something for the Young Generation to be um to get out from the parents

[79:15] house and also to have their own property their own wealth and to create a new family so which is really important as you can see noways the age of of people who become firsttime owners for example in Germany is 38 39 years so this is quite old and if you're think about and you want to have a family and you have to pay off your credits until retirement it is often impossible therefore a lot of people are not getting credits anymore and we have the situation that we had 10 years low interest rate or negative interest rate at the European Central Bank uh the negative interest rates where people

[79:48] didn't save people didn't save money to become homeowners people didn't Des spend all the money which was the purpose of the um of the European Central bank's policy that people should not save they should consume in order to encourage the economy which means that people haven't don't have any resources don't have their own Capital if they decide now when you are 30 to buy a property become homeowner doesn't need to be a house can be an apartment can be a corporative share so what our member banks are mostly in Eastern Europe Germany and Eastern Europe but the

[80:22] French no they which is a similar product what we offer saving and then you get the credit and since I said we are collective close fund scheme corative finan we Grant credits to people who have been saving with us before the idea was established in the United Kingdom um more than 100 years ago the first building Society cataly Building Society some in nowhere of England um in Ireland you had a lot of building societies until 2008 and then there was this famous crash and only one building building Society

[80:57] survived but in England the building societies are not doing this kind of basic principle business like I said they are doing normal banking business but they are corporately owned what I'm representing is Banks who are corporately financed so people save and they get a get a credit for housing or or cooperative share when they saved enough money but we promise the customer have a fixed interest rate on the saving and fixed interest rate which credit in order to have the security to finance um the property around 40 million contracts are

[81:30] sold in the European Union we are not so big like other Banks but um in the countries where we are the government is incentivizing people to save money for housing for obtaining a Cooperative share in the housing um in the Cooperative housing stock but also become own owners in at the end so governments are incentivizing savings depending on the salary how much you earn so the government gives you a special bonus which is helping consumers who are usually don't have us don't have access

[82:01] to credit so there are still some countries where the banking sector is not as developed like in France or like in England or Netherlands and these countries consumers need to earn their own credit worthiness by Saving regularly they wouldn't get a normal credit from a normal bank if you go to Romania if you are a farmer or if you are working in a fact in fixing building cars you will have a low salary and most of the banks are not serving you so these people have really a problem they don't they're not credit worthy because they don't have a credit history they don't um have enough salary in order to get a credit so

[82:37] refusing to Grant these people credits so what we do we come to this countries we open up the building Society sector and help people for self-help to save the money and then get a credit for the property or for the collective share so how does it work it's really simple basic borrowing banking if you want to if you all want to be homeowner or you want to buy a share in a Cooperative but you don't have the money now so you can go to the bank but the banks refuse you so what we do everybody gives me one Euro today so I have probably 50 people in the room I have 50 EUR today and if

[83:11] the house would cost 50 EUR I will give it to some of you so I will choose one of you of course there is a legal principle and there are methods to prevent fraud mathematical formulas which are supervised by banking supervisors and give you the first loan today and he can start building up a house and tomorrow he will be pay me one Euro again and you will give me another Euro and tomorrow maybe it's your turn to get the credit so that's how it usually works it's a collective closed fund system which is under screw to me by the banking supervisor in the countries where we're active and we even have specialized

[83:45] laws that we should not do risky commercial business or investment business so that's what what's it about so this is really typical boring banking in the old sense is a closed pool of deposit safeguarded by protection on a specific that we are not able to gamble on the stock market for example and we need to be we need to get a security for the for the pro for the for the for the mortgage credit so we register rights in the property in order to be safe and the

[84:16] consumer pays back and we have fixed interest rates agreed already in the beginning so this is a typical mortgage credit for being homeowner interest rates in the Euro zone is quite low for us we offer even credits right now Germany Austria with 1.5 interest rate for the mortgage credit which is quite cheap if you go to normal Bank b parba or do Bank bank or B this you might get you might have to pay right right now 4% I guess in bu or 10 years

[84:47] fixed interest rate so since we are independent from Capital Market because it's a closed Collective fund scheme we can organize lower interest rates but the interest rate on the saving is also really low so this is a disadvantage of the system so you hatch you hch actually a consumer as a saver the rights to get a cheap interest rate you don't have to take the credit if you don't like it or if you find another bank and the market offering you a cheaper interest rate which can be tricky as we saw it in the zero environment zero interest rate

[85:17] environment but um we offer you the possibility you have a security to have an option to get a credit did for a low price so that's how we do our business and since we're here in the Cooperative World um we are also financing cooperatives we financing Cooperative owners we financing shares for corporations or for Cooperative owners by um supporting them to help to to to to accumulate the Savings in order to buy this Cooperative share but we also financing cooperatives as such The Entity as such in order to fix the

[85:54] building in order to buy the building and so on so we have certain quotas in our legislation focusing and restricting this kind of business because we should not do business only in this field the main target is normal consumers but we're also financing cooperative and Cooperative ownership in Germany we even have quotas for that so we Grant big amount of contracts volumes um with a lower fee and um the the advantage of this kind of close Collective fund scheme is that we

[86:28] don't charge early repayment compensation in case the consumer need to pay back the loan earlier so which is a big advantage in some countries it is regulated like in France the early repayment is limited but in some legislations not so with this system we don't have a damage as a banker when we get the money back earlier so therefore we don't charge early repayment fees or early repayment compensation since I'm German I was or we were looking into um what is going on in Germany and the German kfw which is a federal sportive

[87:00] Bank um has certain programs on Cooperative Housing Finance which you probably know better than me because you're dealing with this all the time um there are currently there's a program currently under this government Social Democrat government which we have um granting consumers the possibilities to take up a loan as a Cooperative owner up to 100,000 with a really low interest rate organized by kfw in to be corporate owner of an apartment or a building so this is the program which has been

[87:32] established by the Social Democrat government unfortunately the volume of this program is only 10 million euro it's actually P nuts if you think about how much money is needed but at least it is a first step in the right direction and I know the Minister of Housing and Germany she is really keen on supporting housing cooperatives so if you are talking to German government probably now is the best time the best government for you to convince to get more support for Cooperative housing because our Minister of Housing Mrs kid she's really

[88:04] keen on supporting this specific idea of Cooperative moment maybe we could argue or maybe we could convince EI together in the next term to do something similar on the European level the evb is currently focusing or has been focusing a lot on green finance and green deal now is focusing on weapon financing as we mentioned it before but maybe we can in the next Parliament together convince lawmakers here in Brussels and the

[88:36] European commission to focus more on this way of home ownership Cooperative home ownership and get some support by the European commission and especially the European Investment Bank so I think this is um something which we can do together and really Keen to do that next term and I hope that we have reasonable politicians in the parliament who will listen to us so thank you very much for your

[89:06] attention definitely the S of a good idea there I know that um we have a quick response planned from Gio from Austria um it's going to just react to the to the spara model based on the need a microphone yeah interation um now uh maybe I just wanted to to add because these Banks obviously also exist

[89:37] in Austria but uh I just wanted to add another type of bank which is more going into the direction of of rental housing um for those who might not be familiar with that it's they called the bom banking um so it's it's it's it's not this type closed pool system that they having about C but where you can actually put savings into like any anyone can put in savings a bit like the the French model but uh was bit different so you you uh don't pay capital gains tax and uh the savings on that basically is passed on to

[90:09] especially our members Al the cooperatives uh and with that interest rate reduction they have to use that to finance portable housing um and if you look at it historically um about half of all basically money that went into like from banking side into constructing a portable hous is actually used by generating funds from those W banking so it's quite a significant amount of of money that has been collected from Individual savings with this sort of interest rate reduction that has also benefited directly operative tenants

[90:45] so yes thank you and I think just sitting behind you indeed I don't ask you to speak now but indeed you presented today sorry the branch model which is also based on individual savings that is then used and recycled in a also model based on solidarity to deliver social housing so I think what our job Indeed is to raise the profile of these different instruments that are actually giving citizens a choice and stability in um in

[91:16] a housing market where um and to show that there is another way to manage uh to manage housing um we have a couple of questions coming through online which I'm going to raise but then we also have some time um together before we um before we hear from Lorenzo and one of those questions indeed if Martin Lilia is still there yes so one of those questions was indeed on um she thanked you very much for the example Patra and she wanted to inquire more about the level of participation of

[91:52] residents and to what extent it's a particip participatory process um how is that defined and um yeah she wanted to hear a bit more detail about that and then we have another question Dum so and this is to everybody what is the importance given to Energy Efficiency and energy quality for all these Cooperative homes discussed so far ideally affordability energy efficienc should come together so of course so maybe Martin if you're there you'd like to respond on the level of participation

[92:23] which which was indeed referred to Yes um I tried to give a comment on that um uh when um you are talking about participation members participation in in a Cooperative there's u a different between small uh and big cooperatives it tends to be a um a bigger degree of participations in in small cooperatives and but there is another side of the thing as well

[92:54] um one can see um uh the more formal aspects of participation taking part in the general assembly or perhaps taking place at the board and so on do not attract so many but um the the organization the the framework of of a Cooperative allows the Cooperative to arrange a lot of other activities like um um yeah gardening groups and singing groups and uh perhaps wine tasting and

[93:27] so on and all those activities gives a participation and a social inclusiveness in in the Cooperative uh so the The Cooperative um gives by by the way a framework for other activities and uh many cooperatives have also meeting rooms or common rooms often equipped with a kitchen and so on so um and in Swedish in rickb and that's mandatory uh so that gives an arena

[93:57] possibility for for the uh for the members to to meet and uh get together in a way that private landlords do not offer just a follow-up question um a followup question on that Martin recently we've heard from many of our members that in their funding models they do not receive funding for indeed common areas so in the funding models that you are working with that is not the case uh no uh it's of course if we um uh

[94:32] if we were of if we try to get as much profit as possible we could perhaps exclude those common rooms for example but since we believe that a longlasting good housing uh has to provide a social there are social aspects on it and then for for those reasons we always create a common room uh and uh also other possibilities for activities

[95:06] beside that formal aspects of taking part in your Cooperative indeed good point and indeed this reference to the ecosystem you mentioned that also when we had a preparatory call for this session so the fact that housing corporative lend themselves to more collaboration with other types of cooperative for social issues and we heard also indeed the broader ecosystem with Cooperative banking um from Christian and I've also seen examples of Cooperative construction um sector as well so it's yes

[95:40] yeah anyway I can speak loud just a Precision after what we have reable okay thank you sir for your explain about financial opportunities I just give you an further information how we can do such price we can do such price because the F

[96:12] mediterania Cooperative has access to special kind of loan which is uh called GAA Loan praya in French it's the bank of territory Bank the territ who promot it this loan is on 80 years long so we buy the land with this kind of loan of 80 years long and the rate the rate of which is in

[96:46] France which is a saving personal saving and the rate for this loan is the rate of the liy plus 0 50% so we can buy such land in such area and we can promote this kind of social solution all people key point if the finance framework is not right often it's not possible to to achieve these results so a very important point and indeed brings

[97:17] us back to why we need to work at the EU level to improve it even more um so just on the point on Energy Efficiency see if some of you would like to come back on that yes thanks for the question uh we said also this morning in the in the during the working groups that Energy Efficiency is quite a crucial point that then if we think about a Marshall Plan as ourang is

[97:51] suggesting uh the issue of of energy renewal is absolutely important and to make an example that we have used also for the shape EU final conference a European project that was uh leaded by housing Europe um is about one of our cooperatives but many of them are are doing uh such such plan uh The Cooperative abitare in Milan has used

[98:24] this tax incentive that is called super bonus in Italy and uh this is a Cooperative that itself is celebrating this year 130 years H so which means that they have quite um old housing stock uh they have renewed almost all all the stock so uh they have made an energy retrofitting on more than [Music]

[98:55] 2050 um and 500 uh dueling uh investing uh 200 100,000 um billions of millions of Euros sorry H and what uh was important involving all the families more than uh 700 families in the process with uh with a codesign uh uh let's say yes process uh so uh we care a lot about energy and

[99:28] efficiency and we are investing a lot of money in that and and and we think that again at European level it's it is quite important that housing Europe is saying uh that uh the renovation wave uh has to be followed up and and Cooperative can can use it indeed an inclusive renovation wave and do you have other other panelists would like to come back on the aspect of Energy

[100:04] Efficiency okay and are there any other questions coming from group yes at the back there thank you I'm Christine and I come from Denmark I have a question maybe to Alish because she was gathering evidence maybe to Sweden about the enrollment procedure for cooperatives because we in Denmark have special rules to increase

[100:38] coherence among the inhabitants there is exemption from the rules usual when you apply for nonprofit housing you stay in general waiting line and then the one who is first gets housing first for cooperatives they actually can choose whom they want to have as their neighbors and uh the idea was good that people are feeling together but now we're experiencing two problem with this one problem is that this uh cooperatives among elderly we see that more resource uh people with more resources are getting in there because those are the ones who are more interested and can

[101:10] motivate better for that and then we're also seeing that they are also very similar age and that's also challenge because now they're aging together and younger people are not willing to come in because they will see that there will be a burden for them to carry this large group of uh other seniors who may be still 20 years older than them so I was wondering if there are other models among those rental cooperatives which were sing this successfully and still people were feeling like coherence and large interaction with each other thank you thanks lot keep Point sorry your

[101:43] question was to Rosana on the how it works in Italy or in general she has of models I can have if you want go ahead Martin yeah uh the Swedish corporative that they are working with a op membership model but you have to prove that your economy uh are strong enough to uh fulfill the the payments you you have to the

[102:16] cooperatives and um if you are denied membership uh you can go to court uh perhaps sopia I can see here is can give some comments on that later on H but the corporative the board of the Cooperative does not have the last word on this you can uh get to court to to if you are denied your membership but the model is very open and um except for one thing uh those cooperatives for elderly of course

[102:49] you have to be old you have to be at least 55 years but except that it's a very open model Thanks Martin and do you want to talk about the comparison system yeah just um it's very difficult question actually because I think there's a lot of uh different ways also within the same countries the way that cooperatives allocate their their homes it also depends on whether they manage

[103:19] the stock independently or link to some kind of public program for example supporting social of affordable housing that may have its own rules uh and even at the local level for instance in some municipalities you might have policies to try to balance certain trends like aging of the population or maybe having a stronger mix of incomes um at the same time there are also projects which are born and clearly have an objective from the start of having kind of intentional communities so that we people basically join together based on a certain

[103:56] interest or a certain Philosophy for instance there may be groups uh that look for extremely sustainable and environmentally friendly Housing Solutions others that are for instance groups of uh uh related to age elderly women Co housing projects and things like that so it's it's very hard to to reply but I think overall as a as a society and as a sector we should definitely aim at having a a social mix but whether it has to be uh in one specific project

[104:28] or it's more of of a broader concept it I think the briefing that's a good note to make sure in the briefing we have an overview in different indeed of the different allocation procedures yes another question here then I think we wrap up yes I my um my name is Stefan did I turn it off you did automatically my name is Stefan I'm from the Netherlands and I

[104:58] research cooperatives and I have the sense that I'm in in two entirely different worlds here there's one world present here that is about um financing individual ownership me and my little family unit and individuality and um survival in a world of scarcity and there's a a much longer also a Cooperative movement collaborative movement of social uh collectives of uh co-housing of uh Eco

[105:32] Villages Etc it is also about uh living together in in the broader sense and I hear some of that and I hear some of the individ individuality so I'm not sure at what meeting I am here and I'm wondering how you see that is is about um organizations organizing housing for for for for people for consumers with the word consumer or is this about a movement of people finding housing in some some new

[106:08] forms I think that if we look at the um the corpor that I mentioned earlier on that very strong even 100 years ago it was very much based around the home ownership model but communal management um and we also have cooperatives in our membership that are purely based on rental or right of use um and but what we what what we try to propose is um the need for the need to

[106:40] give people choice in different contexts I don't think it's um the right approach to dictate a certain approach from from European level this is what indeed what we tell the institutions all the time and what is true that in in in the areas for for instance that were mentioned tourism areas with high levels of Tourism where um local families can no longer um access home ownership in fact um um the type of financing described

[107:10] and for individual home ownership can actually be what is missing so I think we don't try I think we see many different contexts in Europe so rural and urban areas with with um different needs but what we try to work towards is a vision for decent housing for all and many of those Solutions indeed have to be collaborative and I think Mo I think most of those what we outlined today but it doesn't mean we rule out the other option of giving people more affordable access to to home ownership because I think what was mentioned the fact that

[107:41] the the market is controlled by uh by a small number of of profit driven Banks is also an issue and doesn't give the people the the choice and the fairness for that option so I don't think it's one world or another I think there's so many different different contexts and I think what what we strive for indeed is is a Europe for people have a choice and at the moment unfortunately the the choice for too many of us is the street at the moment um so with Rising

[108:11] homelessness Rising housing exclusion but I think what we show is that there are other ways there is another way but we need the right context the right financial instruments and the right legislative framework so it's a complex one I agree and hopefully we continue this conversation as well I'm going to let Lorenzo sum up and hopefully we can still say is it possible to stay a little bit for a drink afterwards and there's still some coffee there people still have an appetite for coffee please thanks for joining us thank you it's summer seems

[108:44] pretty complicated but I can give you some pointers so um first of all uh I have to to bring the salutations from our team and our director that couldn't be here today anas matis so I'm trying to replace her let's see if I can do a good job um I'm Loreno novaro I work for cooperatives Europe cooperatives Europe is the representative organization of cooperatives in Europe in general so we are the intersectoral representation as

[109:21] we call it so we mostly work to advocate for the Cooperative model itself independently from the different economic sectors or the different activities that the cooperatives do because there are cops in essentially any part of the economy in Europe so very very varied movement so the the the last question can be applied to a lot of other economic sectors in cooperation uh what we do is represent uh CS through

[109:58] that are represented by our members so uh our members are currently I think 84 uh from 33 European countries so EU and non-eu uh one of the main topics we work on is the uh so-called uh social economy ecosystem so we try to support the emergence of the social economy as an actual uh proper uh part of the European economy this latest

[110:34] legislature in the European commission yes okay uh in the of the European commission uh really changed the approach publication of the social economy action plan in December uh 2021 so after the most uh hard part of the uh pandemic crisis uh we sat down to talk about how the social economy in Europe

[111:08] can evolve and especially how an approach can be harmonized between the different European countries because one of the main topics uh regarding social economy at the moment in Europe is the different approach of the different member states uh there are some that are much more advanced in the way they deal with the social economy initiatives and Enterprises acting in in this field others that are much less prepared or

[111:45] uh maybe you need to change the microphone take another one [Laughter] so maybe they switch off at 530 I think you can stay without your voices yeah yeah sure just for the online I don't know if there is any any mic okay uh no

[112:20] better uh so yeah the the social economy action plan was really a moment that uh changed the discussion at European level uh and it had already a series of consequences the publication so we have more clear the action areas that were identified and we have a path to what could be the evolution of of this the first uh um the first moment was when the uh Commission launched a cons

[112:54] consultation called the pathways so uh the first two were uh dedicated to tourism and to social economy and proximity economy uh the interesting thing for today I think is that touching the topic of proximity economy they are starting to involve the Civil Society of Europe into a process of re-evaluating and uh looking into the different modalities of urban living and also

[113:29] rural living and how the European citizens can shape their own habitat let's say uh the interesting thing is that the proximity economy is is actually at the moment the least developed policy point but it's going to get a lot of attention so we expect for the new commission that will come up after the uh the elections in the next legislature to have more initiatives on

[113:59] this uh the transition pathways are leading to groups and to other and to other discussions so we hope that we will get contributions on this from the uh housing cops and all the other all the other actors so that we can uh participate more in this discussion um the touris one is somehow linked we touched upon that um a lot of times today there are different aspects

[114:29] especially on sustainability of Tourism uh from the environmental point of view but also from the urbanism point of view and and the life of the European citizens so the two are are quite interl and others will come uh the other aspect that is definitely interesting for the discussions today and that we can try to follow together uh is the renovation of buildings and the um renovation of the energetic profile of the real estate in

[115:06] Europe in general uh this aspect is interesting on a lot of different uh uh of different profiles first of all the fact that there is also another initiative from the European Commission uh called the new European B house I don't know how many are involved in this uh it's an interesting approach because it's trying to give like a European way of uh of identifying certain kinds

[115:40] of needs and finding the the solutions I don't know how effective it is for now but the Ambitions are very high and public bodies uh local public bodies are very much involved in the process so for the first time we are seeing not only the usual uh dgs so the say ministries of of Europe involved uh but also theg Regio and all the local

[116:11] territory uh governance very much involved uh in this aspect uh of renovation and going towards the green transition for what is the enormous Heritage and the enormous patrimony of buildings in Europe that's also the topic uh of energy itself so energy consumption and energy production on this there is for us working for cooperatives a topic that is very

[116:41] interesting is the energy communities energy communities could be a way also to make homeowners or Cooperative members uh and energy consumers because each of us is also an energy consumer in in society they could become producers or consumers as they call uh and but this requires a lot of work on regulation because there is no harmonized way to regulate energy

[117:17] communities not only in the member states but even in the regions inside the member states so there is a lot uh to work there uh some countries are getting more open to experimentation uh and some others are looking for like a uniform regulation that it's still to come so on this we are working uh also with with other Cooperative sectors rope for example our

[117:47] uh renewable energy cooperatives uh Association so all of this is is really a challenge uh we are working to try and bring the voice of all kinds of cooperatives uh to not only the European commission but also uh the work with the parliament the um it was mentioned at the beginning when MP Toya was speaking she mentioned the social economy Intergroup a lot of work has been done

[118:18] there mostly behind the scenes to push for uh new positions in the social economy the parliament always a quite slow process kind of institution but uh a lot a lot was done we hope that in the new Parliament there will be other opportunities for this uh so we're definitely open open to that uh I really think we can do a lot together uh one

[118:49] step practical that can be uh from here to the to the elections Is the participation in the next uh consultations and the participation in pledges so on the transition Pathways what the commission is looking for is pledges from Civil Society on some topics and they are open also to uh pledges from the same organization in different transition Pathways so maybe we could think of something

[119:22] conect connected to the proximity economy uh and see if we can together push for uh some significant points to be included in the future Publications and in the directives that will necessarily have to be promoted by the next commission so we are we are at the end but a lot of what we are doing now will have to be uh picked up in the next season thank thank you very

[119:56] much member of corporative Europe I really appreciate that you're keeping this other way of working on the map firmly at European level as well so that's um great to have you here today and we need some of those ideas we can continue to work on so I think just leaves us to say thank you to all our panelists to to you for being here I know it's been a long day for many of you and also to I don't know if anybody's here but they host us so SL Bay is Our member here in Brussels and they hosted us here today and indeed I think I just finished with the words

[120:29] indeed you inspired um mentioning the new European bow house because um indeed it's an interesting initiative launch at European level but with three key words um sustainable beautiful together and I think this word of together it's just a point that we should constantly reinforce that housing indeed should not just be left up to the individual if you're priced out of the market it is not necessarily your fault if you are homeless on the street it is not your

[121:03] fault this is a societal question that we we do have to solve together and I think a lot of the answers of of how to do that were mentioned here today but we just have to scale it up so thank you for being here and and also to Andrea naku for working very hard in in the background preparing and ABD Rim also for the preparation of of the event today am I forgetting somebody thank you

[121:33] all thanks for the invitation maybe I can take a picture of you all together go back then come back maybe standing up no little bit in the front we

[122:08] have work together in Italy actually European B I see I see I'm from may I mean I

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