Barcelona, 2011
Status: Pilot
By 2018 the cooperative LaCol will build 28 apartments on a public land rent out for 75 years by the municipality of Barcelona, with a total budget of 2 milions Euros. The site is located in Sants, a working class neighbourhood, next to a former textile factory that was converted into a vast autonomous cultural centre name ‘Bloc Onze’. Since 2011, this 9 hectares industrial complex, called Can Batlló, has been occupied by several organizations from the neighbourhood in order to reinvent a public space where locals can gather and express themselves. They organise many activities for the community including markets, concerts, screenings, artistic workshops. Three years ago they started looking for solutions to tackle the lack of affordable housing and imagined La Borda, a self-initiated co-housing project.
In La Borda co-housing project, there are owners and tenants and a part of a coop supermarket. The idea is that the group of people would form a cooperative so they can collectively build houses. They would then split the project it into lots so each family could buy its own house at the end. In that case, the cooperative puts houses out of the market so in case someone wants to leave the co-op, the co-op gives the money to invested and chooses another person to replace. This person has to pay its share to be able to use the house.
The municipality of Barcelona is renting out the land for 75 years. La Borda is hiring experts from different fields : LaCol (architectural design), and a cooperative in charge of economical aspects and managing the budget. An other important partner is Coop57 which is some sort of a cooperative bank, that lends money to social projects. They directly contribute to 20% of the overall budget and also help us raising money via a micro lending campaign. It’s between the loan and the crowdfunding campaign ; individuals from all over Europe can give us a small amount of money (few hundred euros) and will get it back in 10 or 15 years.
Then, each family participates financially in the project through their initial share (about 15 000€ each) and the rent they will pay monthly to the cooperative. Rents, that range from 300€ to 600€, are about 50% lower than the market price. Our project also includes much more services than what you could usually have. The fact that the building will be built on a plot owned by the municipality implies that rent cannot exceed social housing prices.
This project is entirely self-managed by the members of La Borda. They are organised in commissions that deal with specific aspects (architectural design, community life, communication etc.). They try to reach consensus and big decisions are taken during our assembly, when every family is present.
