Catalan housing co-op Sostre Cívic has secured €31m from the Development Bank of the Council of Europe (CEB) to develop 350 new co-operative homes.
The homes will be located on land owned by the town councils of Barcelona, Lleida, Manresa, Granollers and Vilafranca del Penedès, and part-funded by the government of Catalonia.
Sostre Cívic called the project a first step towards a “leap of scale“, which will see the co-op manage over 550 homes within the next two years.
Sostre has been managing co-op homes since 2004 under its right of use model, where the co-op maintains collective ownership of homes, and members have the right to live indefinitely in the property.
“Since we do not have a profit motive, the partners who come to live in the new projects will do so at cost price,” said Sostre Cívic.
The co-op’s president, Carlos Alcoba, said: “We guarantee that these homes will remain forever off the speculative market, and any future surpluses we can obtain will be reinvested in more homes.”
All homes will be built with high energy-efficiency features such as solar panels, water recycling systems, and a shared telecommunications network.
“The Lleida and Manresa projects will be built with industrialised systems to reduce time and costs,” said Sostre’s co-ordinator David Guàrdia, “minimising the environmental impact and increasing the quality of the finishes; those in Granollers and Vilafranca del Penedès will be built with wood and will have shared electric mobility vehicles.”
The Sant Andreu building in Barcelona will also have places reserved for people with learning disabilities, and the Sarrià project, ‘Can 70’, will cater for older residents.
The project was announced on 4 November at Bloc4BCN, in Barcelona’s Sants neighbourhood.
The event was attended by Maria Sigüenza, country manager of the CEB in Spain, who said:
“We are proud to support this project as investing in affordable housing aligns with the priorities of our Strategic Framework 2023-2027. Through this loan, our aim is to contribute to a future in which all people have access to a safe and affordable place to live, especially those who are socially and economically vulnerable, including people with reduced mobility or learning disabilities.”
Sostre Cívic said the project “lays the foundation stone” of a co-operative housing model similar to that of the Netherlands and Denmark, where more than 25% of the housing stock is managed by co-ops or non-profit entities, through government partnerships.
