A group of Vitorians work in a way to respond to the problem of housing as a collective. In BizikoopO, the idea of creating a cooperative for the construction of community housing has been dubbed. "Housing is a project and a model of coexistence; in other cooperatives there is no commitment to community life, and here, yes, coexistence is of great importance". Arantza Basagoiti has communicated this to ALEA magazine, which Gara has just published. The group met in spring and there are currently ten people, including adults and children, who have taken the first steps to implement the project they dream of.

The community housing cooperative is based on the figure of the transfer of use, that is, the owner of the housing is cooperative from the beginning to the end; the cooperativist has the right to use the house but not to the property. "The property will be collective; it is not just the creation of a normal housing cooperative for the construction of a building". Leire Zelaia, from BizikoopOn, has made it clear that the cooperative’s partners, at first, are going to make an economic income, and are going to pay a fee every month. "When you get out of the project, you'll get your initial income back and you'll get a chance for someone else to take your place."

In November last year, they started talking to friends about the idea. The plan arises from the desire to promote coexistence and to share more spaces in daily life. "When we start to turn around the intention, we propose that housing have common spaces, other than those that are. It is clear that we have to keep the private spaces, but we have to have the opportunity to share some activities, the kitchen, the living room… We do not have a very elaborate image, as we move forward we will realize what we will like to do together and what only”.

The members of the group believe that the project also involves adopting an attitude to the housing problem, "like not wanting to enter a mortgage for 30 years for example". Furthermore, they believe that this model offers an alternative of collective ownership and the possibility of leaving the ordinary market. "It's a partial answer to the housing problem, it doesn't respond to the need of society as a whole, but to some groups of people it may be. It's not a global response, we're clear," Zelaia stressed.

Casco Viejo

It is intended to locate the first community housing of the city in the Casco Viejo de la capital alavesa. "We have some kind of bond here, most of the time we live here, and it's important for us to maintain the bond with our regular community," Zelaia explained.

They have a lot of work to do. At the internal level, it is a question of concretizing most aspects of the project, they have a quote to talk about financing next week, they will also have to analyze and discuss the statutes of the cooperative… In addition, to the extent of their community aspirations, they want to make known to the neighbors and the social agents who are carrying out the project and are organizing presentations. "It is important for us to communicate the intention, because we can generate concerns, we want to communicate it to the neighborhood and that is what we have done, the reception has been good, very rich, we have not been questioned too much", he added.

Institutional participation

Buying a plot, fixing a building… The members of the BizikoopOn group are analyzing different options and are gathering information these days, "we are not experts in this, we are not professionals, and bringing the idea forward requires a lot of work."

They have also spoken with the institutions, the Basque Government and the association Ensanche 21 Ensanche de Vitoria-Gasteiz, with the objective of obtaining a site to build a house through a transfer of years. "This is our first choice, on the one hand, not to raise the price too much, and, on the other, because we believe it is good that administrations commit themselves to this type of initiative." Basagoiti explained that in the meetings they have held, nothing has been done, but that a very broad position has been found by the administrations. "The leaders of the Basque Government told us that at present the policy of the administration is to promote renting and they see that a percentage of homes can also be built through this model. In the Ensanche 21 society they also liked the idea very much. They knew the model and saw the possibility of starting a project pilot." In any case, from now on we will have to see what the interest shown by the institutions is.

La Borda de Barcelona, as a model

It is the project La Borda de Barcelona, which BizikoopOn has taken as a model to implement the idea of community housing in Vitoria-Gasteiz. In the Basque Country there are also more experiences of this kind, such as that of Abaraska de Donostia, and some small groups in Navarre and Bizkaia, but the majority are in its beginnings.

The friends of La Borda de Cataluña, for their part, after a long year of work, will move the December bridge and finally occupy a building in the Sants neighborhood. Elba Mansilla, cooperativist at La Borda, explains to ALEA that 29 homes have been built in which 50 people and 11 children will live. "We started with the project seven years ago, when a group linked to the Can Batlló neighborhood platform began to reflect on housing because in Barcelona the housing problem is dramatic." They had been studying all possibilities for two years, since there was no reference in the Spanish State to the model of community cooperative housing, so they had to look for a model in the countries of northern Europe. In 2014, the location of the project was defined, and in the last two years a construction work of housing has been carried out.

Mansilla has stressed that the main problems are the lack of references and the existence of a legal system that penalises collective ownership. "Public institutions do not advise, hinder what they do not know and, in addition, do not recognize hybrid formulas. The collective property of housing is an anomaly in the current logic based on individual property".

The cooperatives of La Borda have had to disseminate many "melons" and now, over these years, they are sharing their knowledge and enhancing the cooperative housing model. You're clear that right now, it's not a formula for everybody. "We have to spend a lot of hours and we need financial resources, each of which has invested EUR 18,500, it is not an amazing price, but it is not a little," he added.

This news was posted by Arabako Alea and we brought it to ARGIA thanks to the CC-by-sa license.