Another way to live
As technology brings us closer together and tries to smooth out the rough corners of our lives, daily reality for many is still a lonely and complicated business. More demands on our time, along with less community support, have led to a sharp increase in social isolation. At the same time, modern trends point to a yearning for something more simple. From car sharing to knitting circles, community allotments to coworkings, the underlying focus is on the sharing economy, where community and sustainability are key to a better quality of life.
With that in mind, groups are coming together to create homes that are based on sharing and interaction within the community, inspired by a northern European model of housing that has been growing steadily since the Seventies. Barely heard of in Catalunya five years ago, the concept of cohousing is gaining ground here, and the green shoots of a new movement are breaking through.
Cohousings are intentional communities in which each family unit has its own living space, but certain amenities are shared, such as laundry facilities, gardens and a common space where residents can meet and eat together. A cohousing project may be city-based or in the country, apartments or single family homes, and usually contains between 15 and 30 living units. Not to be confused with communes, cohousing is a less idealised and more pragmatic solution to our practical and social needs. It differs from other types of communal living in several ways: there is no shared economy (each household is financially independent), it is designed by the residents according to their own needs, and it works by way of consensus decision-making, with no one leader.
Europe’s first cohousing community was built in Denmark in 1972 by a group of people dissatisfied by what their communities offered. Thirty miles from Copenhagen, the Saettedammen community is still going strong, and it gave rise to many other similar projects. Over 50,000 Danes now live in cohousings, and this model of collaborative living has become increasingly popular in other northern European countries. The Netherlands is home to over 300 cohousings, and the UK currently has 19 functioning projects, with many more groups in the process of setting up.
Ana Fernández is the cofounder of cohousing_LAB, a Barcelona-based architectural firm that specialises in designing cohousing communities. Originally from Argentina, Fernández lived in the Netherlands for some years and, although now based in Poblenou, she continues to work with groups there. She is well versed in the process of setting up a group, finding land and creating a bricks-and-mortar community. “There are three main advantages to cohousing over traditional single family homes,” said Fernández. “They are made to measure, affordable and participative.”
According to Fernández, all of these benefits come from cutting out the middleman. By having no property developer involved to raise the financing (and add a profit margin) and no sales and marketing costs, the final price stands at around 30 percent less than a standard home. There can be further savings if the group is willing to help out with painting, carpentry, etc. For Fernández, however, the biggest advantages are the intangibles. “Everyone gets to participate in community life,” she said.
While traditional banks are unlikely to be familiar with the concept of cohousing, Fernández said ‘ethical banks’, which finance social and environmental projects, are more amenable. The group needs to be able to raise the funds to buy the land (approximately 20 percent of the total cost, depending on the location), but the remaining amount, including design and construction, can be financed. The group forms a housing cooperative and each family unit contributes proportionally in accordance with the size of their home.
Fernández has worked with 12 groups in Barcelona over the last two years, although none have yet come to fruition. Fear and cost are usually the issues that halt progress. She noted that for older people, taking the plunge usually means selling the family home, a big leap of faith when there are no functioning cohousing projects in Catalunya. For younger people, the problem tends to be financial. Because they often work in the city, these groups generally look for cohousing in urban areas where land is scarce and prices are prohibitively expensive.
To anyone looking to begin a cohousing group, Fernández has some advice. “Find two or three like-minded people and define your project together. Once you have the basis in place, then you can open up and start looking for other people.”
Juli Carbó is president of Cohousing Barcelona, a cooperative that aims to bring together people who want to live in a cohousing, and help them get their project off the ground. They are currently working to secure a site in Poblenou and are also supporting a project for seniors in Arenys de Mar. “One of the main differences with cohousing is that the group gets to decide on everything about their future home,” he said. Aspiring cohousers pay a fee of €500 to join the cooperative, which is returned to them if they leave.
Barcelona resident Mark Hazleton used Meetup to look for like-minded souls in the city. Born in Scotland and raised in the US, he had been interested in living in a cohousing for many years. At its peak, the group had 12 people—a mixture of locals and many other nationalities—but finances proved to be a stumbling block. “The problem is that many memberes of the group were relying on getting mortgages and it was a shock when they discovered that the land would have to be bought upfront. Only a few people had the means to go ahead at that point.”
One of the people who joined the group is Sven Campers, a Belgian who has lived in Barcelona for 10 years. For Campers—who lives in a small apartment in Poblenou with his wife and four-year-old daughter—having more space for less money, and sharing facilities and skills with other families are the attractions. “Some people think cohousing must be like living in a commune, but I don’t see it like that. I like the idea of the kids having more space to play, of being able to share things and help each other out.” Although his search began in Poblenou, he is now looking beyond the city in the hope of finding less expensive land.
The price of land in Barcelona means that people on lower incomes are being priced out of the city. As well as creating sustainable communities, cohousing is also part of a new model of non-speculative housing that has gained ground in the last few years. Spain is traditionally a land of homeowners, with more than 78 percent of its adult population living in owner-occupied homes (compared to 63 percent in the UK). Long considered a safe investment and a way to pass wealth on to the next generation, recent times have revealed dangerous cracks in a model that is so dependent on market forces. The economic crisis of 2008, and the ensuing rise in unemployment, led to huge numbers of people being evicted from their homes for failing to keep up with mortgage or rental payments. Others, who had bought their homes at a peak in the market, were left with negative equity. The sharp increase in rental prices since then is also proving problematic for those residents who are unable to keep up with rising costs. The city is crying out for new solutions to a problem that won’t go away.
One of the ideas being pursued by the Ajuntament is public cohousing as a way to help people on low incomes gain access to secure housing. Although the actual living arrangements may be similar to private cohousings (where members own their property), the financial model is significantly different, and is based on a ‘granted-for-use’ (cesión de uso) model. The Ajuntament allows a cohousing to be built on public land, granting use of the land for a specific number of years (usually 70-100). Often financed by an ethical bank, the tenants form a cooperative that builds the physical project but never actually owns it. Each month, they pay rent, but it is below market rates. Just as in a private cohousing, the members of the cooperative are the main designers of the project and the end design is defined by their needs. However, the land is still publicly owned and, when the lease ends, the land and the building revert back to being the property of the Ajuntament.
In 2016, the Ajuntament put seven pieces of land to tender to cohousing cooperatives. The aim was to create 115 apartments in total, all under the granted-for-use scheme. “There’s a lot of demand for the creation of homes in communities, and the city wants to encourage it,” said Josep Maria Montaner, housing councillor.
One of the cooperatives that secured a site was Sostre Cívic, which was setup in 2010 as a means to create new and innovative ways to provide access to housing. As well as the granted-for-use model, Sostre Cívic promotes senior cohousing and urban masoveria, whereby a home is used in exchange for carrying out improvements or maintaining it—similar to the masover concept often found on farms in Catalunya.
Carles Torra is a member of Sostre Cívic and part of its group working on senior cohousing. Now retired, Torra joined Sostre Cívic with a personal desire to live in a cohousing as an older person. Although he sees that interest is increasing in the model, he agrees that one of the biggest hurdles and reasons that groups fail to advance is finding affordable land. Working with local administrations also means that things inevitably move more slowly, even with the best will. “Cohousing isn’t well defined here and some town councils have never heard of it,” he said.
The cooperative has nine projects up and running, including cohousing and other forms of non-speculative housing. One of these is a pilot granted-for-use project on Carrer Princesa in the Born in conjunction with the Ajuntament. Work began in April 2017 and, when completed, it will contain five apartments of between 45 and 65 square metres, as well as several common spaces. The residents each contributed an initial €9,000, refundable by Sostre Cívic if they leave the project, and will pay a monthly quota of between €450 and €500.
Sostre Cívic has another 14 projects at the planning stage and works with private groups who want to create a community based on the granted-for-use model. To join the cooperative, individuals contribute €100 (returnable if they leave) and pay an annual fee of €36. In exchange, they receive advice, training and mediation with professionals and banks to help get their project off the ground.
The Transition Factory, near Tarragona, is one of these projects. Instigated by Belgian Matthieu Lietaert who is working with three local professionals, the aim is to rehabilitate an abandoned paper and textile factory in the town of El Catllar. Lietaert’s vision is to showcase a new and sustainable way of living beyond the city through the revitalising of villages. “In the Seventies,” said Lietaert, “people began to migrate to cities and entire villages across Europe began to die away. Thanks to the technology available now, we can reverse that.” The Transition Factory will not only be a cohousing, but also a hub for local artisans, innovative ideas and projects. They will begin to create the group in January 2018, with the aim to start construction in 2019.
Lietaert has plenty of experience in cohousing. He was the motor behind l’Échappée, a five-storey cohousing in Brussels—where he currently lives—that opened in 2016 and houses 45 people in 18 apartments. They share a garden and common space, as well as regular meals together. “We’ve created a village in the city,” Lietaert said.
Reflecting on the experience of living in a cohousing, Lietaert observed that many people are worried about living at close quarters with other people, and the obligations and lack of privacy that might involve. In reality, according to Lietaert, privacy is extremely important to cohousing inhabitants. “Rather than creating obligations, cohousing gives you more freedom, not just for social interaction, but also in terms of time saved by pooling resources, from cooking to car sharing, skills and shopping.” L'Échappée, for example, has five cars shared between them. And it has a positive financial impact, too: “We get a lot more for our money here,” Lietaert said.
Closer to home, another pioneering granted-for-use project is La Borda, on the old industrial site of Can Batlló in Sants. Work began in spring 2017 in conjunction with LaCol, an architectural collective that works with ordinary people to bring about social transformation. La Borda was started by a group of activists who, in 2011, had campaigned against the use of Can Batlló for commercial housing, demanding that the Ajuntament respect their original intentions of using the site for new social housing, amenities and green space. The group occupied one of the buildings and created a social centre for the neighbourhood. In 2014, they reached an agreement with the Ajuntament to build the cohousing. “The project was a bit of an experiment with the Ajuntament,” explained cooperative member Carles Baiges, “and it has paved the way for future projects. We had a lot of problems because something like this had never been done before.”
In the summer of 2018, La Borda’s 28 apartments will become home to an intergenerational community of people, from young parents to retirees. Apartments will come in three different sizes, with shared zones, including a laundry room, large kitchen, guest rooms, sitting room and playroom. The community has defined the details of the plans and will manage the building on a day-to-day basis. To qualify, all members must be eligible for social housing, and pay a returnable fee of between €14,000 and €16,000 to enter. This money is given back if or when they decide to leave. On a monthly basis they will pay a low rent.
The project will cost €3 million and is financed mostly by ethical bank Coop 57. Guarantees for the loan were provided by the future residents themselves and by their friends and family. La Borda also received €865,000 in loans from friends, family and benefactors.
Key to the success of the project, according to Baiges, has been the participation of the residents. “We meet each week to move ahead with plans, and each person is part of a working group, such as legal, architecture, finance or communication. We are also carrying out some of the unskilled work ourselves.” He pointed out that in projects in other countries, such as Uruguay, it is common for families who don’t have the money for the initial fee to dedicate an amount of time to helping with the construction.
A noticeable feature of La Borda is its unusual architecture. Except for the first floor, the entire building is made of wood. “It was very important for us to create an ecologically sustainable project,” said Baiges, explaining that the wood came from the Basque country. “The building will be very energy efficient.”
With so much interest from private individuals, cooperatives and the Ajuntament itself, it seems that momentum is building in the cohousing movement. Despite society’s many entrenched paradigms about housing, these few pioneers are showing that something else really is possible: a more collaborative, community-focused life that brings tangible and intangible benefits to its residents. In some cases, it also means a welcome departure from the stressful ladder of home ownership, or the ups and downs of the rental market. And although none of them would say the path is easy, judging by the time and dedication being invested in projects around the city and throughout Catalunya, they all consider it a worthwhile journey to a healthier society.
ETHICAL BANKING
Since the banking crisis of 2008, there has been a rise in demand for more ethical and sustainable banking, not only regarding the behaviour and transparency of the bank towards its clients but, more importantly, where and who it is investing in.
Ethical banks are transparent about who they are dealing with and loaning to. Their investments are in socially or ecologically sustainable projects. They are regulated by the same authorities as traditional banks, and their profit margins are often lower than traditional banks, meaning fewer offices and more online service.
Triodos
The biggest of the ethical banks, Triodos was founded in 1980 and has over 150,000 clients. It focuses on social and environmental sustainability and only loans to projects that can show that they will have a positive effect in these areas. It has current and savings accounts for individuals and entities.
Fiare Banca Etica
Part of the Italian bank, Banca Popolare Etica, Fiare has 37,000 clients in Italy and Spain. It expects its clients to participate in the bank’s decisions—each customer has one vote, regardless of how much capital they have in the bank. Loans must be for social or environmental requirements, with each loan considered on its individual merits. Fiare also offers current accounts for organisations and companies.
Coop57
All clients are members of this cooperative bank and must be approved by its ethics committee. Accounts are available for individuals and companies.