Will Zurich housing cooperatives be the solution to the rest of Europe’s housing crisis? | peter applications
Children go down a slide into the tunnel, while their parents watch, drinking coffee and chatting amiably on long benches in the middle of the courtyard.
It is surrounded by modern-looking residential projects – architecturally smart, mid-rise, and expensive-looking in their design. This appears to be just another 21st century development project in a major city, one on which contractors have made a huge profit, and apartments that will inevitably be snapped up by landlords and rented at the highest market price.
But look closely, and you’ll see that things are different.
There are more children and families than you would find in a project like this in London. People seem to know each other, neighbors greet each other warmly and sit together outside, rather than rushing to the metro station with earbuds jammed.
Inside, some of the apartments are arranged in clusters: eight bedrooms open to a common space where neighbors cook, chat and share meals. There are more working class, poor and ethnic minorities than you might expect to find in a project like this in a major city.
This is it Mehr als Wohnen Cooperative In Zurich, Switzerland: A group of 13 apartment buildings represents a different approach to housing development in major cities across the country.
All the buildings are owned by a cooperative that developed them. The cooperative is owned by the people who live in the apartments and have bought a share in the company. The result is no landlord, no speculative real estate developer, no rising housing prices, no profit, no need for evictions, and a building that supports affordable housing and communal living. The cooperative includes shops, work spaces, a restaurant, a children’s nursery and a hotel. It has a no-car policy, complemented by electric car and e-bike rental systems. It couldn’t feel more different from the UK.
In many parts of the world, a cooperative like this is not some kind of utopian dream. In fact, it is the primary means used by communities from Scandinavia to South America to provide housing to people who cannot afford straight market rates. Zurich quickly became a modern model of how this model could be used to build a different kind of city.
One in five citizens They now live in Zurich in a cooperative, which means they have bought a share in the company that built and owns their apartment building. This means that despite it being a major global financial center and a great location on the edge of a large lake, poorer people, young people, families and students can still find a place they can afford in the city centre.
Today’s model involves members purchasing a returnable share for between 7,000 and 25,000 Swiss francs (about £6,500 to £23,500) to join a co-operative and acquire a home. They then pay a “cost rent” that reflects the cost of paying off the debt and maintaining the property.
Swiss cooperative housing has a long history. The movement began in the late 19th century, with labor movements pooling their wealth to purchase homes that could provide them with security amid the housing speculation that was beginning to emerge in urban areas. In Zurich, the city’s first housing cooperative, Waidberg, was founded in 1907, and other cooperatives quickly followed, including Allgemeine Baugenussenschaft Zurich (ABZ)founded in 1916, when 15 members began paying 20 cents each into the account. Once enough money is collected, a new house will be built. ABZ still exists today, owning 5,000 homes inhabited by 12,000 people.
The movement grew after World War II, with support from national and local governments, which provided favorable land rents and loans. Corporations became more sophisticated from the 1990s onwards, as they banded together to raise development finance. A broad renaissance of the movement was sparked in Zurich in 2011 after a citywide referendum set a goal for a third of the city’s housing stock to be owned by cooperatives by 2050.
Since then, cooperatives have had priority in obtaining land leased to or gifted to them by the city. They receive low-interest loans and preferential treatment in the city’s zoning planning system. They also have access to some world-respected architects, to learn about developments Gain a good reputation for being “Examples of Outstanding architectural and environmental quality.”
In some cases, the city also buys up to 20% of a co-op’s shares, giving it the rights to housing that it then offers to homeless families in exchange for lower rents.
All cooperatives Signed a joint charter Which requires the adoption of principles such as “no speculative profits, sustainable, good quality and affordable housing, inclusion of disadvantaged families, tenant participation and self-determination.”
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The legal structure of cooperatives means that each member has one vote in decision-making, which means that the collective cooperative is run democratically by its residents. This can be difficult: running a building is difficult, and the democratic model is a time commitment that UK citizens will not be used to. But this means that decisions about their buildings are made by them, and not imposed by the landlord or freeholder.
It’s also not always an easy model for doing business financially: older buildings will eventually need improvement work, leading to higher rents. For newly built projects, rising construction costs have pushed up rents, while land scarcity means growth slows and demand exceeds supply.
This has led to accusations that it is not affordable, and that it actually caters to wealthier renters and drives gentrification. Even with these drawbacks, the model is cheaper than it would have been if the owner’s profit margin had also needed to be taken into account.
Could such a model work in the UK? There’s no reason to think it won’t happen. In fact, there is Existing network One of the small but thriving cooperatives here, dating back decades.
And part of the reason this hasn’t gone mainstream is because we did something better – council housing – so we didn’t need it to grow. But with social housing provision halted and demand for housing higher than ever, the co-operative model offers a glimpse of an alternative to our broken system. It’s something we can at least explore.