Author: moba

Or What We Learned from Switzerland’s Cooperative Housing Ecosystem & Vice Versa

For the week surrounding this year’s International Day of Cooperatives, we went to Switzerland to deepen relationships with those that have spent decades in the guts of one of the world’s strongest cooperative housing ecosystems. The exchanges were focused on coop housing ecosystem building, collaborative housing finance and international cooperative solidarity.

We spent the week visiting Geneva’s housing cooperatives and meeting its residents – including CODHA, Archipel, Équilibre and SCHG. We learned of the different ways they use external and internal capital to develop new projects and support members, of how their origins, scale and residents affect their priorities. We also met with Philea, a non-profit coop that facilitates access to credit. In Zurich, we met Hans Rupp (former ABZ and Kraftwerk1 CEO), Andreas Wirz (WBG Zurich), and Franz Horvath (WBG Swizerland) to use our collective intelligence to pinpoint what makes coop housing in Switzerland work as a fundamental part of the housing system – and to identify new ways of moving forward with building a new reality for cooperative housing in Central and South-Eastern Europe. 

Continue reading “Building Solidarity Across Europe & Reclaiming Finance”

Last week we spent at the vastness of the World Urban Forum in Baku. We presented MOBA’s work in the region on bridging the gap in coop housing finance with our cooperatively owned financing mechanism the Accelerator, reflected on the bruises and breakthroughs we’ve experienced on the way, joined community-led housing friends and allies at the Habitat Village, and found genuine understanding among EU-level decision-makers at the UN Habitat Arena. 

Inspiration, hope and celebration – of increasing recognition of the importance of centering care and imagining new financial architecture to support it, the resilience of initiatives such as Slum Dwellers International who celebrated their 30^th anniversary, 40 years of World Habitat Awards, gradual shifts and hard-won victories across contexts globally – mixed with the uneasy feeling of being faced with what we’re up against: top-down, market-driven housing actors who shape and exploit narratives, with platforms much, much bigger than ours.

Continue reading “Finding our place at World Urban Forum in Baku”

From February 24-26, the European Alliance for Collaborative Housing organised an event in Brussels that marked a pivotal moment in its ongoing advocacy – we gathered collaborative housing actors from across Europe and key decision-makers to further push for the European Affordable Housing Plan to centre long-term affordability at a stage when the Commission is moving towards its implementation. 

The Alliance is formed by MOBA, World Habitat, European CLT Network, urbaMonde, European Student Cooperative Housing Alliance, NETCO, Red Vivienda Cooperativa and Sostre Civic and advocates for “collaborative” or community-led housing – models based on long-term affordability and community stewardship, with a focus on housing cooperatives and community land trusts.

Continue reading “European Alliance for Collaborative Housing gathers key actors in Brussels”

Only getting younger!
We have a new member: Foundation for Housing the Youth (FHY) – Fiatalok Közösségi Lakhatásáért Alapítvány, from Budapest!

The Foundation has been created by the legendary College for Advanced Studies in Social Theory (TEK), a unique student organisation that gave rise to numerous civil society organisations and social movements in Hungary. And so, we expect things to shake up in MOBA as well.

Continue reading “New member joins MOBA!”

Our wish for 2025 was strong communities and resilient enthusiasm – and this is precisely what we were lucky to have.

In 2025, MOBA:

• Brought the Accelerator, our community-owned revolving fund, to the final stages of development

• Advocated extensively for cooperative and community-led housing to be recognised in the European Affordable Housing Plan

• Supported territorial partners in the Danube region through the RurALL Interreg project, analysing vacancy mapping data and contributing to governance and business model development for the participatory transformation of mapped buildings

• Participated in the International Social Housing Festival, the Global Social and Solidarity Economy Forum, the Responsible Housing Finance Summit, and more

• Strengthened our capacities in targeted areas of cooperative law, sociocratic decision-making, and facilitation

This work continues into 2026, with some cooperations and processes only just beginning.

We are glad to be kicking off the new year as part of a consortium working to reduce inequalities and strengthen participation by bridging the gaps between grassroots housing solutions and policymaking through local and regional forums on community-led housing.

Read our full annual report for 2025 below!

The housing cooperative project in Križevci is among 20 projects awarded the NEB Boost for Small Municipalities earlier this month – the second project in MOBA’s network to be recognised by the NEB initiative after ACRED’s rising star win in 2024!

Continue reading “Housing Cooperative Križevci wins NEB Boost for Small Municipalities!”

The RurALL project addresses the challenge of rural depopulation in the Danube region by helping rural municipalities identify vacant buildings, engage local stakeholders and communities, and develop realistic renovation concepts supported by governance and financing solutions, aligned with the principles of the New European Bauhaus.

With the help of Periféria Research & Policy Center, we analysed vacant buildings mapped across 11 pilot areas in Central and Southeastern Europe. Periféria’s analysis includes revitalisation potential, 10-year depopulation projections, and local, national and EU policy recommendations. More on the methodology and findings below:

Territorial partners mapped about 40 buildings per area using a standardised methodology developed for the project. They captured key characteristics like condition, ownership, and infrastructure access. Buildings received revitalisation scores (1–7) across five dimensions: immediate usability, economic viability, social impact, environmental impact, and overall priority. These buildings formed the foundation for the analysis.

Using a common template, the partners gathered local socio-demographic data to understand population trends, employment patterns, and age structure. National-level data complemented these insights when needed, while linear models were applied to track population changes and housing vacancies over time, allowing a 10-year projection of developments in each locality.

Applying the same method to all 11 pilot areas allowed a comparative analysis of regions, identification of patterns, and highlighting buildings with the highest revitalisation potential. What this ensured is that every mapped building was evaluated systematically, transparently, and comparably, giving policymakers, local communities, and stakeholders a reliable basis for strategic planning and revitalisation efforts.

You can read the analysis, complemented by policy recommendations, here.

What follows is designing business model development tools that will allow municipalities in the region to act on these findings and reverse depopulation trends.