European Alliance for Collaborative Housing gathers key actors in Brussels

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.

Public event at Arc-en-Ciel in Molenbeek

The first day, hosted at Arc-en-Ciel’s community space, saw a full house – present were representatives of the European Commission’s Housing Task Force, Housing Europe, UN-Habitat, FEANTSA, the King Baudouin Foundation, Van Leer Foundation and the International Tenants’ Union. To make the exchange actionable and clearly correlate our on-the-ground practices to the Commission’s priorities, we focused on the four pillars of the European Affordable Housing Plan – boosting supply, mobilising investment, enabling reforms, and supporting the most affected.

Meeting with the Housing Task Force

The messages and examples shared on the first day set the groundwork for a meeting with the European Commission’s Housing Task Force on the following day. This moved the level of discussion from general support to concrete questions about including collaborative housing into EU investment tools and policy frameworks in order for the European Affordable Housing Plan to centre support for on-profit models that inherently include anti-speculation safeguards, sustainability and social cohesion.

Next steps

Brussels was exciting, and we are hopeful. This was the first major step towards involving collaborative housing actors in the implementation of the European Affordable Housing Plan as structural partners – building, ultimately, on decades of on-the-ground work and advocacy. We keep working on internal coordination and towards our proven solutions no longer being stuck at pilot scale, but being structurally integrated into both policy and implementation frameworks. If this succeeds, our small pockets of hope could spill onto the wider social fabric, opening more space for transformative action.