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 30th 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.
These were our interventions:
The MOBA Accelerator – Building the Missing Piece in Cooperative Housing Finance
This year’s theme of WUF was Housing the world: Safe and resilient cities and communities – and our main intervention focused on the financial and institutional conditions needed to deliver safe and resilient housing beyond market-driven models. Rather than a presentation or fundraising pitch, we conceived our intervention as a curated networking and matchmaking space. Using short, playful prompts grounded in our regional experience in financing, implementation, and governance on coop housing projects, we explored the workings of the MOBA Accelerator and facilitated exchanges between the participants in order to collectively explore why such instruments are urgently needed beyond the MOBA region, and what roles different actors can play in supporting and adapting similar mechanisms.
We also participated in:
Solutions to the Global Housing Crisis: Lessons from 40 Years of the World Habitat Awards
Drawing on lessons from 40 years of the World Habitat Awards, the session explored what practical, community-led housing solutions can teach us about addressing the global housing crisis today. Through a moderated conversation with World Habitat partners – practitioners, researchers, and grassroots organisations – working across Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and Europe, the discussion examined approaches including participatory upgrading of informal settlements, sustainable rapid housing delivery, community land trusts, and cooperative housing models. The session focused on lessons learned across different contexts, common challenges, and the conditions needed to create housing systems that are inclusive, affordable and community-driven at scale.
Community-led Housing in Europe – Tools for Cities Beyond Markets
Despite their potential and proven impact, community-led housing initiatives often remain limited in scale because of a lack of institutional recognition and support, resulting in challenges in navigating regulatory and legal frameworks, securing land, and accessing finance. This event opened space for practitioners, including us from MOBA, to share our experience from the ground in different parts of Europe and the Americas, while cities and decision-makers explore what governments and the EU can do to support CLH through financial, regulatory and institutional frameworks that recognise the contribution of CLH models to long-term affordability and community resilience.
Bruises, Breakthroughs, and Cooperative Housing: Voices from Europe’s Semi-Periphery
Housing pioneers from our member organisations across Central and South-Eastern Europe – contexts marked by weak housing policies, missing financial tools, and little remaining cooperative tradition – gave a light-hearted take on the strategic disadvantage of operating from Europe’s semi-periphery and explored how this institutional “void” pushed groups to become inventive and unexpectedly persistent.
From Hungary’s first student-led cooperative housing project and Croatia’s first municipality-supported cooperative initiative, to Serbia’s Center for New Cooperative Housing and the MOBA Accelerator – a translocal financing mechanism for kickstarting cooperative housing projects – participants shared bruises, breakthroughs, and unusual strategies for turning ambitious ideas into reality!
Part of MOBA’s work is showing up in spaces where power concentrates and narratives collide – so that we can stand our ground and speak of alternatives from a position of integrity and practice. With deepened realisations and new connections, we keep working to open pathways for community power to build homes, neighbourhoods and cities that reflect the best of humanity: creativity, cooperation and collective care.