The lack of financing for affordable housing in the CSEE region – such as long-term, low-interest loans – makes it difficult for pioneering community-led housing initiatives to secure adequate funding. To help address this challenge, MOBA Housing SCE is establishing a unique financing instrument to kickstart new projects: the MOBA Accelerator.
Not charity, but a shield
The MOBA Accelerator provides short-term bridge loans to novel housing projects in their beginning, most vulnerable phases. With this loan, these housing communities can develop their buildings and establish a financial track record. Once a project is completed and generates stable cashflow, the Accelerator funds are repaid (with 3% interest to cover its operational costs) and refinanced by impact-driven financial actors offering long-term financing.
Supporting the ‘hardware’ of new housing projects
The MOBA Accelerator loans are used by housing initiatives to purchase buildings or land and to fund renovation or construction works. The Accelerator does not cover costs of staff, studies, plans or consultancy alone – it solely focuses on the ‘hardware’ of housing projects. Before a loan is disbursed, the viability of the loan request is thoroughly assessed (business plan, technical plan, valuation & surveys, etc).
Embedded in cooperative values
The MOBA Accelerator is accessible to housing communities that have become full members of MOBA’s network of pioneering housing cooperatives. This guarantees that the loans will benefit projects that share MOBA’s values (non-profit, affordable, community-led and community-owned housing projects). At the same time, embedding in the MOBA ecosystem makes it much easier to validate project proposals and loan requests.
By housing communities, for housing communities
MOBA Housing SCE with its member-cooperatives fully governs the MOBA Accelerator, and this community jointly decides on approving the loans. Within MOBA, the Accelerator’s operations are handled through robust protocols and procedures, backed-up through specialist technical assistance from Cooperative for Ethical Finance (ZEF, Croatia) – an associate member of MOBA with years of experience in developing, handling and supervising financial services.
A successful trial – and now building out!
With the help of cooperative peers (ABZ, Zürich) and FundAction, during 2021 MOBA has undertaken a trial of the Accelerator. Following the empowering experiences from this, and with support from the re:arc institute, MOBA has in 2025 readied the technical infrastructure, tools and protocols to fully operate the Accelerator.
MOBA is now seeking donors to provide the initial stage of the required loan pool, aiming to reach the 1 million euro goal in 2026 and kickstart the first new housing project. If you want to be part of this groundbreaking endeavour, join us now!