Gothenburg

Cooperative housing in Gothenburg comes in three legal forms. The dominant one is the bostadsrätt. A member pays an insats (a one-off purchase of the association share) and then a monthly fee that covers running costs and the association's debt. The right to the flat can be sold at market price, so the form behaves much like ownership. The building, though, stays collectively governed by an elected board. The second form is the kooperativ hyresrätt (cooperative rental). Members pay a smaller deposit, cannot sell, and get the deposit back when they leave. Riksbyggen's Futura Clara at Lindholmshamnen uses it for 40 flats reserved for 18–35-year-olds. The third form, the kollektivhus (collective house), layers shared kitchens and duties on top of either tenure.

The tradition grew out of the labour movement. HSB Göteborg (the tenants' savings and building society) was founded in 1925 by tenants who saved together in order to build. Riksbyggen, set up by the building-trade unions, followed in 1940. Both built at scale through the postwar decades, including the city's share of the Million Programme (Sweden's 1965–1974 drive to build a million homes). Over the same years the form drifted from movement to market. Bo Bengtsson's study The changing role of cooperatives in the Swedish housing regime shows how the deregulation of 1968–1969 let shares trade freely. A social tenure became a marketised one, and that shift has proved hard to reverse.

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The changing role of cooperatives in the Swedish housing regime

Three reforms—1930 act, postwar universalism, 1968 deregulation—locked in cooperatives, driving hard-to-reverse marketisation.

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Today's sector falls into three clusters, and they face different problems. The federations are the largest. HSB Göteborg alone has 75,000 members and manages about 38,000 tenant-owned flats in nearly 400 associations. Their pressure points are ageing 1960s and 1970s buildings, costly energy retrofits and association debt that became expensive when interest rates rose. A 2024 Shelterforce essay, Sweden's Housing Co-ops Offer a Model for Moderate-Income Housing, notes that member savings schemes still help fund new building. The second cluster is the independent associations, many of them former rental blocks. The third is small and self-organised: cooperative rentals, collective houses and byggemenskaper (self-build groups that act as their own developer). They do not need retrofit capital first. They need land and patient finance.

The city uses these forms on purpose. Its own developer, Egnahemsbolaget, builds tenant-owned flats and small houses in districts where renting is almost the only option, so residents can change tenure without changing neighbourhood. In 2015 the property office opened targeted land allocations (markanvisningar, grants of building rights on city land) for byggemenskaper. The first larger group, Byggemenskapen Ärlan in Majorna, received its site in 2013 and moved in only in September 2022. The gap between those dates shows how long the self-organised route still takes.

Organisation in focus

Egnahemsbolaget

Develops cooperative apartments and owner‑occupied homes in Gothenburg rental‑heavy districts.

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Tenure is the city's political fault line. In October 2021 the centre-right majority of the day voted 38 to 36 to push the conversion of municipal rentals into tenant-owned associations. "We cannot have areas with only rental flats," argued Axel Josefson, then chair of the city executive board, for the Moderates. The red-green coalition that took over in November 2022 set out to stop every conversion it could. By then 31 requests covering about 1,700 flats had been lodged, and a single sale of 58 flats in Tynnered had gone through. The coalition also gave Framtiden a delivery target: 2,300 completed homes a year from 2025, including 1,700 rentals.

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Maktskifte stoppar ombildningar i Göteborg

Red‑green coalition halts hundreds of housing conversions, aims for 2 300 new homes annually, boosting rentals.

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The September 2026 election widened that mandate. The Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens won 43 of the council's 81 seats, a majority of their own. Nationally, the four opposition parties won 176 of 349 seats in the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament). Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson resigned, and Magdalena Andersson is negotiating a new government.

Each tier of government holds a different tool. Parliament writes tenancy law. The outgoing Tidö government is the centre-right coalition built on the 2022 Tidö agreement. It ended state investment support for new rental housing from 1 January 2023, arguing that costly subsidies could not solve the shortage. From 1 January 2026 it also made presumtionshyra more flexible. That is the negotiated first-let rent on a new building, which now rises with general rent settlements during its 15-year term. The city holds the land, the planning monopoly and Framtiden. Its rent talks set the pace: Framtiden's two largest companies agreed a 2.9% rise for 2026. Private landlords, organised in Fastighetsägarna GFR (the Gothenburg property owners' federation), left local talks for the third year running and sent 26,500 flats to an arbitrator.

The new majority's first test is the rent itself. In June 2026 the Left Party and Demokraterna (a local protest party founded in Gothenburg) proposed freezing municipal rents for 2027. Marie Brynolfsson, the Left Party's group leader, called the freeze "a breathing space" for tenants. Framtiden's chief executive, Terje Johansson, warned that it could "provoke the system", because the companies must be run on business-like terms. The tenants' union objected as well. Ronny Bengtsson, chair of Hyresgästföreningen Region Västra Sverige, said: "Rents must not become a pawn in a political game where the levels change sharply from year to year." Private landlords pull the other way. GFR asked for a 4.90% rise from January 2027, and in July it asked the rent tribunal to appoint an arbitrator for the fourth year running.

Swedish rent-setting has a long academic defence. Jim Kemeny, Jan Kersloot and Philippe Thalmann compared unitary rental markets in 2005, in Non-profit Housing Influencing, Leading and Dominating the Unitary Rental Market. They found Sweden's non-profit sector the strongest price-setter of the three countries studied, because municipal companies lead the whole market. Gothenburg's annual talks still work that way. Cooperative-specific tools are thinner. The city can earmark land for byggemenskaper and use Egnahemsbolaget to mix tenures. It has no dedicated funding line or ground-lease pact for cooperatives of the kind Zurich and Munich use.

From our library

Non-profit Housing Influencing, Leading and Dominating the Unitary Rental

Three European case studies reveal varied market roles, evolving regulations, and surprising solidity trends.

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Conversion is the obvious answer to empty offices, and it has been slow. Wallenstam turned more than 8,000 m² of central commercial space into 85 flats as early as 2013. Nationally, Boverket (the national board of housing, building and planning) had 77 million kronor in 2024 to help municipalities convert premises into homes. Only 1.5 million kronor was used.

Climate targets run through the same companies. Gothenburg is one of the cities in the EU mission for climate-neutral and smart cities, and received its Mission Label on 22 October 2024, with neutrality targeted for 2030. Climate-neutral construction is one of its priorities, and public building projects are meant to lead it. In practice the burden falls on Framtiden's retrofits of Million Programme estates and on the energy experiments of the cooperative federations.

Gårdstensbostäder is the city's proof that a stigmatised estate can be renewed with its tenants rather than around them. The municipal company was founded in 1997 to take over 2,252 flats in Gårdsten, then one of Sweden's most troubled Million Programme areas. It cut average rents by 5.8% in 1999 and wrapped blocks in its Solhus (sun house) retrofits. Those won the World Habitat Award in 2005. In 2019 the police took Gårdsten off their list of particularly vulnerable areas.

Organisation in focus

Gårdstensbostäder

Resident-led renewal of a Million Programme estate; World Habitat Award 2005.

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Kollektivhuset Stacken in Bergsjön began as an experiment in a half-empty 1969 tower. In 1980, led by architect Siv Carlsson, residents turned it into Sweden's first cooperative rental building, with a shared kitchen, workshop and play space. The 35-flat community bought the building in 2002. A 2015 renovation took it towards passive-house standard behind a solar facade.

Brf Viva, Riksbyggen's 132-flat association in Guldheden, is the federations' sustainability showcase. Completed in 2019, it stores rooftop solar power in retired electric-bus batteries and swaps parking spaces for shared electric cars. Its concrete was chosen for a lower climate impact, and the scheme earned a gold rating under Sweden's Miljöbyggnad (green building) standard. Studios for young residents sold for 95,000 kronor, a rare low-cost entry into tenant ownership.

Lighthouse project

Brf Viva

Riksbyggen's solar-and-bus-battery tenant-owner association in Guldheden.

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HSB Living Lab, on Chalmers University of Technology's Johanneberg campus, turns a cooperative federation into a research partner. Students and visiting researchers live in its modular flats while sensors record energy, water and daily habits, in a decade-long programme with industry partners. Kanozi Arkitekter, a Gothenburg practice with a long list of residential commissions, shows the mainstream side of the same market: the everyday association blocks where most new members will actually live.

Frihamnen, the old free port across the river, is the next test. It is planned for 9,000 homes as part of the Älvstaden programme, which aims for 25,000 homes by 2035. Whether its tenure mix leaves room for cooperative rentals and self-build groups, alongside tenant-owned and municipal flats, will show which of the city's traditions shapes the next district.