Resource overview
“International policies to promote cooperative housing” is published by La Dinamo Fundació and authored by Carles Baiges, Mara Ferreri, and Lorenzo Vidal. The publication compiles an international review of legal tools and public policies that enable cooperative housing to remain affordable and decommodified, drawing on case studies across Europe and beyond.
Purpose and scope
The study focuses on cooperative housing models where residents are collectively “owners” and dwellings cannot be traded on the open market, and it examines how public authorities can support these models across the housing life cycle. It emphasizes that policy intervention can occur at municipal, regional, and national levels, and argues for a multi-level, long-term approach that links production, management, and long-term safeguards.
Case studies and evidence base
The comparative analysis is based on 10 case studies: Germany, Austria, Denmark, Lazio (Italy), New York (USA), the Netherlands, Quebec (Canada), the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Uruguay. The text notes differing historical trajectories (early 20th-century roots in some contexts; consolidation in the 1970s in others) and identifies a renewed expansion of public–cooperative housing initiatives since 2000, particularly after the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
Policy tools across three phases
The publication organizes policy mechanisms into three “moments”:
- Production: access to land/buildings (sale or lease of public land, long leases of 30–99 years, reserving land in new developments), financing tools (public credit lines, public guarantees), direct and indirect subsidies, and technical support.
- Access and management: rules that regulate access to cooperative stock (e.g., transparent waiting lists or quotas) and subsidies that help maintain affordability for lower-income households.
- Maintenance over time: regulations that restrict individual equity capture and prevent commodification (price controls on shares, rent/fee setting tied to costs rather than markets, limits on subletting, restrictions on conversion to individual ownership, and rules on dissolution that protect collective assets).
Selected quantitative highlights
Examples of scale and policy reach include: around 2,000 housing cooperatives in Germany managing about 2.2 million homes, described as roughly 10% of rental units; Denmark’s common housing sector accounting for about 20% of national housing stock; and Quebec’s cooperative sector referenced in the resource as creating around 30,000 affordable homes through roughly 1,300 housing cooperatives. The report also references Uruguay’s programmatic expansion, including national plans financing thousands of cooperative homes.
Long-term affordability and sustainability
A central message is that preventing re-commodification requires durable legal and governance mechanisms beyond initial construction support. The study highlights that stable affordability depends on rules that keep prices and rents tied to costs and inflation rather than market dynamics, and on dissolution/asset rules that keep public investment and cooperative reserves within the sector over time.