Cooplink is a small national knowledge network for housing cooperatives and other collective living initiatives in the Netherlands, based in the Arnhem region. On its website it presents itself as a support point for groups that want to set up or manage collective housing projects, and for professionals working with them.
The organisation emerged in the second half of the 2010s, when interest in Dutch housing cooperatives started to grow again after the 2015 Housing Act created room for new cooperative forms. Cooplink’s site shows a steady build‑up of tools, webinars and case descriptions from around 2019 onward, indicating that it has developed organically as a practical platform rather than as a top‑down programme.
Cooplink is organised as a network with a small core and a wider circle of volunteers, board members and partner organisations. External descriptions call it a “knowledge network for housing cooperatives, supported by the Ministry of the Interior,” and note that its board members work on a voluntary basis. Its focus is the “third sector” of citizen‑led housing, distinct from both commercial developers and traditional housing associations.
The scope of activities is broad but concrete: Cooplink collects and publishes Dutch case studies of housing cooperatives and co‑housing projects, offers online courses and thematic meetings on issues such as finance, governance and legal structures, and runs a media overview that tracks developments in collective living across the country. It also participates as a societal partner in academic and policy research on citizen collectives, for example in a large Dutch research consortium on the collective power of citizens in societal transitions.