Rede Co‑Habitar is a small but visible node in Lisbon’s emerging cooperative housing scene. Based around Lisbon, it presents itself as a “network of housing cooperatives,” bringing together groups that want to collectively develop and manage homes outside the speculative market, mainly through collective ownership models.
The initiative grew out of Portugal’s broader cooperative and solidarity economy milieu in the mid‑2010s, as housing prices in Lisbon began to climb sharply. Academic work on cooperative finance describes Rede Co‑Habitar as a co‑housing network whose goal is to promote collective property housing and press public authorities to fund cooperative projects and transfer public land or buildings for shared management.
Rather than acting as a single cooperative, Rede Co‑Habitar functions as a platform: it connects different groups, shares legal and technical knowledge, and coordinates political advocacy. Its website documents regular public debates and events, including the recurring “Novas Formas de Viver” (New Ways of Living) meetings in 2022, 2023 and 2025, which gather architects, activists, researchers and cooperative groups to discuss concrete pathways for non‑speculative housing.
Members of the network appear in public forums on the housing crisis, such as roundtables at Lisbon cultural institutions, where they speak both as part of Rede Co‑Habitar and from specific cooperatives like Aldrava. A recent book on cooperative housing in Portugal, published in 2025 with Rede Co‑Habitar’s initiative, points to its role in translating international experiences and tools for a Portuguese audience.
Precise membership figures, budgets or number of built projects are not published; the network remains primarily a coordination and advocacy platform rather than a large housing provider.