The European Collaborative Housing Alliance convening in Geneva
On the occasion of the International Day of Cooperatives, we were hosted by urbaMonde in Geneva for a week of discussions on the financing of collaborative housing across Europe and to deepen our collaboration within the European Alliance for Collaborative Housing.
The visit brought together Giulia Barnhisel from the European Community Land Trust Network, Dali Malnoury, representing our member Community Land Trusts Brussels (CLTB), including our partner MOBA Housing SCE.
This article is put together drawing on urbaMonde’s news article written by Nadia and MOBA’s reflections.
Learning From Geneva’s Cooperative Housing Ecosystem
We spent several days meeting with Geneva's cooperative housing organisations to understand what has allowed the Swiss model to thrive over decades: including CODHA, Archipel, Équilibre and the Société Coopérative d’Habitation Genève (SCHG), and with Philea, a cooperative that facilitates access to credit for agricultural producer cooperatives and savings-and-credit cooperatives in Africa and Latin America.
These conversations touched on governance, land access, and the financial structures underpinning permanently affordable housing, mechanisms that resonate closely with our own Community Land Trust (CLT) work.
Les Saules, a cooperative housing project developed in partnership with la Ciguë and la Codha.
Marc from MOBA and Giulia from the Network speaks to Benoît Molineaux, looking onto Equilibre's Soubeyran site that has managed to combine resident participation together with strong ecological outcomes, including compositing toilets and onsite wastewater treatment.
La Codha is a not-for-profit housing cooperative based in Geneva. In the past 20 years, it built around 20 buildings offering more than 800 affordable housing units, while promoting social mixity and residents’ participation. Here we see the building Les Vergers.
The view from Les Saules.
Accelerating Finance for Collaborative Housing
A central focus of the week was a roundtable guided by a shared question: How can housing cooperatives and collaborative housing models be financed across Europe? The discussion brought together the different approaches represented in the room.
Giulia Barnhisel, representing our network, and Dali Malnoury from Community Land Trust Brussels (CLTB) presented CLTs in Europe and shared the unique characteristics of the Community Land Trust approach, rooted in democratic governance, collective land ownership, and long-term affordability.
The delegation from MOBA Housing SCE, presented the MOBA’s Accelerator: a translocal, cooperatively owned financial instrument designed to address one of the most significant barriers faced by citizen-led housing initiatives: access to early-stage financing. The Accelerator bridges this gap by providing the initial financing needed for groups to reach this critical stage. Ganz81, a student housing cooperative in Budapest, is one example of a group that has already benefited from a MOBA Accelerator loan.
Learn more and donate to the Accelerator’s foundational layer of €1 million here.
Giulia from the Network presents CLTs in Europe.
Strengthening the Alliance
With the European Alliance for Collaborative Housing, we are working together with MOBA Housing SCE and other key collaborative housing actors to make community-led housing a normal part of the housing system.
The discussions in Geneva happened at a particularly relevant political moment. The Alliance is currently working towards collaborative housing models, including CLTs, to be mainstreamed into the European Affordable Housing Plan - and this to be complemented by a dedicated funding stream in the accompanying investment platform.
Beyond the site visits and presentations, what mattered most was the strengthened relationship within the European Alliance for Collaborative Housing. As a leading partner, we see exchanges like this as essential to scaling solutions to Europe's housing crisis - and we remain committed, alongside our partners, to building housing models that are fairer, more inclusive, and financially sustainable across the continent.
Read more on the European Alliance for Collaborative Housing.
A warm thank you to Léa from urbaMonde for hosting us, and to Ana, Marc, Zsuzsanna and Adel from https://moba.coop/ for being there with us and sharing their perspectives. Read UrbaMonde’s recap here and MOBA’s recap here.