La Borda - User Housing Cooperative in Barcelona

Discussion

Lorenzo Vidal:

"As made explicit on the website of La Borda, one of Barcelona’s pioneer user housing cooperatives, the cooperative housing models in Uruguay and Denmark have served as a ‘direct reference’ for local praxis (La Borda, no date). Their collective property and limited-equity character embody an alternative to the entrenched local imaginaries of individual homeownership. Copenhagen is as an example of just how significant such housing alternatives can become. More than 30% of the city’s housing stock belongs to ‘private housing cooperatives’ (privat andelsboligforening) and another 20% to ‘common housing’ (almene boliger), a sector of non-profit rental housing associations with roots in the country’s cooperative housing history and governed through a system of ‘tenant democracy’ (See Table 30.1). The latter sector comprises 550 housing associations with 7000 residential estates (BL 2015).

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In Catalonia, the user cooperative housing sector is still emerging and taking shape. At the end of 2021 there were 30 user cooperatives in either the development or living phase, 17 of which were located in Barcelona (La Dinamo Fundació 2021)."

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