Introductie wonen

Collectively owned housing

In the Netherlands, the social sector (housing associations) and the free sector are the two most common and dominant sectors in housing. However, collectively owned housing is also possible. To illustrate this, for our webdocu we have interviewed a number of people and organizations who are in various stages of living in collectively owned housing. Some have been living this way for decades, others have recently realized their homes, and there are also collectives that are in the process of finding a plot or securing their financing.
Living in collectively owned housing can be done in many different ways: with a balance between communal and individual space, from large to small, in the city or in the countryside. Each collective, housing cooperative or eco-village arranges it in its own way. And the best thing about collective ownership is that you ensure that you, your fellow-inhabitants and also future generations can live affordably and pleasantly by placing the property outside the market.

Housing crisis
This webdocu on collective ownership would almost make you think we are talking about a new phenomenon, but that is certainly not the case. Collective ownership has been around for a very long time. It used to be quite normal to collectively care for a piece of land, a settlement, tools or food supply. The private sector and the free market are only something from a later period. If we look at housing in the Netherlands, we see that the government actually only fully committed to the free sector about thirty years ago. The Netherlands is traditionally a country that is/was proud of its large social sector. That sector is still quite large compared to other countries, but make no mistake, more and more houses in the social sector are being sold and this sector is becoming increasingly marginalized. It has become the safety net for those who cannot keep up. A kind of stamp that says ‘you are not successful.’ Completely unjustified of course, because good housing is a basic need, and housing is a (basic) right! The fact that we live in a society in which the speculation with land and real estate has become the most normal thing to do is sad. Who wants a world in which some people fill their pockets, are richer than rich because they own land and buildings and rent them out at high prices, while others work themselves to death to pay the rent, or worse, are homeless? In my opinion: no one, and that is why this situation needs to be solved.

Solution
I will certainly not pretend to have all the answers, but I am convinced that a larger cooperative sector, i.e. more collectively owned housing, could contribute immensely to a better housing climate. Of course, the social sector should also continue to exist and grow. Not everyone has the time and inclination to set up their own housing cooperative and/or be part of a collective management structure. Some people just want to live well and affordably and be busy with other things, and that is quite normal. For those who do want to live communally, engage in self-management or realize a communal living dream, collective ownership is a very good option. At least, if the government and the banks cooperate a bit, because unfortunately that is not yet the case.
While quite a few people have been living in collective ownership constructions for decades, the housing cooperative has only been included in the Housing Act since 2015. This means that before that, there were really only two options for the construction of new housing: the free and the social sector. The latter was entirely in the hands of housing associations. Since 2015 you can also build cooperatively, but that does not mean that housing cooperatives have mushroomed since then. Housing cooperatives are still struggling, because legislation and financing in the Netherlands lag behind. Housing cooperatives often fall between the cracks, because they are considered partly business and partly private. Banks find it risky to finance housing cooperatives, because the government has not (yet) set up a guarantee fund like it has in the free sector (NHG – Nationale Hypotheek Garantie). In simple terms this means that as a private individual, you can get a 100% mortgage, while the housing cooperative gets a maximum of 60% (if you are lucky). So you have to fill that 40% gap in your financing another way. There are several options for that, such as: own deposit, crowdfunding, crowdlending, bonds and recently in Amsterdam part of it can be financed via the loan fund for housing cooperatives. Financing is a puzzle that not everyone gets laid, and solving that problem requires the commitment and cooperation of the government and the banking sector.

The great thing is that as a co-owner, you will never raise the rent more than necessary.

No ownership, no speculation
It is worth clarifying again that a housing cooperative is collectively owned. That is, members/residents do not have a part of individual property that they can sell again later on when they move out. The ownership lies with the association, if all goes well, in a strong legal structure, so it cannot be sold again. This means there is no possibility for speculation with collectively owned housing. Living in a housing cooperative is not something like a rainy day fund or a pension provision, which is often the case with home ownership. In this respect, living in collectively owned housing is more like social renting. You live there, you use the property, but you don’t have any ownership, at least not personally. Indeed, collective ownership does mean – unlike the social sector – that you are co-responsible for the property and the things that happen there. You are co-owner and tenant at the same time. Those two different hats can sometimes be confusing, because from your position as a tenant, for example, you are not in favour of rent increases. But from your position as a co-owner, you know that you have to raise the rent from time to time because costs have risen and the budget has to add up. Those two roles can clash, but eventually a solution will always be found. The great thing is that as a co-owner, you will never raise the rent more than necessary. That ensures that housing remains affordable. It is a very simple system that guarantees affordable and good housing for the long term, which is why I find it incomprehensible that the government and banks in the Netherlands do not give their full support to this. As a government, make sure that land is affordable for housing cooperatives, that less is built in the free sector and more cooperatively, and make private ownership less attractive from a tax point of view. Provide a national loan and guarantee fund to make financing for housing cooperatives easier. Again, housing cooperatives are not there to make a profit, they are there for good affordable housing for the long term. If you have a vision for housing then surely this is what you want!

Risk
In some surrounding countries they are much further ahead. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, for example, the cooperative sector has been supported and financed for years. There the banks do not see risks like here, because it never goes wrong. There are no examples of housing cooperatives that have gone bankrupt. There are examples of housing cooperatives that have stopped because the process was too difficult and time-consuming, but no cooperatives that went under after building. But even if things would go wrong, there is real estate as collateral and you can still hardly lose any money. The risk of which Dutch banks and the government speak is not there. If we talk about risk, the risk of a couple or an individual becoming unemployed after buying his/her/their house and no longer being able to pay the mortgage is much higher than that same risk in a collective where people support and help each other.

Regenerative network
To scale up the cooperative movement in the Netherlands, it needs to be made easier by the government and the banks, but there is also a task for the cooperative movement itself. Looking across the border again to Germany, we can see that there, since 1992, there has been an organization set up by squatters called the Mietshäuser Syndikat. This non-commercial organization is aiming to realize and promote, in cooperative form, affordable, long-term housing. The Syndikat helps with the legal part of setting up the cooperative, providing an extra layer of security by taking its own place in the organizational structure of all member cooperatives. That way, properties can never be sold or monetized individually. Meanwhile, nearly 200 properties have already joined the Syndikat, which continues to grow. This growth is partly made possible by the built-in solidarity fund. This is a fund to which each member of the Syndikat transfers a monthly amount, by which equity is built up to financially support new Syndikat members through loans. This way a regenerative system is created that enables others to take up cooperative living. The bigger the fund, the less the need to involve banks and other financing methods.
In the Netherlands there is a similar organization, called VrijCoop. They took their structure from the Mietshäuser Syndikat and turned it into something that works within Dutch law. The idea for VrijCoop came about in 2015. Initially it was Syndikat.nl then, but in 2017 that organization was transformed into VrijCoop and the articles of association were filed. In 2018, Ecodorp Boekel was adopted as the first VrijCoop project. Currently, besides Ecodorp Boekel, Bajesdorp, De Leef and Groei Hoeve are also affiliated to VrijCoop as real estate projects.
It is not an obligation, yet I would like to see new groups starting a housing cooperative join an organization like VrijCoop. Firstly, you can pick up a lot of knowledge and experience there, thus easing your own work. Secondly, you make sure you really can’t sell in the future. Thirdly, it is important because VrijCoop also has a solidarity fund. There’s not that much money in there yet, because there are only 3 properties and VrijCoop hasn’t been around that long, but that’s only a matter of time. The more members, the bigger the pot, and then it will become easier and easier to finance affiliated projects.

It is important to realize that communal living and collective ownership are very beautiful, instructive, enjoyable and good for the long term, but that they can also consume a lot of time and energy.

Several examples
This webdocu shares the stories of Ecodorp Boekel, De Warren, Woningbouwvereniging Gelderland, CLT H-Buurt, De Bonte Hulst and other nice cooperative projects in the Netherlands. Only a small proportion of these projects are housing cooperatives, by the way. Ecodorp Boekel is an eco-village, the name says it all. CLT H-neighbourhood is a Community Land Trust project with a housing cooperative within it. The Vrouwenschool in Nijmegen, for example, is an association that has existed for decades. What I want to say is that collective ownership can exist in different ways in different constructions. It does not necessarily have to be a housing cooperative. In fact, the cooperative as a legal form is very rarely used. Housing cooperatives like De Warren and De Nieuwe Meent are associations and not cooperatives. This has to do with the fact that the cooperative as a legal form can be profit-oriented, while the association is non-profit by definition. The potentially profit-oriented cooperative is classified differently by the tax authorities than the association, and therefore the association as a legal form often fits much better with how a housing cooperative wants to be organized.
Besides the personal stories told by several people in our webdocu, we have also included the organizational charts and statutes of almost all the organizations, so that this webdocu serves not only as an inspiration document, but also as a practical guide if you want to get started with collective ownership yourself. Because setting up a housing cooperative or collective project is certainly not all that easy, stories of people who have spent a lot of time setting up a housing cooperative or society, but have not (yet) succeeded, are also included. It is important to realize that communal living and collective ownership are very beautiful, instructive, enjoyable and good for the long term, but that they can also consume a lot of time and energy. The fact that things go wrong, that fierce internal discussions can arise and that every now and then you run out of things to do is the reality. Don’t let that stop you from getting started, because despite the obstacles and setbacks you will undoubtedly face, there is a lot of positivity that will enrich your life.

WBVG
One of the examples from the web docu that I would like to highlight is Woningbouwverening Gelderland (WBVG). Not because they are better than others, but because they are substantially different. Most housing cooperatives build a building in which they themselves will live with a group of people. WBVG is a housing association that does not build for itself, but an organization that facilitates the construction and financing of housing cooperatives – or in their case we might call them ‘management cooperatives.’ They have a similar association structure as many housing cooperatives, but have housed a multitude of properties within this structure. Those properties are (mostly) collectively owned by the association WBVG and are rented out to the residents’ association that is established per property and of which all residents become members. Both those residents’ associations and their members are members of WBVG, thus forming a large association together. The interesting thing about this construction is that WBVG takes the work of project developer and financier out of the hands of the future residents of the properties. With a team of professionals they solve exactly that bit that stops many people from starting a housing cooperative themselves. They build, preferably in consultation with future residents, but do so not for profit or for shareholders, but for affordable housing in collective ownership.
Much of the social housing sector in the Netherlands used to be owned by similar housing associations. Unfortunately almost all of these have been converted into foundations and the democratic, collective element has been lost. Add to this the landlord levy imposed on the social sector as a punishment by the government for renting out housing cheaply, and you can understand that, thanks to our government, the social sector is not growing but shrinking.

It is incomprehensible that corporations sell their houses regularly to private individuals or (foreign) investors, but almost never to the residents themselves in cooperative form.

From corporation to collective ownership
Another example I would like to cite is Woonvereniging Roggeveenstraat in The Hague. Unfortunately we did not get hold of them for an interview, but I want to mention them anyway because they are the first housing association or street community (as they call it themselves) in the Netherlands that was created by the sale of housing from a housing corporation to residents. The struggle of the residents there began back in 2013 when the street community was first initiated by way of a neighbourhood prevention team. A little later, in 2014, they started opposing the plans of housing corporation Haag Wonen, which wanted to demolish the 19th-century cottages in the street for new construction. At the end of December 2018 the documents were finally signed and the Woonvereniging became the collective owner of 65 houses in the Roggeveenstraat.
A wonderful story and therefore well worth mentioning. It is an example for all corporations in the Netherlands, because it is incomprehensible that corporations sell their houses regularly to private individuals or (foreign) investors, but almost never to the residents themselves in cooperative form. I can quite understand that corporations sell houses now and then to create budget for building new houses, but let them sell to people who want to use a cooperative model instead of to investors who only strive for profit maximization. Maybe the amount they receive for their sold property is slightly lower, but the government could compensate for that, as each new cooperative housing project is a self-regulating asset in the housing supply.

Land
When we talk about collectively owned housing, we are not only talking about bricks and mortar, but also about land. In the Netherlands, land is very expensive and scarce. This calls for a well thought-out and balanced land policy, with a view on how land is distributed among different uses and how ownership is arranged. Frankly, I am not at all in favour of land being a tradable object, because I think that land should be a commons just like water, air and light. We do not need ownership and trade, but proper arrangements regarding the use of and the care for land. Currently we experience in our society what happens when land is a freely tradable market product. It is one of the causes of the housing crisis, the problems in agriculture, the lack of free space, inequality and the gap between rich and poor.
Back in the year 1901 there was such a thing as the Common Land Ownership Association (GGB). This was an association that sought to bring land into common ownership of the entire community. In the beginning the GGB consisted mainly of anarchists, socialists and members of the Union for Land Nationalization, while later workers without any ideological affiliation joined in as well. In our web docu you can also read about the Boermarken, a form of organisation for common land that has existed since the Middle Ages. The docu also includes an interesting piece on land taxation. These are examples which show how important it is to think carefully about land and why common land ownership may not be such a strange idea at all.

Conclusion
We have tried to bring together a whole range of different options and experiences in this chapter. This is obviously not complete, because there are bound to be a lot of other great examples. We have also left out CPO (Collective Private Ownership).
By way of this web docu we hope to inspire and encourage people to take their own initiative. Collective ownership is a way to break away from the dominant neoliberal course, but above all a way to jointly realize one’s own initiatives and ideas, from passion and vision, rather than from the idea that housing is about acquiring capital.
Be inspired by the examples in this web docu, but also knock on the doors of organizations such as VrijCoop, Cooplink, Stichting !Woon or other knowledge organizations. There is a lot of knowledge and experience available; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel all by yourself.