Reconnecting, sharing knowledge, and reaffirming the vital role of community-led housing
From 4 to 6 June 2025, Dublin hosted the International Social Housing Festival (ISHF), a landmark gathering of housing practitioners, policymakers, architects, activists, and researchers from around the world committed to affordable, sustainable and people-centred housing. For urbaMonde and partners from the CoHabitat Network, it was a powerful moment to reconnect, share knowledge, and reaffirm the vital role of community-led housing in addressing today’s multiple housing and social crises.
urbaMonde: workshops at the heart of the right to housing in the Global South
Throughout the festival, urbaMonde led and participated in a number of discussion sessions:
- Strengthening Communities Through Collective Housing
An international seminar on community empowerment, featuring Urban Poor Consortium (Indonesia), a documentary from POCAA (Bangladesh), World Habitat and IIED. Participants exchanged experiences on social impact, innovative finance, and enabling policy frameworks, offering tools and insights to strengthen collaboration and keep people and communities at the heart of housing strategies.
- Alliances for Collaborative Housing
An interactive workshop chaired by Fondazione Impact Housing brought together various European players to explore synergies favouring community-based, accessible and dignified housing. Participants discussed key issues such as social impact, innovative financing and policy frameworks, while identifying practical tools for strengthening collective action.
- Student Housing Cooperatives are paving the way to solve the housing crisis
A workshop on student housing co-operatives, led by the European Student Cooperative Housing Alliance (ESCHA), highlighted the precariousness of students in European cities and showed alternatives through their self-managed, inclusive and affordable models in the UK, Germany and France. Did you, for example, know that:- There is a 3 million housing shortage for students in the EU?
- France counts 1.500.000 inadequate student housing?
- 12% of the students in Scotland have experienced homelessness?
- The average rent for a student accommodation in Dublin is 1.200 EUR?
- Student Housing Cooperatives are paving the way to solve the housing crisis
Student housing cooperatives are showing innovative solutions to these challenges! Know more about ESCHA and its members’ actions here.
- Collaborative Housing Policies in Europe
A round table on public policies in favour of collaborative housing, organised with the Network of Cities for Collaborative Housing (NETCO), Robert Temel (Vienna), Alessia Macchi (Cooperativa Casae, Italy) and local hosts from Dublin, where no collaborative housing project has been successful yet. The Guidebook and Policy Brief produced during the European research project CO-HOPE were presented and disseminated to provide concrete recommendations for local authorities and citizens. - Scaling up Housing Cooperatives
Finally, in collaboration with SOA (Self Organised Architecture, Ireland), urbaMonde took part in a session dedicated to the emerging dynamics of cooperative housing in Ireland, drawing inspiration from experiences in Switzerland, Austria, and Catalonia, paving the way for new partnerships, and answering questions from participants from Ireland and the Czech Republic. Special attention was paid to the complexity of the multimodal financial arrangements for these projects, as well as to the need for political support through appropriate legal frameworks and proactive action plans.
The CoHabitat Network at ISHF
Beyond the sessions led by urbaMonde, members and partners of the CoHabitat Network also contributed to various activities throughout the festival (see the Community-Led Housing Track)
As in previous editions, urbaMonde organised a CLH dinner to promote informal exchanges. 120 people from 20 countries participated in this networking event, and the less tired participants followed the conversation in a Dubliner pub.
On Friday afternoon, urbaMonde organised a field trip to Cloughjordan Ecovillage, with the support of the residents and local housing activists. This neighbourhood seeks to limit the impact on land and the local biodiversity through dense constructions, limited car circulation, central heating, local food production and the sharing economy. It is one of the few inhabited CLH initiatives in Ireland.
Conclusion and next steps
The ISHF 2025 was more than just a festival — it was a powerful space of solidarity, shared learning, and strategic dialogue for advancing the right to housing. We hope that the attention raised on Collaborative Housing during ISHF and the informal events will support local organisations in their advocacy work promoting the Community Land Trust model, like Tri Siolta CLT and Cork CLT, as well as the promotion of resident-led cooperative housing, like the Cork Student Housing Cooperative.
urbaMonde warmly thanks all the people we met in Dublin, and invites you to extend the exchanges around these concrete and inspiring alternatives.
If you believe in the importance of community-led housing, you can support our work:
- Donate to urbaMonde to help us keep organising events, publishing resources, and amplifying community voices.
- Join the CoHabitat Network and take part in the international movement.
- Stay connected — we’ll see you again for the next ISHF edition in Lisbon in 2027!
