The players involved to rethink our ways of life in common.
Saturday, 6 July, UrbaMonde France hosted a workshop discussion on the learning of the research project CO-HOPE (Collaborative Housing in a Pandemic Era) on the occasion of the National Meetings of the Habitat Participatory (RNHP), which were held from 4 to 7 July, Rennes, France. These meetings have brought together actors involved to rethink our ways of life in common.
On the eve of a political moment crucial in France, the second round of general elections, which represented a risk unprecedented since the second world war to see the far-right fascist to take power in France, Alain Jund, president of the National Network of Communities for Habitat Participatory (RNCHP), and Michèle Cauletin, co-president of Habitat Participatif France (HPF) have pointed out, in their inauguration speech of the RNHP, the importance of creating a social link, solidarity and the hope of positive change for our companies through our ways of living, of living together. Habitat participatory in its many forms (cooperatives, corporations, self-promotion, rental housing social, light habitat, oasis…) product of local responses to social breakdown and the climate emergency.
Peter Arnold and Marie Brandt of urbaMonde facilitated the enriching exchange which took part Michèle Cauletin (HPF), Pascale Bourgeaiseau and Annie Le Roux (Hal’age), Gizem Aksümer (University of Lyon) and Christian Peer (Technical University of Vienna TUW), partners for CO-HOPE. Together, with the score of participant·es in this workshop, they have explored and discussed the models austrians, swedes, and French participative housing and the individual and collective experiences lived in the habitat participatory during the period of the pandemic of COVID-19.
The difference of social housing or private treaty, habitats, with participatory are distinguished by their ability to adapt through the collective management and the availability of large shared spaces interiors (common rooms, guest rooms, offices, game rooms or reading, etc) or external (balconies, terraces, gardens). This has allowed resident·es habitats participatory quickly organize to adapt to the gestures barriers and limitations of freedoms imposed in 2020-2021. If, as elsewhere, tensions were able to burst on topics such as vaccination or the respect of the rules are draconian, 96% of people surveyed across the project CO-HOPE (339 respondents in five european countries) have found it beneficial to live in a habitat participatory during the health crisis. They consider that this has been an advantage to adapt to the period of the COVID-19.
In France, the financing of a project of participative housing remains a challenge. It is difficult to finance a project of habitat participatory self-promotion because the banks do not play the game to adapt their loans to individuals or to the promoters professionals in these groups of citizens heterogeneous who want to develop their real estate project, collective, and often anti-speculative. Peter Arnold discussed this topic during a session organised by Home Tomorrow, highlighting the role of alternative banks or conventional Germany, Spain, the netherlands and Switzerland, on the contrary, the funding of innovative projects that are their hallmark and pride.
To go further : https://www.habitatparticipatif-france.fr
State of the scene of the habitat participatory in France, presented to the RNHP2024
Manifest habitat participatory popular, signed at the end of the RNHP2024
Video of the conference “to Live is to create” by Miguel Benasayag, RNHP2024
