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On the eve of a crucial political moment in France — the second round of the snap parliamentary elections, which represented an unprecedented risk since the Second World War of the far-right fascist movement coming to power in the country — Alain Jund, President of the National Network of Local Authorities for Participatory Housing (RNCHP), and Michèle Cauletin, Co-President of Habitat Participatif France (HPF), emphasised in their opening speeches at the RNHP the importance of fostering social bonds, strengthening solidarity, and nurturing hope for positive change in our societies through the ways we inhabit and live together. Participatory housing, in its many forms (cooperatives, self-promotion companies, social rental housing, lightweight housing, eco-communities, and more), provides local responses to social divides and the climate emergency.
Pierre Arnold and Marie Brandt from urbaMonde facilitated this enriching exchange, which brought together Michèle Cauletin (HPF), Pascale Bourgeaiseau and Annie Le Roux (Hal’âge), Gizem Aksümer (University of Lyon), and Christian Peer (Vienna University of Technology – TUW), all partners in the CO-HOPE project. Together with around twenty participants in the workshop, they explored and discussed participatory housing models in Austria, Sweden and France, as well as the individual and collective experiences of living in participatory housing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unlike conventional social or private housing, participatory housing stood out for its capacity to adapt, thanks to collective management and the availability of extensive shared spaces, both indoors (common rooms, guest bedrooms, offices, playrooms or reading rooms, etc.) and outdoors (corridors, terraces and gardens). This enabled residents in participatory housing to quickly organise themselves in order to adapt to social distancing measures and the restrictions on freedoms imposed in 2020–2021. As elsewhere, tensions did arise around issues such as vaccination or compliance with restrictive rules. However, 96% of respondents in the CO-HOPE project (339 participants across five European countries) considered that living in participatory housing was beneficial during the health crisis. They felt it gave them an advantage in adapting to the COVID-19 period.
In France, financing a participatory housing project remains a challenge. It is difficult to finance participatory housing projects through self-promotion, as banks do not generally adapt their lending schemes—designed for individuals or professional developers—to these heterogeneous citizen groups seeking to develop collective and often anti-speculative housing projects. Pierre Arnold addressed this issue during a session organised by Chez Moi Demain, highlighting the role of both alternative and conventional banks in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which, by contrast, have made the financing of innovative projects part of their identity and a source of pride.
Further reading: https://www.habitatparticipatif-france.fr
Overview of participatory housing in France, presented at RNHP 2024 (in French)
Manifesto of popular participatory housing, signed at the conclusion of RNHP 2024 (in French)
Video of the lecture “To inhabit is to create” by Miguel Benasayag, RNHP 2024
