CO-HOPE (Collaborative Housing in a Pandemic Era) research project

The COVID-19 period revealed the urgent need to speed up the implementation of the right to adequate housing in Europe. The CO-HOPE project analyses the robustness of Collaborative Housing in times of crisis.

Since 2022, urbaMonde-France has been taking part in the European research project Collaborative Housing in a Pandemic Era (CO-HOPE) as part of the ERA-NET Urban Transformation Capacities (ENUTC) call with the universities of Lund (Sweden), Lyon (France), Seville (Spain), Vienna (Austria) and Robert Temel (Austria).

The research teams carried out fieldwork in 14 Collaborative Housing communities in Europe (Austria, Spain, France, Sweden, and Finland) to analyse the link between affordability, social integration, and health before and during the COVID-19 period.

CO-HOPE has an inter- and trans-disciplinary approach, integrating complementary forms of knowledge through cooperation between academics and non-academics. urbaMonde - France participated in the development of research tools (survey, interviews, focus groups) and led four participatory workshops (‘Urban Living Lab’), bringing together (future) residents, project facilitators, social landlords, civil servants, notaries, and architects in Lyon in 2023.

These workshops - which also took place in Austria, Spain, and Sweden - provided an opportunity to exchange perspectives on the stages and players involved in setting up a Collaborative Housing project, the current bottlenecks to the emergence of new affordable projects, and the levers for scaling up this virtuous form of collective housing.

With the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and Habitat Participatif France, urbaMonde organised a public conference in Lyon in June 2024 (see summary video), as well as co-creation workshops and visits to Collaborative Housing communities (Le Groupe du 4 Mars, Chamarel, le Côteau de la Chaudanne, les Choux Lents).

Finally, based on these discussions, the results of the survey, and the CO-HOPE interviews, urbaMonde drafted and edited a Policy Brief with policy recommendations in English, followed by an extended and contextualised version in French.

The aim of this document is to convince elected representatives at all levels (municipal, metropolitan, regional, national, and European) to take action to promote affordable Collaborative Housing in its various forms because it is a vehicle for mutual aid, sharing, solidarity and quality of life, both in everyday life and in extreme circumstances such as the COVID-19 period. Please share it widely!

urbaMonde would like to thank Habitat Participatif France, Hal’âge, and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon for their contribution to this publication and their support throughout the CO-HOPE project.