For millennia intentional communities evolved to pursue philosophical, religious and political aims and to avoid persecution. Many coinciden-tally integrated sustainability principles in the form of simple living and collective sufficiency, either for doctrinal or pragmatic reasons because, despite private institutional and voluntary donations, many were essentially self-supporting. However, with the revolutionary ferment of the second half of the nineteenth century and cooperative ventures in a range of sectors, certain governments began to support utopian settlements. Historian Bill Metcalf refers to efforts by the state
‘in Australia in the 1890s, New Zealand in the 1970s, and Palestine/Israel for much of this century’.3
Indeed, up to 2 per cent of Israel’s population still live in kibbutzim, collective communities typically based on agriculture, although only around one-third are still income-sharing. After a decline, since the 1980s kibbutzim have experienced a range of reforms, adaptations and resurgence of interest from young parents wishing to live in more affordable, rural and community-oriented ways. Kibbutzim are not dealt with here due to their religious and state specificity, which hinders transference and, therefore, relevance to this study. In contrast, Metcalf contends that intentional communities flourishing in the last half century have tended to be secular, even if utopian to the extent that they frequently pursue environmental sustainability in their everyday practices.4
Given that this chapter refers to a range of models in various regions, it is important to iterate that certain legal terms for distinct kinds of collab-orative housing, ownership and sharing arrangements have developed in particular municipal and national contexts, sometimes confusingly bearing similar names across jurisdictions where regulations, practices and technicalities differ markedly. As discussed in Chapter 5 regarding the scope of cohousing, ‘housing cooperative’ refers to many different kinds of relationships and housing tenures. Indeed, in one article Vestbro understandably rules ‘cooperative housing’ out of discussions of
‘alternative ways of living and building with shared facilities’ altogether.
Yet, a cooperative legal form has been used for diverse projects stretching from state- and market-oriented models of governance, and from social housing and cohousing through to communes, including the intentional community Commonground that, in the mid-1990s, Bill Metcalf nominated as the most radical case presented in his classic Australian collection.5
Irrespective of distinct legal terms, this book aims to be specific regarding essential types of housing and households (see glossary).
Furthermore, for reasons of space, generic legal models, along with differences and complexities between jurisdictions, are ignored because the primary barriers to collaborative housing involve planning and financing. Appendix 1 includes a select list of legal references and links for interested readers.
Short descriptions of outstanding state support in three co-located countries follow. They indicate how social movements informed the demand for cohousing and how important government support has been to enable, and impede or deter, interested citizens to realise their dreams for collaborative housing.
Denmark: the cradle of cohousing
The initial development of government-supported ‘cohousing’ in Denmark during the 1980s was secular and social in its orientation and purposes. Many proponents were attracted by its emancipatory opportunities, especially for gender roles and collective organisation of households. Rather than wrangle privately with a partner over household duties, a formal and collaborative approach to domestic chores and caring tasks promised greater responsibility and account-ability. Furthermore, sharing child-care and playing spaces had potential for more efficient co-parenting, and parental support for singles, sole parents and couples alike.
Thus, architect-crafted collaborative living of the cohousing type found today in North America evolved through discussions in Denmark in the 1960s and took root there in the 1970s. By 1982, 22 Danish owner-occupied cohousing projects had been established. Professional support from the ‘live together’ (SAMBO) association (1978–) and national Cooperative Housing Association Law (1981) facilitated financial backing through state-sponsored loans. Banks perceived pre-sales an advantage. In recent decades, cohousing complexes show
reduced household dwelling sizes in favour of increases in collective facilities – making them more compact, sustainable and affordable.6
Estimates of the proportion of Danes living in such housing settle around 5 per cent, the greatest proportion in any country in the mid-2010s. Danish seniors’ ‘collective housing’ accommodates just over 1 per cent of Danes more than 50 years old. In 2010, there were around 350 units with 5–156 dwellings (15–30 dwellings on average) supplemented by 140 or so similar units of intergenerational communities that consci-entiously integrated seniors.
Kähler has referred to the eco-cohousing of Munksøgård (Roskilde) as a ‘very good compromise’ between these two models. There seniors are housed together in one 20-dwelling cluster of an intergenerational settlement of five distinct clusters, each with their own common house.
Munksøgård owner-occupiers, cooperative members and renters integrate activities across their separate neighbourhoods, and all support an organic farm.7 Such well-established seniors’ models are attractive to other governments in as much as they successfully address welfare and housing challenges associated with aging populations.
Sweden8
Vestbro’s short history of Swedish collaborative housing starts in 1935, in Stockholm, with a privately developed, multi-storey block of 54 serviced apartments that he describes as a ‘modernist collective’ or ‘functionalist cohousing’. A radical 1970s development with a similar ‘cohouse’
(Hässelby Family Hotel) had collective self-provisioning taking over services once supplied by workers. Later, a ground-breaking ‘self-work model’ in a renovated municipal housing company building in Stacken (Gothburg, 1979) was inspired by the Bo I Gemenskap (BiG, ‘Live in Community’, 1977–) ‘working-together’ model which, as in Denmark, responded to household re-organisation as more women worked outside home.
A spate of cohousing followed in Stockholm because, in 1980, the city started to take a serious interest in it – soliciting three public municipal housing companies to develop distinct models. Consequently, Kärnekull reports that between 1983 and 1993 more than 1000 apartments concentrated in 19 building complexes were characterised by affordabil-ity, central kitchen and dining areas, a range of rooms for working and playing, and municipal kindergartens. (Similarly, a Dutch cohousing
agency facilitated partnerships with housing companies for tenanted cohousing during the 1980s though, after 2000, support diminished just to financing assistance.) Then, in the 1990s, the municipal housing company Färdknäppen became a prominent builder and owner of a Swedish version of seniors cohousing, the ‘second half of life model’ for those 40 years and over without dependent children.
Although a 2009 survey indicated that around 10 per cent of Swedes were attracted to cohousing, at that time, there were only about 45 cases on the self-work model and two-thirds were owned by municipal authorities. Vestbro identifies this kind of government backing as ‘almost unique’ to Sweden, in sharp contrast to the almost exclusively private cohousing model in North America. He explains the universally low uptake of cohousing, based as it is on equality, as mainly attributable to a patriarchal culture. Indeed, around 20 per cent of the self-work cohousing projects developed in the 1980s were, at a later date, ‘de-collectivised’.
Despite the neoliberal trend for cash-strapped councils to pass housing provision more to market-based companies, public companies remain attractive to Swedish cohousing groups because, even though such companies need to make a profit, they are subject to political directives.
Of course, housing companies such as Familjebostäder (Stockholm) offer assistance only where an incipient cohousing community is already proactive. Thus, government is best described as ‘responsive’. Even so, Kärnekull reports that smaller groups have difficulty attracting support because larger groups are preferred by the housing companies, which have no competition given that private housing firms ‘show no interest in collective buildings’ and land is a prohibitive cost without financial support.
Typically, Swedish state-owned cohousing was vertical stacks in urban centres. By way of an example, Lietaert pointed to Stoplyckan (Linköping), with 184 apartments in 13 tall buildings housing more than 400 residents, and its efficient arrangement with public healthcare companies that co-rented shared spaces to work in, the residents enjoying them outside business hours. This critical mass enabled a multiplicity of group activities and legitimised the establishment of two adjacent childcare centres.
Germany
Especially due to the leadership of city municipalities such as Berlin, Tübingen, Freiburg and Hamburg, Germany has been a leader in practical
legislative, financial and policy models for enabling a range of types of collaborative housing in response to strong community-based pressure.
So much so that Droste has argued that the scale of realised projects and ‘the emergence of entire co-housing neighbourhoods’ indicates that municipalities need to consider mainstreaming this approach rather than leaving it a niche development. In fact, more progressive cities offer substantial pathways for collaborative housing models: Hamburg will sell land to groups at market prices but is prepared to delay the sale for up to, say, one year; Freiburg reserves 20 per cent of land for such housing.9
German state support for collaborative living has been seen as an affordable housing strategy. Yet, left-wing criticism pivots on rearguard action to expand as well as protect further incursions on low-income social housing. The associated criticism that collaborative housing is a gentrifying force is shallow given that gentrification is a function of market forces10; gentrification is a function of unmet demand, which would disappear if the demand were satiated. A more reasonable argument combines cohousing with demands for social housing as a matter of choice and in recognition of its various co-benefits.
Indeed, Droste confirms many co-benefits of collaborative housing, including that, as ‘a part of strategic housing policies, it contributes to relieving some of the burdens of social-welfare provision’. The Chair of the German community housing association Forum Gemeinschaftliches Wohnen, Albrecht Göschel, has distinguished collaborative housing from family-based and service-based public approaches to seniors. As a form of self-help and mutual management, collaborative housing is essentially a case of ‘alternative production of personal services’ that offers a third, cooperative, way. Caring is not specific to cohousing for seniors and other philanthropic and government-assisted collaborative housing; many wholly self-funded cohousing projects are intentionally inclusive across abilities, ages and income, and share responsibilities for those with special needs. They also offer local, public, facilities as part of the vibrancy and space advantages of community-based settlement.11
Despite such benefits, German state progress has been patchy and inadequate – especially in collaborating with groups as co-generators.
Tummers explains this in terms of the failure of the planning profession worldwide to include genuine processes of engagement in their suite of learned and applied skills: ‘the position of inhabitants is often weak, despite legal consultation requirements’ and, as such, the kinds of
co-creation required by collaborative housing projects ‘presents a serious challenge to the current top-down planning cultures’.12
Berlin’s lead has been partly due to authorities building on a tradition of housing cooperatives since the nineteenth century, and the revital-isation of the 10 per cent of cooperatively owned housing stock by a twenty-first century model of active resident participation. Furthermore, between the mid-1980s and 2000, Berlin ran a Wohnungspolitische Selbsthilfe (self-build housing) program offering financial and insti-tutional assistance to hundreds of self-managing groups, formalising and integrating squats and bottom-up collective housing initiatives that appeared aplenty with re-unification. As LaFond has said, ‘the city became a fantastic field of play for alternative projects, which cemented the local Co-Housing culture’.13