Struggles for the decommodification of housing: the politics of housing cooperatives in Uruguay and Switzerland

Abstract

After the Global Financial Crisis, activists and scholars have turned to collective forms of housing as a strategy to decommodify housing. We argue that housing cooperatives might take a crucial role in this strategy. The fact that they are still marginal, however, raises questions about the conditions for their emergence, growth and survival. By bringing the trajectories of housing cooperatives in Switzerland and Uruguay in dialogue, we capture different paths towards housing policies conducive for cooperatives. In both countries, housing cooperatives are meaningful policy instruments to make urbanization governable. To understand their development, their mutual relations with governments are crucial. We argue that the organizational form of a cooperative resembles a shell, which can be repurposed from the inside and the outside. In their ambiguous position between self-organization and being entangled with state practices, the situated stories of housing cooperatives in Switzerland and Uruguay help to re-describe struggles to live and dwell in urbanizing spaces around the globe.

The Synergy of Community, Government, and Circular Economy in Shaping Social Housing Policies

“…The nine documents on best practices are presented in the full version. After selecting the nine studies [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], they were organised into Results Matrices to facilitate the organisation of the findings. This technique employs a table format that presents research results clearly and concisely.…”

“…The discourse on market control, especially in capitalist contexts, echoes the concerns articulated by [42,50,51] all converging on exploring alternative solutions to address housing decommodification. Inadequate regulations are identified as a catalyst for the unsustainability of lower-income environments in the centres of capitalist cities, resulting in forced relocations and subsequent gentrification.…”

A structural view on housing movements: Strategic lessons from a field of contention approach

“…The necessity to build social coalitions that can politically support such policies, beyond electoral and market support for existing (dual) policy branches, are another potential strategic conclusion. Unions' involvement in housing policy and in building concrete community-controlled housing solutions (e.g., Barenstein et al 2022) can be a good example for such coalitions.…”

Living Together for a Better Life: The Impact of Cooperative Housing on Health and Quality of Life

“…Among the different alternatives that are being promoted, cooperative housing under the grant-of-use model stands out. This model takes as a reference the Andel model as well as other consolidated experiences in European and Latin American countries [26][27][28][29][30][31].…”