Self-managed student housing is not a new idea. University Hall, Edinburgh’s first purpose-built student housing, was founded by Patrick Geddes in 1887, letting its residents “manage the internal affairs of the residence”. The model soon became popular across the United States, with many student housing co-operatives independently set up across the country since the 1930s, and now joined in the North American Students for Co-operation (NASCO) federation. European co-operatives can’t boast a comparable history or level of organisation – but things might be slowly changing!

On October 3rd and 4th of last year, a colleague and I attended the Pan-European Student Housing Co-operative gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, representing Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative. The event was held in conjunction with the 10th anniversary celebration of the Co-habitat Network with the goal of creating a learning environment between different student housing co-operative projects across Europe.

On the first day we visited a number of housing co-operatives in Geneva, while the second day saw most participating co-operatives share presentations about their organisations, and a focused session on how participants thought the student housing co-operative movement could develop across Europe.

Co-ops in Geneva

The co-operative ecosystem in Geneva is thriving. Over the last 30 years, the number of people who live in a co-operative has increased dramatically. In a city with some of the most expensive house prices in the world, forward-thinking policy is allowing a small but significant portion of its residents to take control of their own housing and make it more widely accessible. Many of these co-operatives now own multiple properties all across the city and are growing at a good pace, with some co-ops having hundreds of millions of Francs invested in multiple new sites. While being tenant-governed, these organisations remain incredibly agile, with only a handful of employees in charge of both running existing sites and developing new ones. The ability to expand is supported by a sustainable and yet member-centered business model, and risks are mitigated through buy-in from the regional government: the Canton leases new land to the co-operatives for 100 years and guarantees a portion of the initial loans. Some of the remaining capital is also raised through shares from the prospective residents, who in exchange get a say on the design and amenities of the new building.

We saw the full effects of this strategy through our visit of the Les Vergeres Eco-village in Meyrin. A stone’s throw away from the CERN campus, this 34-acre site on the outskirts of the city was allotted by the Canton to a number of distinct co-operatives and other developers. Over the course of a decade the site was developed into a series of wide boulevards, orchards, and high-rises with their own distinct personalities and goals. The neighbourhood now houses 1100 apartments, half of them in co-operative ownership, and a number of co-operatively owned businesses are hosted on the ground floor shop fronts.

Each co-operative has a distinct ethos in its objective and governance, which is clear from talking to its members and the choices they have made in building design. We visited sites from three different co-operatives both in Les Vergeres and the city centre:

• Equilibre, founded in 2005 with 118 units across 5 sites and 270 more across 6 sites under development, is focused on environmentally sustainable living;
• CODHA, founded in 1994 with 759 units across 17 sites and currently developing 12 more sites which will increase its capacity by 861 units, aims to provide affordable rent and conviviality to its members through the use of shared spaces (such as shared orchards or the unforgettable indoor climbing wall!); and,
• La Ciguë, founded in 1986, which houses 311 students around the city.

The history of the latter is inspiring: from a small group that would strike deals with landlords to look after empty properties stuck waiting for planning permission, since its founding the co-operative has raised enough money to have invested in its own purpose-built sites, while continuing to operate the same model of temporary agreement. Visiting one of their sites, it was striking to see how differently the students chose to design their accommodation from the standard design of student accommodation in Scotland. Rather than organising cluster flats with bedrooms off long, dark, and narrow corridors leading to a single communal kitchen, most flats in the building we visited were duplexes, with both large kitchen and living areas. Corridors between bedrooms had plenty of nooks and shared spaces carved out for communal activities, for each flat to customise to their desired usage. It was clear from talking to the residents that the design of the buildings was key to creating the conditions of communal living that are essential for co-operatives, and really highlighted to me how our own pre-existing building in Edinburgh has somewhat constrained our ability to do so.

Student Housing Co-operatives across Europe

On the second day of the workshop, we gathered on the ground floor of one of the more central CODHA buildings, which serves as an event venue, to discuss the state of Student Housing Co-operatives in Europe. We heard some more details about how La Ciguë operates from one of its staff members, as well as introductions and updates from projects across Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Hungary. We also had significant UK representation, with both Edinburgh and Birmingham student housing co-operatives describing our projects, as well as the Student Co-operative Homes federation, and Professor Anke Schwittay from the University of Sussex describing her research on student housing co-ops (you can read her own blog post reflections on the gathering here).

The different projects in attendance testify to the wide range of forms a student housing co-operative can take: some have been running for decades, others struggle to find a site; some have repurposed single family homes, while others house hundreds of members. Governance models are also varied, with some (like Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative) operated entirely by their residents on a democratic basis, others operated by elected committees of students, and some employing paid members of staff or run by the local university as a research project. The one thing that was shared in common was the need to address a dysfunctional student housing market in all of our cities, and how the presence or the prospect of a housing co-op has given many students hope for their future in a place they could not afford to live in otherwise.

After lunch, we broke into groups to discuss and brainstorm solutions on shared issues that affect our co-operatives, and how to create a broader Pan-European movement to advance this model. It is really easy to get stuck in the day-to-day business of running a housing co-operative, but it is clear from this type of event that we are all facing similar kinds of challenges, and these opportunities for knowledge sharing can help shake up how things are run and help identify best practices.

With Glasgow Student Housing Co-operative finally housed, and a growing co-housing movement finding its voice, this is an exciting time for housing co-operatives in Scotland. As Margaret Whitelaw, secretary of Lenzie Community Development Trust, eloquently stated at a recent gathering at the Scottish Parliament: “Somebody needs to explain to me why Cohousing – which is such a mainstream housing model, and seems to work really well, in many other parts of Europe – wouldn’t work in Scotland.”

• This article was originally published on the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence website