Cooperative Housing Projects and Community Land Trust of New York

Barcelona is currently the most expensive capital to rent a house in all of Spain. The situation is reaching such extreme points that terrace houses are being rented as rooms.

The interiors of the houses are subdivided to increase the number of “living” spaces compatible with other spaces to share, and so we see how what used to be dining rooms or living rooms become new rooms where tenants can “living” while sharing a kitchen and bathroom with strangers. The housing problem is not new, it has been dragging on for years and at the same time, self-organization structures have been growing in parallel to defend the rights of neighboring people.

Although the situation in Barcelona is very serious, it is not, by a long shot, the only city affected by this situation in Catalan or Spanish territory. We could point out that this trend is repeated in hundreds of countries, and that’s why we wanted to look at what’s happening, and how it’s acting in other cities around the world.

New York was already a reference city for us, being the first city to promote a cooperative supermarket. An initiative that has inspired dozens of projects in the territory. On this occasion we wanted to address the protection of the right to housing of the inhabitants of New York in a session that will take place on November 18 at 6 p.m. You can register here.

We will have the participation of representatives of three entities that work to protect the rights of New Yorkers, fighting displacement and speculation through community management mechanisms. The speakers will tell us different experiences of cooperative housing and Community Land Trust developed in New York. They will accompany us Arielle Hersh, ofUrban Homesteading Assistance Board, Julie Colon of Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition in the Bronx and Elise Goldin of New Economy Project.

The session will be in English and there will be simultaneous translation of the content.