Project Overview
CHOICE (Community-led HOusing for
Inclusion, Climate, and Equity) is a European project confronting the continent’s housing crisis by championing Community-Led Housing (CLH): cooperatives, ecovillages, and community land trusts as a democratic, affordable, sustainable, and inclusive alternative to speculation-driven housingand working to empower citizens, exchange knowledge and best practices, bridge grassroots dialogue with policymaking, and advance gender equality in housing solutions.
Led by the GEN Europe together with ECOLISE, ICLEI European Secretariat, RIPESS Europe, MOBA Housing, CVTT-ISCTE, and the University of Vechta, with Commoning Spaces Network as an associated partner, CHOICE brings citizens, civil society organisations, and policymakers together across Europe to co-create policy recommendations, best-practice guides, and lasting networks in support of the growing CLH movement.
CHOICE is funded by the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme.
Partners
Consortium Partners
GEN EUROPE
GEN Europe is the European branch of the Global Ecovillage Network, a network of grassroots initiatives and civil society organisations supporting ecovillages, communities and community-led projects across 27 EU countries and beyond, working towards regenerative, ecologically, socially, economically, and culturally regenerative ways of living.
ECOLISE
ECOLISE is the European Network for Community-Led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability. ECOLISE’s purpose is to engage in, support, and facilitate accelerated learning and collaboration among community-led initiatives, their networks, and partners to catalyse systemic transformation within and across society.
RIPESS EUROPE
RIPESS Europe (Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of Social Solidarity Economy – Europe) is a European network that brings together social and solidarity economy organizations, networks, cooperatives, associations, researchers, and grassroots initiatives committed to building an economy centered on people, communities, and the planet. Through advocacy, knowledge-sharing, capacity building, and international cooperation, RIPESS Europe promotes democratic, sustainable, and solidarity-based alternatives to the dominant economic model, while strengthening connections between local initiatives and European public policies.
ICLEI
ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability is a global network of more than 2500 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development and is active in 125+ countries.
MOBA
MOBA is a European Cooperative Society pioneering community-led and cooperative housing in Central and South-Eastern Europe. “Moba” is a Slavic word for a solidarity custom of voluntary collective work.
CSN: COMMONING SPACES NETWORK
Commoning Spaces Network is a European Network of community-led Houses.
CSN focusses on international knowledge exchange and on a legal lock housing model against profits from rents, housing and by speculation.
This allows permanently affordable, sustainable, democratic, self-organized housing with solidarity transfer to emerging groups.
CVTT-ISCTE: CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Iscte-Knowledge and Innovation is a Technology Transfer and Valorization Centre based on the combination of two of Iscte’s reference research areas – social and human sciences and digital technologies – with the aim of providing integrated knowledge transfer solutions for society, organizations, companies and public administration. CEI-Iscte is a research unit at Iscte-KI dedicated to producing knowledge and conducting excellent research on contemporary global challenges. Our approach combines local and sectoral analyses with an international perspective, enabling us to understand complex phenomena and contribute to solutions applicable to different contexts.
UNIVERSITY OF VECHTA
University of Vechta is located in northwestern Germany, in the town of Vechta in Lower Saxony. Its study programmes concentrate on teacher training, social sciences, social work, philosophy, and gerontology.
The University with its mission statement ‘Responsibility is Key’ has designated the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework as core points of reference for research and teaching. Through responsible research and teaching, the University aims to promote sustainable solutions to contemporary social challenges which are in harmony with the needs of society.
