Community-led housing initiatives – including cooperatives, cohousing, community land trusts, ecovillages, and other collectively governed, non-speculative models – offer something that neither the market nor the state has been able to deliver at scale: housing that remains permanently affordable, democratically governed by residents, and prioritise people and the planet over financial returns. Across Europe, citizens are already making this work. The question this session asks is simple, yet challenging: what does it take for local and regional authorities to support them?

Across Europe, some cities have given community-led housing access to land, planning support, and a seat at the decision-making table. In others,  similar initiatives have become stuck in  permitting processes  designed for conventional developers or in legal systems that simply have no legal category for community-led housing. Both realities coexist in Europe today, and even sometimes within the same country.

This session brings together municipal representatives and practitioners to explore that question from both sides. Not to celebrate what’s working, but to be honest about what it actually takes: the tools that help, the relationships that matter, the moments where the system gets in the way.

The discussion will be guided by the following questions:

• How do the municipalities understand and approach alternative housing models, and in particular cooperative housing?
• What policy tools, financial mechanisms, land strategies, or regulatory frameworks are being used to support their development?
• How does the relationship between housing cooperatives and the municipality work in practice?

The first session in the series, taking place on the 29th September, is titled “Community-led housing and the cities that enable it”. It will focus specifically on the role of municipalities in enabling and supporting cooperative housing models, and on how the relationship between local governments and housing cooperatives or community-led initiatives functions in practice.

More Information

The CHOICE webinar series is a set of eight one-hour online sessions bringing together local governments and community-led housing initiatives (CLIs) from across Europe for facilitated exchange on affordable, sustainable, inclusive, and democratically governed housing . Each session brings together a community-led initiative with a representative from local or regional government, leaving space for the conversations that usually doesn’t happen