FUTURE OF COLLABORATIVE HOUSING — WITH DARINKA CZISCHKE

CitiesSociety

Nov 5

November 4 2025—Vancouver, Dublin, Los Angeles, Sydney, London, Auckland – in so many cities I visit, people tell me that skyrocketing rents and prices have made housing unaffordable. For younger people especially, it is a generational challenge that limits their future. This is confirmed in the data: over the past two decades housing prices have risen and households have spent an increasing share of their budget on housing across OECD countries.

But all over Europe communities are choosing collaborative housing and enjoying a host of social and financial benefits in return. Is this a pathway to a better future?

I'm in The Netherlands exploring collaborative housing with Darinka Czischke, Professor of Housing and Social Sustainability at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

Click below to listen to Darinka debunk the myths associated with the oft-repeated phrase ‘housing crisis’ before diving into the motivations and shared benefits of collaborative housing. She details where and why projects thrive, the importance of scale, how scale has already been achieved in places like Zurich, and the national and cultural factors that support collaborative housing. We discuss multi-generational approaches and how community-based options unlock more benefits than “aging-in-place” strategies. City governments are singled out as key enablers, and Darinka shares what policymakers can do to help.

There’s something for everyone in this conversation. Darinka is a passionate advocate for a better future; her insights are practical, universal, and VERY topical.

The best part? Her inspiring first-hand observations from communities she has stayed in.

After listening, scroll down for personal reflections, links to case studies and further reading, and a full transcript.

If you enjoy these insights, please share them with friends and colleagues:- connecting more people with real projects delivering outstanding outcomes is one way to contribute to a better future!

HOUSING AFFORDABILITY IS POLITICAL CHOICE

Darinka took issue with my use of the term ‘housing crisis’ because ‘crisis’ is a word politicians can hide behind by pretending it is a short-term issue amenable to short-term fixes. In fact housing affordability is a perpetual, systemic problem. The data confirm we are living through a period of sustained and escalating unaffordability: since 2015, real house prices have increased by 32% on average across OECD countries, and the price to income ratio, a measure of affordability calculated by dividing the nominal house price index by the nominal disposable income per head, has worsened by 18% over the same period — see Figure 1 below.

*Figure 1: Housing affordability indicators averaged across OECD countries, 1996 - 2024 (indexed to 2015)*

This is not simply a matter of supply and demand.

It’s the product of neoliberal ideologues who train citizens to think of houses as wealth-creation assets rather than homes, and train policymakers to prioritize capital growth over social sustainability.
It’s the product of planning and zoning rules which unlock outsized profits for developers, and wealthy developers who in turn exert outsized influence on rule-makers.
It’s the product of tax codes skewed towards investor interests:- a classic example being ‘negative-gearing’ in Australia, a rule which incentivizes investors to borrow heavily and accumulate one property after another by allowing artificially-induced ‘losses’ — when outgoings exceed rents — to be claimed as tax deductions.
It’s the product of private equity giants like Blackstone buying up residential properties around the world.
And its the product of political hypocrisy and ‘quick-fix’ solutions that do nothing to address the underlying problems. A perfect example of how quick-fix solutions actually worsen long-term affordability, and how governments are conflicted by a desire to keep growing wealth for investors, is detailed in this news article published about the Australian context while I was writing this post.

All of the above can be changed. They are slow to change because beneficiaries, who are less numerous but wealthier and vastly more influential, strive to keep the system advantageous to themselves. They collectively apply a powerful set of brakes to equitable reforms. This is not to pass some kind of value judgement – 30 years of futurism has trained me to keep a certain detachment when factoring for human behaviour. Humans can altruistic and selfish, people-focused and money-focused; to deny these complexities is to deny reality, and to deny reality is to deny an opportunity to asses the future objectively.

In sum, as Darinka put it, housing affordability is a political choice.

Which is one reason why collaborative housing is so interesting: it is subversive. Communities have been initiating projects from the bottom up, in defiance of societal conventions about what housing is ‘supposed to be,’ and by finding ways around unhelpful, if not hostile, regulations. Governments can do much to help, but even without top-down assistance these communities are changing the landscape.

COMMUNITY FIRST

I expect most people nowadays will come to the subject of collaborative housing from a financial/affordability perspective first (I certainly did). In real projects however, broader social goals come first and the benefits far exceed the financial. Mutual support, reciprocity, sharing practices and collective action are common elements, and these groups typically have strong environmental motivations too. Residents are not merely making decisions about money, they’re making decisions about how to live.

Hence, the historic origins with unconventional and alternative communities. Hence too, the greater take-up in Scandinavian countries which place greater cultural emphasis on community and shared outcomes.

Could a bunch of strangers come together and pool money in a not for profit housing enterprise? Of course they could. But getting a project off the ground in an unhelpful regulatory environment? Choosing an architecture that works for everyone? Decisions about shared spaces? In all these tasks a community of motivated, like-minded people with shared values clearly makes an enormous difference. And community doesn’t end when the bricks are laid. When people move and apartments vacate it’s about match-making the priorities and principles with new residents.

COLLABORATIVE HOUSING DELIVERS

Darinka’s qualitative observations across so many European collaborative housing projects confirm residents are consistently living socially richer and more fulfilled lives, and paying less to do it.

Research also shows that multi-generational housing — combining older and younger residents in one community — benefits all cohorts and offers a more secure and practical future for older people compared to ‘aging in place’ strategies (which can promote isolation and slow the flow of housing to first-time buyers and younger families). In collaborative housing, older people retain privacy and their own dwellings while sharing some common facilities and having others around who they can rely on for some tasks. They are not totally alone.

This speaks to the broader and well documented public health issues of isolation, loneliness, and depression, which have been steadily worsening in recent times.

And as we learned in my conversation with Global Happiness Report editor Professor John Helliwell, community engagement and social linkages and trust in people around you are all factors that consistently create greater happiness and fulfilment across all cultures.

Bottom line: collaborative housing delivers.

CAN WE SCALE COLLABORATIVE HOUSING FASTER?

Scale matters. As Darinka points out, jobs change, people move. If you step out of the property race via one not-for-profit, how can you move without penalty until you find another?

And we know collaborative housing can scale because it accounts for 20-25% of stock in Zurich. We also know it took a hundred years to get there.

So are there ways to achieve ‘critical mass’ faster?

Short answer: yes.

Darinka tells us that city governments, not national governments, are key enablers. City leaders are more connected to housing outcomes. If a Mayor wants it to scale, she can do so by easing the rules in her city, earmarking locations, preferencing not-for-profit projects, allowing more old buildings to be converted or adapted to collaborative living instead of sold to the highest bidders, facilitating low-interest loans, etcetera.

Added to which, the awareness factor: if more people knew collaborative housing was an option with established principles and hundreds of successes, would more choose that option? I think they would. Darinka has the same hypothesis and is kicking off a multi-year research project to test it. I hope to access the results as they come in so I can update this article.

pathway to a better future?

Does collaborative housing offer a pathway to a better future? Yes.

Will it be a bigger part of our future? Yes.

Will it happen quickly? In places.

Based on this conversation, and the efforts of passionate people like Darinka to inform and enlighten, acceleration in Europe seems all but inevitable. And while there are a great many models for collaborative housing, I expect more dominant models to emerge that attract broader segments of the population. It will surely become a more normalized option than it already is.

Outside of Europe there will be breakaway cities, but the aforementioned forces for preserving the status quo are very strong. Let’s say I’d be surprised to see a Los Angeles or Dublin or Auckland reach 10% collaborative housing by 2060.

But that’s only my probable future. The opportunity is universal. Housing policies are always within our grasp to change. Then there’s that awareness factor we talked about. The possible future in any given city is much higher.

My thanks to Professor Darinka Czischke, for generously sharing her insights on such an important aspect of our future.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Please note, my transcripts are AI-generated and lightly edited for clarity and will contain minor errors. The true record of the interview is always the audio version.

Bruce McCabe: Hello and welcome to FutureBites, where we explore pathways to a better future. And today we're exploring a problem which is universal in my travels, and that is access to affordable housing. And I thought an absolute wonderful person to explore that with me, someone who's really researching this space in an amazing way in Europe, is Professor Darinka Czischke. Welcome to the Podcast, Darinka.

Darinka Czischke: Thank you.

BM: Thank you for making time for us and hosting us here. You are the Professor for Housing and Social Sustainability at the Delft University of Technology. So this is very much at the centre of your universe, this global issue. And I wondered whether we might start with just a little bit of your background and what inspired you, or maybe who inspired you, to get involved in this particular field.

DC: Yes, I guess that my interest for thinking about housing in terms of social sustainability started to develop gradually after I was, well, let's say, when I was doing my PhD. I was doing my PhD part-time while I was working as a research director of the European Social Housing Observatory in Brussels. And then towards the end of my PhD, I started to realise that there was something missing in the analysis of established housing institutions or housing systems to meet the changing demands of people, at least in the European context, because this work I was doing was mostly focused on European countries, where I learned a lot. In my role as a research director there at the European Social Housing Observatory, I had the privilege to travel to all these countries and meet all the different type of providers of housing and understand their challenges, the different models and the outcomes, what works, what doesn't work, and so on. And in my PhD, what I did was compare the strategies of different type of housing providers in different northwestern countries in Europe. And well, while I learned a lot about it, I also noticed the shortcomings of, as I said, the institutions, the established ways of providing housing.

DC: I started my PhD in 2008 and I finished it in 2014. And in that period of time, if you remember, it coincided with the onset of the global financial and economic crisis.

BM: I remember it very well indeed.

DC: And that had a huge impact on housing conditions of a lot of households, not only the most vulnerable households suffered, but also new groups, middle income people, people who you would have thought that they don't have major issues to access housing in the market. But well, because of the crash, right? There were a series of foreclosures and evictions, etcetera. And a lot of people lost their homes. So a lot of research started to rethink, okay, are the systems future-proof? Are they fit for purpose? And what is missing? And in my own research, what I discovered is that a lot of people were taking initiative themselves, also collectively, together with others, to find ways out of this crisis. And that really fascinated me. So I wanted to learn more. And this coincided with my stint I had in England at the time as a director of World Habitat, which is an NGO that researches community-led housing. And I became really fascinated by the agency, the capacity of people to act also collectively to address the shortcomings of the institutions.

BM: So these are groups of people who got together and found a new way of, I guess, funding housing or sharing housing or cooperating. Is that right? So you actually spotted that first and went, that's really quite an inspiring thing to go and look at.

DC: Well, what I discovered is that indeed these models are not new. They have existed for over a century at least, since the beginning of, let's say, industrialized societies with the advent of the workers' movement and urbanization. People started to come together to solve their housing issues. That's how the cooperative movement started, for instance, not only in housing but in other fields, right? So if we study modern collaborative housing forms, it always boils down to that, the people who are struggling with no one providing the housing for them, so they have to do it for themselves, by themselves, right? So, as a sociologist, I'm also trained as a sociologist, and that really was super interesting for me. Also because, well, I grew up in Latin America, and one thing that I've seen in European societies, and a lot of, let's say advanced post-capitalist societies, is that they tend to rely a lot on the state providing welfare. Whereas in countries like Latin America, people are very self-sufficient, because they have to, right? So we don't rely in a state, a welfare state providing. So I noticed that here in Europe, up until the big crisis, let's say, people were constantly expecting that there would be either a state company or a housing association or someone, you know, an institutional type of provider, a professional providing the housing, the affordable housing.

DC: But this ceased to happen, right? Because what we saw was that a retreat of the state from housing provision, which is a trend that was going on at least since the 80s, with privatization and neoliberal trends in Europe, and on the other hand, there was a shrinking of the social rental sector. So then there was only the market, okay, the market seemed to function for a lot of people until the crisis. And that marked a turning point, because then middle income groups, they fell between the cracks, basically.

BM: Yeah, it's not a poor person's problem anymore. It's a much bigger problem.

DC: Yes, yes, yes, and more complex also, way more complex, because when we talk about middle income people, we cannot assume that they are all the same, no? At the same time, you have a lot of other trends like demographic trends, lifestyle change, expectations from people, much more single households in the market, that's the trend and it will continue to be so. So what do we expect in the future, that people live in their little boxes, you know, next to one another at high densities, and then what's going to happen with our social bonds, with our social connection? We see a crisis of loneliness in many countries that also spills over a crisis of health, public health, right?

BM: It all links, doesn't it?

DC: It's all linked together. So that's when I thought, well, there's a huge potential for these collaborative living forms, as we call them, to contribute to all of this housing, but also social and environmental challenges, because there's also an environmental question there.

BM: Yeah, now I want to get into some of those solutions in a minute, how different cultures and communities have approached the problem, the solutions. But just on the problem side, just anecdotally, everywhere I go, I'm hearing the same messages, and particularly at a generational level. So people that are under 25, even under 30, are saying they're locked out of the market in cities like Vancouver and Sydney and Dublin and all through the bigger cities in the US. They're also, one of the messages that comes up is they're competing against institutional investors now. It's not just private investors that are speculating in real estate, and it's not even just real estate developers, it's even huge funds that are now involving themselves in residential property. So I'm just wondering how universal is the problem from your perspective? I know you concentrate a lot of your work here in Europe, but is it pretty much everywhere? Are the same factors applying? Is it supply and demand and it's generational? I mean, what's your take? Is it as serious as that globally?

DC: I'm not sure I understand the question.

BM: Well, I guess my evidence is anecdotal, and I'm wondering just structurally, is there a crisis, if you like, of access to housing through Europe, would you say? Or how big is that?

DC: Well, that's the thing. I've written about that, and I say it every time I give a lecture or I speak publicly about this. I think that the media likes to portray this as a crisis. And as long as I've been working in this field of housing, it's like about 20 years now, I keep hearing about crisis. And if we think about it, a crisis is something that is quite acute, short-lived, but this goes on and on and on.

BM: It's a universal and constant.

DC: So, it begs the question, is this a crisis or what is it? Because a crisis is normally, well, either it disappears by itself, it dissolves, or it's managed and then it's sorted in a way. But nothing is happening. We're in a constant state of crisis. Therefore, what I'd rather talk about is a structural inadequacy of the existing systems to provide adequate housing for different groups of the population. So, the systems we have are not fit for purpose. That's what I mentioned earlier. That's what I discovered when I was doing my PhD. I said, okay, this is just not working because the world has changed, society has changed, the economy has changed. So, we need to find a different system or at least change what is not working well. But what I see is that a lot of commentators or influencers in this field, politicians, etcetera, they keep talking about quick fixes and affordable housing. Yeah, let's, I don't know, create this program or that program, when in reality, if you ask me, it's a systemic problem. Affordable housing, first of all, what is affordable housing? Affordable housing for whom? Where? It's an extremely vague term.

So, you need to determine what do you mean by affordable housing, first of all. Secondly, usually when we talk about affordable housing, it means below the market. That means that someone has to pay for it. Either the developers, they take a cut on their profits, or the government funds or co-funds.

BM: Yeah, the taxpayer.

DC: The taxpayer, right? So, ultimately, it's the taxpayers. But the government has to make a decision about it. So, it's a political choice.

So, in my opinion, the lack of affordable housing is a political question because we actually know what we need to do. So, technically, there's already more than enough evidence of why housing is not affordable, in quotes, right? So, that's not rocket science, you know? How to make housing affordable, we don't need to continue to reinvent the wheel. We know that. What we need now is a political decision from the government to come up with a plan that is workable. Someone has to pay for affordable housing. So, who is it going to be? The consumer, the developers, the shareholders, they're going to take less profit, or the government will invest?

BM: Yeah. And in the meantime, there are communities who have taken things into their own hands and done it without the economic levers and the incentives changing and that investment environment changing. So, perhaps we should start talking about them as a bit of an inspiration for how people have, I guess, changed their personal economics, haven't they, by cooperating? Is that the best way of summarizing what's going on?

DC: Well, people cooperate for different reasons. One of them is or might be affordability. That's a relatively recent motivation or reason for people to engage in these initiatives, historically speaking. But in the past, it's more often than not been about community life. It's about some values that people hold and they see that or they feel that the only way of living these values in their day-to-day lives is by living together with other people in closer contact, in closer social connection with other people. There are also very strong environmental motivations and they come in waves. We saw a first wave, let's say, in the '60s and '70s with the initial awareness raising of the climate crisis, the environmental problem, as it was called at the time. Now we have a fully-fledged climate crisis, right? So more and more people are thinking, what can I do? They want to have the feeling of some degree of feeling of control. So even though in the large scheme of things, their contribution will not be so meaningful, but they want to feel that they have a degree of agency. And it's also therapeutic to do this with other people. There's a lot of research coming up in the field of environmental psychology, which shows that in the face of despair about the climate crisis, many young people feel that it soothes them. It gives them a sense of relief in a way to do things with others, not to be alone.

BM: The community benefits are huge.

DC: Exactly. So the environmental issue and the community motivation, they come together quite nicely.

BM: And financial is just another element of that.

DC: It is another element. Now, there is also some claims, let's say, that by living in a more environmentally sustainable way, by sharing more, that can help financial, that can make housing more affordable. And there's some evidence coming up on that. But for us to be able to say this is like that, there has to be a number of conditions met for that housing to be more affordable than the alternative, which would be like a conventional housing.

BM: Well, one of the things that I've come across, I don't know how common this is, is the idea of setting up cooperatives where people can buy a share in that cooperative. And the place I came across that particularly was Switzerland. And they can sell that share as well, but they can only ever sell it for the same price they've bought it for. So there's no capital gains incentive, because it's a not-for-profit and the association is structured that way. Suddenly it takes away that speculative element that increases the pricing. So they've still got to build it as a community, I guess, and so they've got to cover the costs, and there's still rent, because we've got to cover the ongoing maintenance and all that, but there's not a perpetual increase. Have you seen much of that in Europe? Have you come across much of that?

DC: There are certain cities where cooperative housing models are more widespread, let's say. Such as Copenhagen, Zurich, Vienna, Munich also, Munich in Germany. In Barcelona, with the previous administration, there was also a big push towards more cooperative housing, and now the current local government is also supportive, it's still going on. But overall, the tricky thing, when we talk purely from a financial or economic side of things, is that you need a certain scale in order to make that system affordable over the long term for the majority of people. Why? Because you might be able to keep this project, this cooperative housing project or projects affordable, but what happens when the person who sells their share wants to move out of the cooperative system? Because everything else goes up, right? The price of everything else in the market goes up.

BM: Yes, as soon as they leave that cooperative, they're in trouble because they're excluded from the system.

DC: Exactly, so that is not interesting in a way for a lot of people, even though they might be inclined to buy the cooperative values. So they think as an individual household, they have limited resources of course, and they think, well, I'm sorry, I would love to, but what happens if I need to move out? Or what happens with my kids, for instance? Will I leave something for them? That's also a big question I come across. People who want to do good, they want to step out of their speculative game of housing, but they think about their children. So the only way in which we can make these cooperative models more sustainable are to make them bigger.

BM: Scaling them up.

DC: Scaling them up, and we see that, as I said, in the aforementioned cities, you have at least 20 to 25% of cooperative housing, and that's large enough for people to move around within that sector. So you have more choice of cooperative housing.

BM: That's fascinating. That's out of the total housing stock of something like Barcelona, there's 25%?

DC: No, not yet in Barcelona. Because they are a relatively new cooperative movement, I was mentioning it as one of the examples where the cooperative housing movement has slowly started recently. As in Amsterdam, for example, it's a city that supports cooperatives, but it's still very small, and we're hoping it will grow. But it takes a long time for such a sector to grow.

BM: So where would it be the biggest scale?

DC: Zurich is a classical example, but it's over 100 years old, so that's something that you need to consider. And every time we have these events where we invite people from Zurich and they tell their story, it all sounds idyllic and super inspirational. But then again, Zurich is part of Switzerland. Switzerland is an extremely exceptional country in many respects, and we need to consider this context and historical specificities to say, well, what can we expect in other contexts where we're used to market housing, we're used to social rental housing control, like, for example, in the Netherlands, by highly professionalized housing associations. So we need to calibrate our expectations in relation to that.

BM: Okay, interesting. Well, let's get away from Zurich and that model. What other examples are there that we can all learn from that have inspired you in your research that you wish more people could look at, I guess, and see what they've done socially as well as economically? I mean, the mixture of benefits.

DC: Yeah, I mean, I've traveled a lot in Europe, and I've visited a lot of wonderful projects, and I've been so inspired by different aspects every time. For example, in Scandinavian countries, what I love is the deeply ingrained culture of community life. So even though there are quite remarkable differences in the projects you see in Sweden compared to Denmark and Norway and Finland, still, there is something about the Nordics that links back to their history, their shared history, the climate, call it, the religious values that led people to really continue this kind of community, small-scale structure of mutual support, you know, the frugality in the sharing. It's very culturally specific. However, you see that aspects of those models have been transferred to other countries. You know, here in the Netherlands, they learn a lot in the '60s and the '80s from what was going on in Denmark, for instance. Germany, then again. Germany is also very interesting because you have a wide variety of models of Baugruppen, Wohngemeinschaften, Genossenschaften, Mietheuser-Syndikat. So they differentiate themselves, but at the end of the day, they all rely on mutual help, mutual support, and togetherness and collective action. So these are common elements.

DC: It happens at different scales, it happens with different social groups, but ultimately for me, and this is why I call my work and my book and everything, I call it collaborative living, not cooperative living or housing, as you might have noticed. Yes. Why collaborative? Because for me, as an urban housing sociologist, more important than a specific legal form is the way of living, the social architecture of a project.

BM: I think what you're saying is the culture comes first and the financial stuff is just a byproduct later on. I mean, if you have the culture of sharing and collaborating, building the housing on the back of that, or the housing comes on the back of that, doesn't it? Is that what you're saying?

DC: Basically, you can work around with your country's, let's say, legal frameworks or planning traditions to try and live the way you want to live. And if this way of living involves collectivity, social connections, reciprocity, sharing practices, then that's collaborative living. But it will take different legal and financial and organizational shapes.

BM: So the people that are doing it, a lot of them have started from the motivation of how do we do things collaboratively from an environmental point of view, from a social point of view, because we will benefit as a community, because if we help each other out, we'll be happier. It actually links back to sort of, I interviewed a professor looking after the happiness report, John Helliwell, and this sense of community is fundamental to the happiest people. So it starts there, then they get together, and there's some sort of model for shared services, I guess, around their living arrangements and how that happens. I believe you've done sort of broader scale research looking at all of these, or mapping out what's going on in Europe. Have you actually looked at satisfaction? Like, do these people self-score themselves as happier and more fulfilled?

DC: That's a very interesting question. I myself haven't done that sort of research, but I know some people, some colleagues have done some research on that. Not like a large-scale survey where we can compare across cultures. That would be wonderful, very costly. Who's going to pay for that? But we know from anecdotal evidence, and again of smaller scale data, that these people are very fulfilled. I mean, when you visit them, you just see that it's lovely. The atmosphere is just great. You see that, you feel that in qualitative research, you know, when you sit down and you do observation, and I've even spent a couple of nights there, you know, cook with them, especially in Denmark where they, a core part of the co-housing model there is to cook together in teams on a weekly basis and eat together as a community, right? So you can feel and you have informal conversation chats with mothers with young kids or elderly people, and people are happy, you know? So yes, scientifically I couldn't generalize this, but what I've seen is that it is a very, very nice way of life.

BM: And I wonder how much is self-selecting, they're already community-minded people who end up in these projects.

DC: But that's why my next research will investigate the potential demand for these ways of living in the Dutch context. That's what I'm starting now, because I realized we have a lot of case data, a lot of nice stories, but the question is, to what extent would the rest of the population like to live like this? So that's my research question for a five-year research that I'm starting now.

BM: That is the question, isn't it?

DC: Yeah, so I want to investigate amongst groups of people who are, I call them non-adopters, so people who haven't either joined a group or live there already in such a type of housing. But, you know, they're just out there looking for their next house, and I want to investigate the preferences, and I want to see to what extent they would be prepared to share more, to what extent they would like to have closer connections, social connections with their neighbors. And then out of that, I will formulate some housing typologies, not alone, but together with architecture students and other colleagues.

BM: Well, I hope you can let me know when that's published, because I would love to distribute that and tell people more, because I have a hypothesis here that my hypothesis is that if people were more aware of the option and how to do it, then a lot more people would get involved in doing it.

DC: That was exactly one of my hypotheses, because the problem with studying housing preferences and connecting them to these type of living forms is that we keep asking people for the same options. You know, every survey, market survey or government statistical survey, whatever, they always pose the same closed answer questions to the population, say, well, would you like to live in a villa or an apartment block or in this and that? So, of course, people will tend to answer what they know, right? Where their parents lived, where their friends lived, but you don't give them alternatives. So it's like a bias already. It's like doomed to failure, you know, the inquiry. So instead of that, I will ask people, how do you want to live? What are the attributes that you're looking for in your next house? And from there, I will construct different typologies that include different levels of sharing and collectivity.

BM: And then you've got to write the manual, please, so they can step by step follow the instructions for following in the footsteps of what others have done. Because again, if they are also presented with examples of people doing it that they can learn from, oh, this is an option and people have done this successfully…

DC: Yes. Well, what happens also, and this is anecdotal, but it's very, I think, helpful to build this hypothesis. When you talk about these issues with other people, you know, not colleagues, not people in the field, I get a lot of reactions like, oh, that sounds wonderful. I would love to do it, but, and then they start telling me all the reasons, the practical reasons why they would not live like that.

BM: Okay.

DC: Like it's difficult and it takes ages. And where will you get the funding and what happens if this and what happens if that is because our housing and planning systems are not prepared for this and not enabling, not facilitating collaborative living forms for the most part. So the people who actually get it done, they're fighters. They're really hardcore innovators, pioneers, but not everyone has the capacity to be like that.

BM: Because they've got to beat the system.

DC: Exactly. Exactly. So that's why you were talking earlier about the self-fulfilling or self-selection. Yes, surely. I mean, those are the people who are passionate about it. Finally, they got to live like that and they're very happy. Yes. But what about people who perhaps don't have the time or the means or the social capital, the cultural capital to do it, but if it was an easier option, they would enjoy it and they would benefit from it. So that's what I would like to see happen, that it becomes more normalized, more like a mainstream option. Like I myself would love to live like that, but there's also buts, right?

BM: Yeah. And also we've been conditioned in our lives to believe that certain things are important or valuable when perhaps they're less valuable than we think. So I just have this feeling that in so many Western societies, modern Western societies, people are actually moving in the wrong trajectory to live happier lives and they're getting bigger houses and there's fewer people in them. They're getting lonelier. People talk about the loneliness epidemic and I know it's a bit like crisis epidemic. It's one of those loaded words. But certainly statistically, loneliness is on the increase and depression rates and all of those things and they do correlate, don't they? And housing, if you're living in a bigger house, which has tied up more of your capital, but there's no one in it to share it with, that's crazy. That's the wrong trajectory.

DC: Yeah, exactly. That holds true, especially for older people. We have a huge crisis of, well, crisis in the sense that it's a health crisis.

BM: Yeah, yeah,

DC: It's a health crisis and a public health crisis in countries like the Netherlands, also Denmark. I've been doing some comparative research with a Danish colleague because both countries are similar in terms of the demographics, culture a little bit, and we see huge demand for community-based living forms. And there are many, many models. Some are developer-led, so market parties are starting to build co-housing, but it's more customized, you know.

BM: And we're specifically talking about older people.

DC: Older people, yeah, 55 plus or so.

0:31:45.0 BM: So there's a range of options. There's the institutional aged care type facility through to … okay, yes.

DC: It's not that, you know why? Because the governments don't have money to fund that sort of care. So what's happening in the Netherlands for over a decade now is that the government is cutting funding for these retirement homes or institutionalized care and they have this aging in place policy, which you might or might not have heard about it. It's, you know, the current mantra when it comes to older people and aging. Stay at home as long as you want.

BM: As long as possible.

DC: Yeah, right. That sounds good.

BM: Not just in the Netherlands. Yeah, it comes up a bit.

DC: There are a lot of issues with that policy if the right conditions are not in place. Say, for instance, usually older people, they stay in the house, they have family homes. They're too big for them and they get locked in because with the housing crisis, again, there's not enough housing options for them that are age-proof. Let's say, you know, that the older people, you know, they will need the adapted housing for their age. That type of supply doesn't exist, at least not in the number that is needed. And also, it creates a lot of loneliness because, you know, these are small flats where people live disconnected from one another. Usually they're not built in a neighborhood where the person has all their social networks. So a lot of research into aging and care talks about this. But the problem is that these people get, as I said, they cannot move out from their homes because of lack of supply, of suitable supply. And that reduces the flow in the market. You see, it makes the housing crisis even worse because all the...

BM: It's not releasing the housing stock.

DC: The first-time buyers, the young families who need these family homes, they're blocked from moving into those homes. So there's less retirement homes because the government is not supporting it. There's not enough supply for suitable homes for the elderly, of older people, as it's properly called, I've been told. And then, yeah, you have no flow in the market. So it's a perfect storm, right? So instead of that, why not think, yeah, let's build collaborative or community-based housing forms where in the areas where these people are used to living, they have their social networks, they can still retain their privacy by having their own dwelling, but smaller, and they can share a number of common facilities with other people, either in senior-only homes or in multi-generational homes. So in a way, you tick all the boxes because as long as these people are still fit, you know, they can take care of themselves, they can also rely on others, you know, for a number of tasks, sharing activities or chores, etcetera. Someone keeps an eye on them, you know, instead of being totally alone. So that is a no-brainer, and many people are actually registered in waiting lists for this type of projects, but they don't go fast enough.

Why is that? Because again, we have still a lot of hurdles, planning, financial hurdles, also some preconceptions or biases. I have, for instance, sometimes people from municipalities asking me, oh, but what if this way of living goes out of fashion in a few years? They think, they are scared of this being, you know, like one day.

BM: Some big white elephant where there's always, like happened in the '60s, all these apartment buildings that later on everyone rejected.

DC: Yes, yes. So there's all sorts of barriers, let's say, to get this off the ground. Meanwhile, we see that the demand is growing, you see? So it's not, it's out of step, let's say. So in my view, this has to... This should be accelerated.

BM: That idea of mixed generational has come up before in conversations with people and it sounds really seductive because both generations or the various generations benefit by being proximate to each other in a community. Have you come across anyone doing that really well? You know, any particular projects?

DC: Oh yes, yes. I've been to some really nice projects. Well, one that I really like is Sofielund in the city of Malmo in Sweden.

BM: In Malmo? So what's it called?

DC: Sofielund.

BM: Sofielund.

DC: It's a super nice project. It's quite large actually.

BM: Yeah. Tell us about that.

DC: And it's relatively new. It's a co-housing project and the architecture is really nice because it was co-designed between the residents. Well, because it was a large project, there was like a committee of future residents before the project was built that they worked on the architecture together with an architecture firm that was already very experienced and committed to this type of community architecture, which means very well thought public spaces or not public but common spaces, common areas, and public in a way also because this building is embedded in the fabric of the neighborhood. So you can actually, there are no gates, you know? Oh, interesting. There's a playground in the middle and anyone could come there. Any kids from the neighborhood can come there.

BM: Interesting.

DC: Yeah, it's not gated at all. It's very well integrated. It has very long corridors slash balconies so there's a lot of also transparency, visibility from one flat to the other while keeping the privacy of the individual dwellings. And they have dwellings for all sorts of type of households, you know, from elderly people to, well, couples and singles, younger people who actually can choose to live also in a kind of a collective embedded within the collective. That's also really cool because they, for instance, it's young people who are there for a limited period because they're studying or, you know, finding their first job and they don't mind sharing a bathroom, for instance. So they don't have their individual bathrooms. So they share more.

BM: All sorts of options. There's a multi-bedroom option down too?

DC: The really shared. It's fantastic. And I stayed there overnight as well. I've cooked with them. I've, you know, I've done some more observation there. And I've returned many times. And for me, it's one of my favorite projects. Yeah, super nice. And then, of course, in Switzerland, you have a lot of super nice projects like Mehr als Wohnen. I don't know if you visited that one.

BM: No, I haven't. No, I haven't. I'm going to get some links together after this though.

DC: That project is also amazing. I mean, these are award-winning projects. We're talking about something that also from an architectural point of view, from a sustainability point of view, they rank very high, you know, very good quality. And Monteurwohnungen, for instance, the nice thing about it is it's not just one building. It's a collection of cooperative buildings. And they form a little neighborhood with a market square in the middle. They have on the plinth, they have a number of shops, community, local economy shops, and they even have a guest house where you can stay there. And that functions as a revenue also for the community.

BM: Oh, really?

DC: Yeah. And they are so well organized because they were getting so many requests for information from researchers, from journalists, that they have a community manager in the sense that that person liaises with the outside world. So, I mean...

BM: Well, that's their pro bono. That's their goodwill to the rest of the world.

DC: Yes, yes, because of course the people also, they want this way of living to become more widespread. They want to share the good stuff with others, you know, and promote it.

BM: I like that very much. We've got to get some links together.

DC: You should do like a trip in Europe. I can tell you the itinerary. And this is just a few. You know, there are other amazing projects.

BM: Well, I'm going to make a list with you because we go everywhere, you know, on our travels and in doing this work and we'll come across them. It might not be all at once, but we'll always have an opportunity while we're in Tallinn or in Warsaw or wherever we are, we'll find an opportunity to go and have a look. And they sound really wonderful. I mean, I can see it in your face talking about it, just the positivity from those communities.

So how do we, how do I, how do we do a better job of educating more people in more cities around the world about them? I mean, is it just a matter of exposing the case studies, or what else can we do? What else can I do to spread the word? Because it seems like education is a huge element in this. If people knew it was an option, more people will be mobilized.

DC: That's what I believe. Yeah, yeah. And also to show that you don't need to be a hippie or a super progressive person to live like this. That's a fallacy, you know. There's a lot of people who are quite, you know, regular citizens. Let's say they have normal jobs and yeah, I mean, just show that this can be different. I also think that on a larger scale we have to stop thinking about the traditional one family home as the normal.

BM: Yeah, we have to break that down. We really do.

DC: Yeah, we need to, in a way, have homes that fit the way we live in general, our lives, you know, and not the other way around.

BM: Culturally, often, I come across this ingrained, societally taught notion that your house is an investment. Not a home, it's an investment. You know, one of its primary purposes is to generate more wealth. And that, to me, we need to break that somehow, because so often I see the behaviors following that. People investing not only their money, but all their time and effort and skills in renovating and building and making a bigger structure because they want to make more money when they sell it, instead of enjoying living.

DC: Yeah, definitely. Well, you know that's all based on an ideology. It's just neoliberal ideology, you know...

BM: Neoliberalism.

DC: And re-responsibilize individuals for their own welfare. I mean, I'm not a statist, let's say, someone who defends the state or a big state at all costs. I believe that the state has a duty to safeguard the right to housing, for sure, and create the right incentives, the right regulations and frameworks for individuals and communities to do what they want to do. I believe more in the freedom for people to self-organize, to create the living environments that they want. So for me, it all starts by that, by empowering communities and households and individuals to live the way they want to live.

BM: And part of that, I think, from a government policy point of view, is how they can get out of the way. Because you said they have to break the system. We have to work against the planning or work within planning laws that …

DC: Are not favorable. Or reform the system, make it more nimble, more adaptable, more flexible.

BM: Are there countries, Switzerland's obviously one of them, are there other countries where the regulatory environment is more favorable? Can we just talk about what that looks like? Is it taxation? Is it low-interest loans? What is it that a government can do to help scale?

DC: Well, as I was saying before, the places where this type of housing forms thrive are mostly cities. It's local governments. They have a key role to play. And national governments should enable them. Again, it's about devolution, it's about decentralization, it's about giving people at local level the tools to shape their own living environments. And every city where you see this kind of housing, they do it their own way. They build on their local traditions, local resources. For example, why not think of converting more buildings into collective living forms? I know that in English that is not a good word. We hear that as a collective one. But I'm talking about collaborative, cooperative living forms. Meaning when a group of people want to take over a building, a dilapidated building or a building that needs to be adapted for a different use, for residential use, and give them the tools to do it, instead of selling it to a big investor who is going to turn it into fancy lofts or a hotel or a mall. You see what I mean?

BM: Or a set of apartments aimed at the highest bidder.

DC: Exactly.

BM: I was just in Helsinki and along the waterfront, as you see in many cities, but the conversion of old warehouses, the repurposing of those warehouses, they're just these amazing spaces where almost all the physical ingredients are there, I guess, because you've got a lot of space to work with, plus the environmental benefits of repurposing rather than rebuilding. It's prime targets.

DC: So I would like to see more of a percentage of these prime locations to be earmarked for collective, non-commodified housing projects. So that it also becomes more democratic, because otherwise you end up with super flashy buildings in the prime locations, and a lot of the time, we know that, there's foreign investors who don't even live there. They have them empty there. That's what happened in places like London, like Paris to some extent.

BM: Yeah, they sit empty.

DC: They sit empty. Yeah. And that's a shame, that's a waste of opportunities when at the same time we have these so-called housing crisis, you know?

BM: It's insane. I see it everywhere. And again, institutional money or investment money is fleeing one country, and it's using residential property as a financial haven for that money. So there's no motivation behind that money to house people. The motivation is to park the money so that it gains in value. That's it. So they're often empty.

DC: I think that's scandalous. That's really scandalous.

BM: How do you stop that, though?

DC: Sorry?

BM: How can you stop that, though?

DC: Well, again, that's political will. To have the guts as a government to say, no, stop it, you know? This is against the public interest, as simple as that.

BM: There's a very pernicious example in Australia of the politics of this. Now, I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's a thing called negative gearing. So it's a tax loophole which allows investors, private investors or institutions to own multiple properties and to borrow heavily against them. And if they're losing money, in inverted commas, because their interest payments are very high and their expenses are high, they can use that as a tax deduction. So you've got a huge incentive to over leverage, to borrow more and leverage more. Now, the problem is on the political will side, of course, there's a lot of money tied up, but there's a register showing how many of our politicians have 20 houses, 30 houses. They're all involved in the process. So, yeah, I mean, that's just a small example.

DC: No, no, but it happens. Same kind of thing happens in our big cities, especially in countries where there's no, or cities, I must say, where this is very deregulated.

BM: I think my biggest takeaway from this conversation is the cultural element, how it's more prevalent in Scandinavian countries and it's working well. And that tallies so strongly with, for example, I mentioned earlier my discussion with John Helliwell, you know, the happiness report globally. They're the countries that score highly. They're already community minded. They already have a high trust for the society they're living in, the people and a high sense of connection or wish to connect with others. And they go together. I think that's what I've really, really learned. Just as we close this out, are there any other big messages you would have, I guess? I usually close by asking, if you could only have one thing, you know, that leaders would do differently, or if there's just one thing that would make a better future, what would it be? But perhaps we could close with that or any other things that pop out of your research. Just wish more people knew it would create a better future.

DC: Well, I think that policymakers and politicians, although they have to work together, but they don't necessarily think the same.

BM: No.

DC: I say it because I work a lot with policymakers. So basically people who have a lot of institutional learning, you know, and then politicians come in and out often. But put your money where your mouth is. Is that the saying in English?

BM: Yes, absolutely.

DC: Because I see a lot of hypocrisy or double discourse, right? So everyone is talking about affordable housing, affordable housing.

BM: Yes, all politicians talk about it.

DC: Yes, but then you see what actually are the policies, what are the measures they take, and they are completely contradictory, you know? So we need to really do, they need to do what they say they want to do, what they promise they want to do. So if you want affordable housing for more people, then you need to start regulating, legislating, and be tough. Because to be honest, the market has not solved the housing problem, because otherwise we wouldn't have a housing problem.

BM: Yeah, neoliberalism won't do it.

DC: No, no, it's not.

BM: I think the other really big message I've got from our talk today is that governments need to think bigger. I mean, this is about collaborative living much more than just a financial quick fix.

DC: Yes.

BM: It's a perpetual systemic problem. That's what you told me at the very start of this conversation. And if governments didn't approach it with a single policy or a single sort of program, let's say, or just building social housing, but actually thought more about cohesive communities and actually getting people to buy into their community living as a whole, for all the benefits that brings, maybe that's a better way.

DC: And it's a long-term planning. The housing crisis won't be fixed in four years' time or five-year time cycles. And just building new units won't solve it. We've seen that, you know.

DC: We have to think how, for whom, where. There are a lot of other questions that need to be asked and answered.

0:51:23.8 BM: Well, Professor Darinka Czischke, thank you so much for the time. I feel like you're doing some of the most important work of all out there. It's such a universal issue and as you point out, a perpetual one. So I wish you well and if there's anything I can do to spread the word and continue the conversation, especially as the new research comes out, I'd love to be involved with that.

DC: Yes, thank you very much.

BM: Thank you very much for the insights.

DC: Lovely talking to you.

Bruce McCabe