COLETIVA is a Portuguese cooperative housing platform, operating within the framework of the European Plan for Affordable Housing.
In early October, Francisco Rocha Antunes, chief executive of MOME Living, presented the COLETIVA project at the Decarb Arena at EXPO REAL, as part of the New Ways of Living panel.
COLETIVA is a Portuguese cooperative housing platform, operating within the framework of the European Plan for Affordable Housing, which aims to create affordable housing for households with a stable income that the free market no longer serves.
This is not social housing, but rather permanently affordable housing, governed by its members and institutionally structured. COLETIVA is funded as social infrastructure rather than as a property development. The co-operative owns the buildings on a permanent basis under the collective ownership regime provided for in the Portuguese law on co-operatives, which has been in force since 1999. This gives rise to four rights for each member: the right to live in the home for life, at a price limited by law to the cost; the right to use the community’s renewable energy, produced and shared on-site; the right to a shared fleet rather than a second car; and decentralised digital governance, which prevents uncontrolled cash flows.
The model is based on long-term institutional debt, supplemented by patient capital in a subordinated position and by members’ shares. It does not rely on ongoing public subsidies or the sale of assets at any stage of its life cycle. The return on the project is moderate, and this is by design: value is delivered to the member in the form of a permanently affordable charge, rather than being extracted as a return on capital.