alternative_housing

State of State-built housing in
The lack of design and planning can be seen by merely visiting one of the numerous State-built housing, especially for the Economically Weaker Section(EWS) and the Low Income Group (LIG). Even basic infrastructure such as water, light, and ventilation or access to open space are left unattended to.
Featured project is the housing by the in

Can we make our buildings environmentally less costly and at the same time enjoy certain benefits such as financial savings, resilience, and self-sufficiency?
The buildings we build have large environmental footprints - starting from when they are constructed which only increases over their lifetime.
Furthermore, buildings come with an average lifespan of several decades. By being aware and implementing certain measures we can have significant impacts throughout the lifetime of the building.

Cooperative housing is co-created housing. The cooperative model can open affordable, participatory housing within urban limits for a wide range of people. In Uruguay, the Mutual Help cooperative scheme offers low-income families a chance to participate and be a part of a housing cooperative.
Under this scheme, the future residents construct their houses, offering manual labor in return for the 15% equity of the loan which they are mandated to raise. Most projects under this scheme are simple two-story structures built on the city periphery due to the unskilled nature of the members who build them. The COVIVEMA 5 housing is the first complex multi-story project within the city center to be built directly by its future residents under this scheme.
The project consists of 55 apartments built around the L-shaped plot in several stories. The high and open ground floor connects all the entrances and functions as the common space. Here, the members of the co-op meet to conduct their monthly assemblies and is open for various multipurpose events.
The biggest challenge in the project was the fact that the future residents were engaged in the planning and construction of the multi-story building. On average, each family in the cooperative contributed 30-35 hrs a week towards the construction over 3 years. A professional construction firm provided continuous education, technical assistance to the members and undertook the most difficult tasks. In this way, the overall building and the structure were built collectively, while the interiors of the individual apartments were left to the residents to finish according to individual tastes and means.

How we own one housing determines the kind of community we live in!
In commercial real estate, individual owners have exclusionary rights to their property within the building along with proportional ownership of common spaces.
In cooperative housing, the people form a cooperative society, and the society, in turn, owns the land and the building with the members of the cooperative society given the right to occupy.

Collective ownership makes it possible to provide and maintain additional facilities that are equally accessible to all members of the cooperative society. In general, the ownership structure of the cooperative society puts community welfare and consensus over fragmented ownership.
Awareness and regulatory incentives towards collective ownership structures can help to reduce the cost of setting up cooperative housing and therefore a reduction in the cost of ownership.
For example, allowing cooperatives to come up with innovative mobility solutions for a discount on the mandatory parking regulations or by providing special financial solutions for these kinds of projects can encourage more progressive housing solutions

Sharing can reduce your financial burden, build a community and save the planet. Yet the consumerist narrative, for several years, has insisted on private ownership - private cars, private houses, private what-not. In most cases, the attitude of sharing must be relearned.
While people can build a community around shared facilities and spaces. Sharing is economical because the cost of owning something is spread amongst different people. Sharing is environmentally friendly because it reduces the number of things that need to be produced.
Meaningful sharing requires strong, well-meaning communication amongst the stakeholders, active participation of the people, transparency , trust and self-management.
In her book, Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth lays out concrete steps to make our economics more humane and fit to deal with the many issues that we face today from poverty to climate change. One of the key pillars is to shift our economy away from the idea of the ‘Rational Economic Man’ - an individual acting in self-interest which has been the driving force of economy as we know it - to socially reciprocating humans.