Cooperative Housing under Grant-of-Use in Barcelona: A Model for the Future of the Right to Housing?

The rise in unemployment, job insecurity, and declining household wages since 2007 have led to a drop in average household income, along with a surge in the number of individuals with low or meagre incomes. In addition, few years later a second housing bubble emerged in Barcelona: the rental bubble from 2000 to 2020. I n response to the severe housing crisis, the municipality of Barcelona declared a “Housing Emergency in 2016” and developed the “2016-2025 Barcelona Right to Housing Plan”.The Housing Plan made explicit the link between specific solutions – cooperative housing under grant-of-use – and the city’s housing question: housing cooperatives were seen as partners in the development of policies to reduce affordable housing shortage. After approximately a decade of implementing the cooperative housing under grant-of-use framework in Barcelona, it is now feasible to pinpoint its constraints and delineate the obstacles it must confront to achieve scalability and replicability.