Maša Hawlina & Rok Ramšak, members of Zadrugator, Ljubljana. Interviewed by CoHab
CoHab is an advocacy-research group exploring the introduction of cooperative housing models in Greece since 2016. In early 2021 we made a series of online interviews with representatives of each of 5 MOBA members, which were funded by FundACTION Rethink 2020 grant as a knowledge exchange program.
MOBA is a European Cooperative Society, registered in 2020, which was initially formed in 2017 by 5 housing cooperatives of Central and South-Eastern Europe.
Its 5 members include:
- Zaduga za etično financiranje (Cooperative for Ethical financing), Zagreb
- Ko Gradi Grad (Who Builds the City), Belgrade
- Rákóczi Kollektíva, Budapest
- Sdílené domy (shared houses) Prague
- Zadrugator (Ljubljana)
Zadrugator started as an informal group of students, sociologists at most, in 2014 and was registered as a housing cooperative in 2016. In 2016 there was collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture that resulted in an exhibition that gained big media attention. This was followed by a big conference on "Housing Cooperatives. An opportunity for Slovenia" that attracted hundreds of audience and kicked off the project. Zadrugator is introduced as housing cooperative, but their strictly legal form is a cooperative and social enterprise, a combination that provides protections against speculation according to the Slovenian Law. They want to develop a rental cooperative housing project on land leased by the municipality so as to make the project more affordable. There is a good relationship with the municipality of Ljubljana and with the Public Housing Fund that provided a piece of land to Zadrugator to develop and build their pilot project. The building is going to have 32 apartments for about 110-115 people of varied income, age etc. There are also going to be clusters apartments for the elderly, for which they work in cooperation with a pensioners' group. Their goal is that the model and the tools they develop will also be applicable in other Slovenian cities with quite different housing issues and for this they have been already invited by other municipalities to develop relevant proposals.
The most challenging issues are the lack of national legislation that would allow the municipality, despite their intention, to provide the land for free or for a lower price and the lack of funding mechanisms, like ethical banking, for cooperatives. Beyond the pilot project's development, the group has been being a leading political voice for housing in Slovenia, doing a lot of advocacy work to change the law, so as to introduce favorable conditions for housing cooperatives. Unfortunately, the draft law proposal that they managed to work out was overthrown overnight with the change of government in 2018. Since then they develop their pilot, incorporating in the contract the possibility of a future change of the law, aspiring that their model will be replicated in other cities too.
