Housing Cooperatives in Germany

Summer party in the coutyard of a cooperatve estate, Berliner Spar- und Bauverein, around 1900

The vision of a self-determined life in a community free from property speculation and rent extortion has persisted in Germany since the foundation of the first housing cooperatives in the late 19th century.

In the beginning often attacked or at best ridiculed, this vision has become a housing market reality. Many of the basic cooperative ideas, such as security of tenure or rent control, have become established in law. But that it was the housing cooperatives whose campaigns initiated these legal principles is no longer universally known or recognised.

Today there are around 2,000 German housing cooperatives, more than 90 of them in Berlin. Together with the housing associations - which are generally larger - they belong to the non-profit sector, which has traditionally played a key role in the German housing market. While housing associations were founded in the 20th century as social institutions within the welfare state, housing cooperatives have always been self-help organisations. Their principal aim is to support their members, to build homes for them and to improve their living conditions. Cooperatives are generally small enterprises: 60% of all German housing coops own less than 2,500 dwellings. Nevertheless, in Berlin, with about 185,000 cooperative dwellings, they hold a market share of about 10%.

In the context of current demographic change and evolving housing markets in Germany, the idea of living in a cooperative remains current. Cooperative ideas are experiencing a renaissance, thanks to their unique characteristics.
In no other type of organisation does one find the social utopia of living in a community closely combined with the pragmatism of day-to-day economic life. Housing cooperatives differ from other housing enterprises in their dual character as an economic as well as a self-help institution. A cooperative is not just about planning and building, it is also about participation of and appropriation by the members.

Meeting in the garden of a housing project for women of different ages in Berlin-Britz, "BBWo 1892"