Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living

ENHR - PAPER

Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary Zsófia Glatz BME Budapest, Faculty of Architecture, 1111, Budapest, Hungary email: glatz.zsofia@gmail.com

Bence Komlósi MOME Budapest, Faculty of Architecture, 1111, Budapest, Hungary email: komlosi.bence@gmail.com Community Living - Közösségben Élni, Budapest, Hungary email: kozossegben.elni@gmail.com

Abstract Hungary, like many other Eastern and Southern European countries, is suffering from a serious housing crisis induced by social estrangement, an aging society, out-dated housing typologies, rigid legal structures and a lack of long-term strategies. Bottom-up initiated co-housing developments could be a potential solution, but the development process is blocked by several factors like memories about “top-down housing cooperatives” forced by the socialist regime, the lack of tradition in bottom-up developments and the lack of knowledge about cohousing. So how can one start the process?

The first step in the realisation of co-housing projects is knowledge transfer through introduction, promotion and education. What are the main points of introduction? On which platform should one promote co-housings?

How can one integrate co-housing to education? We are looking for the answers to these questions to start cohousing projects in Hungary and other non-co-housing countries.

Keywords: co-housing, Hungary, knowledge transfer, resilience, sustainability

Figure 1 - The most important steps of the co-housing knowledge transfer

ENHR Workshop: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary

Introduction The “Community Living” - knowledge transfer hub was started in 2013 with a Master of Advanced Studies in Housing research project. The research was dealing with democracy, bottom-up housing, sustainability and participatory design. After the one year research process, co-housing developments were found to be potential tools to address all the above mentioned issues. The “Community Living” initiative was started after the MAS research, which, in the first year, was more a research platform with a blog and a Facebook page than a real-life knowledge hub. After the first research year, three other members joined the initiative and started a discussion about the idea of establishing the first cohousing in Hungary. The four members started to write articles about their experiences about cohousing. Two members lived in the Centraal Wonen Houtwijk co-housing community in The Hague for a month which was an amazingly inspiring and important experience for them. The members teach at the BME, Budapest, have given lectures and radio interviews and have started the knowledge transfer. In 2014 more and more people joined the team and they are now around 15 engaged young professionals. Almost all the work is pro bono and the initiative has no legal form yet. After the first few months in 2014, they defined the common goals of “Community Living”. They, as a team, would like to introduce and promote the co-housing phenomena in Hungary. Their goal is to support communities with knowledge to realise their own co-housing projects. The process is slow but it is already visible that more and more people are interested in the topics of sharing and community. There are many young and a few elderly people who would like to live in communities, who would like to share housing tasks and who would like to do something for the common good.

Keywords - the definition of the most important terms in this research The meaning of co-housing varies from country to country. There are discussions about the phrase “co-housing” or “collaborative housing”. In different countries they call this phenomenon by different names, mostly because the lack of proper international definition. In this research, the phrase “cohousing” presents all bottom-up initiated housing developments where community-oriented thinking and sharing play a key role regardless of them being for-profit or non-profit. The size of the community is also irrelevant, it can be a small group of households with only a few members or a huge housing complex with hundreds of members - residents and workers. (Vestbro, 2010; Tummers, 2015) The phrases “co-housing-” and “non-co-housing countries” refer to the number and quality of cohousing developments can be found in each country. If there are already many communities and projects in the selected country it belongs to the “co-housing group” but if there are only a few or no communities there, the country belongs to the “non-co-housing group”. The differentiation does not bear any positive or negative values but it is necessary because the two groups need different steps in the development process. (Vestbro, 2010) Co-housing countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Non-co-housing countries are for example the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Poland.

“Knowledge transfer” - introduction, promotion and education - refers to every piece of information that is moved from co-housing to non-co-housing countries. Knowledge transfer can happen on different platforms by means of different tools such as books, articles, lectures, videos and workshops for different stakeholders like potential residents, researchers, activists, professionals and politicians and on different levels from individuals to communities, neighborhoods, municipalities and countries.

(Tummers, 2015)

Questions What are the main characteristics of the knowledge transfer to introduce, promote and realise cohousing projects in non-co-housing countries?

ENHR Workshop: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary

Who are the stakeholders, what are the potential platforms for the knowledge transfer and on which levels should they be implemented?

Can the co-housing movement be initiated from “top-down” in a non-co-housing country?

Who and how can we finance the first steps of the knowledge transfer?

The Objective, purpose and goals of the paper The goal of the paper is to share the experiences that have been gained in the last three years of the “Community Living” co-housing hub in Hungary. The hub aims to start a collaboration with other international co-housing communities and institutes to share knowledge and to widen the co-housing movement.

Hypothesis Knowledge transfer - introduction, promotion and education - is the first and most important step to start a co-housing movement in non-co-housing countries.

Methodology & data Research method The research has a combined research method as it focuses on a wide perspective of social, economic, ecological and cultural questions. There are historical elements, international cases and local, current problems which should be answered by the research. As the problem has a multidisciplinary background, the answers must also be interdisciplinary. Sustainability and resilience in housing, integrate many disciplines so they should be analysed and designed in a complex way.

The historical part of the research is mostly literature based with additional interviews. The international co-housing case studies are analysed and studied by literature based research, interviews and guided tours. “Community Living” hub project, as the main case, is based on experimental research where the data and output are studied during the process (real-life). In this case all the actions serve as research data and should be analysed and reused immediately.

Data collection - the analyses and study of co-housing communities and projects In the current stage of the co-housing development process in Hungary, the members of “Community Living” spend most of their time with data collection and information sharing on diverse platforms.

Data collection is mostly connected to running research projects, such as article writing for local magazines, lecture holding at housing conferences, the “Miskolc Avas” and the “REPLAN” housing research projects, Doctor of Liberal Arts research on “shared-flat network to Budapest” and on “social inclusion”, and the “Department Research” at the Housing Department at the BME Budapest. The resources of data collection are books and articles, interviews, guided tours in co-housing projects, short-term dwelling in co-housing communities, conferences and workshops on national and international levels.

The list of books focusing on co-housing developments is long but very focused on the suburban cohousing developments, such as the Danish Trudeslund community and the American movement started by McCamant & Durrett. In the last few years more and more articles, papers, brochures and books have appeared to analyse and promote the co-housing movement on an urban scale. These works are mostly from Europe - Germany, UK, France, Austria, Denmark and Sweden. (Pearson, 1988; McCamant and Durrett, 1988; Franck and Ahrentzen, 1989; Scotthanson and Scotthanson, 2005; Vestbro, 2010; LaFond et al, 2012; Tummers, 2015)

ENHR Workshop: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary

Many publications, including the above mentioned ones, are focusing mostly on co-housing communities and research projects. To reach a wider target group, more popular and (easily) readable books and articles are needed. In Switzerland, where the movement is well developed, one can find more and more literary work about co-housing. The Bolo’bolo from P.M. promotes the ideology from the beginning of the 1980s and Pörtners’s Mordgarten introduces the community life of a co-housing through a murder case. (P.M., 1983; Pörtner, 2013) Besides the written materials, a narrow palette of online videos and lectures is also available but their number is still not relevant, even though this form of communication has a huge potential. The Charles Durrett - 1st International Cohousing Conference - Stockholm (2010) presentation or the Amanda Crossfield (LILAC) Low Impact Living Affordable Community Project (2013) are two of the few online videos. More online videos on lectures, conferences, communities and co-housing life would be needed to up-scale the movement.

Due to the engagement of some existing co-housing communities, more and more co-housing projects organise guided tours to introduce this form of living to people with interest. They organise open events, proper guided tours, issue flyers to introduce and promote the movement. The “LILAC” community in Leeds, the “Sargfabrik” in Wien or the “Kalkbreite” in Zürich, all spend big amount of energy on knowledge transfer. They know that the success of their projects mostly depends on their popularity. In all these well promoted cases there is already a long waiting list for future residents which brings security in terms of sustainability. (LILAC, 2015; Kraftwerk1, 2015; Kalkbreite, 2015) International and national co-housing conferences such as the “Collaborative Housing and Community Resilience Seminar Series” currently running in the UK, the “Living together - co-housing ideas and realities around the world - international collaborative housing conference” organised in 2010 in Stockholm, the “Plattform” event series occasionally run in Zürich or the “Experimentsday” annually held, are some of the events which discuss the past, present and future of the co-housing movement.

These events are very important and they function well on national level but they can hardly join the whole international movement and its stakeholders. A group of international researchers, activists, professionals and politicians are organising an international platform to share knowledge and experiences. (Collaborative Housing, 2015; Vestbro, 2010; Plattform, 2015; Experimentdays, 2015) And finally the “living-in-a-co-housing” data collection form, which is one of the most important and useful ways to learn more about co-housing communities, their life, rules and advantages. Two members of “Community Living” had the possibility to spend one month in the “Centraal Wonen Houtwijk” in The Hague. This experience gives more knowledge and enthusiasm than any other data collection form. (Centraal Wonen Houtwijk, 2015) All the mentioned data collection methods show that the co-housing movement has potential and has to be up-scaled. In co-housing countries they have to be promoted further, in non-co-housing countries they have to be introduced to realise a more sustainable and resilient housing future.

Data collection - field work and real-life settings, the work of the “Community Living” The organisational structure of “Community Living” is very similar to a co-housing project. There were four initiators in the beginning and now there are around 15 members. There are three working groups dealing with the daily and weekly tasks of the “Community Living”. The Operative Working Group manages the foundation of the “Community Living” association. The association as a legal form is very important to have the possibility to apply for national and international fundings and grants. The Communication Working Group deals with internal and external communication tasks.

They create contact lists, communicate with other partners, share the daily and weekly infos on social media platforms. And the third working group deals with the branding. The Branding Working Group designs flyers, brochures and other tools to make the communication more effective.

Besides the three working groups each project has a specific team, organised by the members. The members participate in the working groups and cooperate in the projects. Everything is voluntary.

Some of the projects are financially supported or paid but the bigger part of the work is pro bono. At the current stage, the group has 15 members. 14 architects and one baker. This professional homogeneity sets some limits for the group but the goal is to have a much more diverse professional structure. With other professionals the daily work within the group and also with the projects could be

ENHR Workshop: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary

more complex and effective. Co-housing communities often mention the advantages of diversity in the group, professionals from diverse disciplines give adequate answers to the questions raised.

The projects of the “Community Living” vary from small scale articles to big research projects. The goal of the group is to be active on different platforms and levels to reach as many stakeholders as possible. Articles and papers such as the Kooperatív lakozás - avagy egy közösségi lakásmodell by Komlósi and Theisler (2014), the Housing Norms vs. Real Needs - Bottom-Up Cohousing by Glatz and Komlósi (2015), the Közösségben Élni - kóperatívok és szövetkezések by Glatz and Komlósi (2014), the Közösségi együttlakás: olcsóbb is, jobb is, bár nem egyszerű megvalósítani an interview with Komlósi (2014), the Közösségi lakóházak Hollandiában - Centraal Wonen Houtwijk, Hága by K. Theisler (2014) and the Genossenschaft! Nein danke! an interview with Komlósi (2014) were published in various Hungarian and international magazines and on different online platforms. These projects give a good opportunity to analyse and study different cases and communities from different countries.

Lectures and radio interviews are another way to widen the promotion. The different lectures and radio programs have very different audience which help to reach a wide range of people. The Közösségben Élni lecture and discussion hold by Koncz and K. Theisler (2014) was organised by the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre to introduce co-housing developments not only to architects. The Cohousing - közösségi- és kooperatív lakozás by Komlósi (2014) and the Cohousing-ok téri elrendezései by Glatz (2014) lectures were both held at the Housing Department of the BME Budapest. The last lecture series were held by several members of the group at the Department of Economic and Environmental Psychology - Eötvös Loránd University. Radio interviews in the FUGA Radio and in the Tilos Radio also reached a diverse group of audience. The development process of the lectures and publications show that more and more people with different interest and professional background are interested in the co-housing movement. The knowledge transfer started to spread infos not only to architects but also to economists, environmental psychologists and sociologists. (FUGA, 2014; Tilos, 2014) Simulation and real-life research projects are important elements in the development process. The “REPLAN” research project was a 10-month-long housing research in Budapest. Two of the six groups dealt with the co-housing topic. The team of the “city center” re-designed a typical multifamily-house of the inner city, creating shared-flat communities in the existing structure. The group of the “suburban area” of Budapest invited fictive residents to participate in a simulation of the initiation of a co-housing community. There were three workshops where the organisers asked the participants to define the common goals and needs of the community. They also dealt with the decision making process and with architecture design. The final results were presented at a public event and were published in the REPLAN - Innovative Solutions to Urban Housing Challenges research book. (REPLAN, 2015) The second real-life research project unfortunately failed in Miskolc, the third biggest city in Hungary. The “Community Living” team tried to support local associations which organised events to form communities in local neighborhoods. (Koncz et al, 2014) The third and still running project is a real-life shared-flat initiative to introduce, promote and initiate a sharedflat network in Budapest. This project called “Grand Home Budapest” joins people with similar interest to live together and to share housing costs, responsibilities and tasks. The project is in its first year but has already gathered a lot of information and knowledge. The first workshops, one for an interdisciplinary professional group and one for potential residents, were both successful. (Grand Home Budapest, 2015)

ENHR Workshop: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary

Figure 2 - The first workshop for the fictive residents in the suburban project of the “REPLAN” research photo by Community Living

Four members of the “Community Living” run the subject “Department Research” at the Housing Department at the BME Budapest. The students learn about research methods and about co-housing developments. The topic always focuses on co-housing projects and communities. In the last two years, eleven researches and twenty students were involved. These small scale studies, writings, publications and events help a lot to share knowledge. It is also very important to mention that almost every student has joined the “Community Living”, as they realised the many advantages of this housing form during the semester. Students have to analyse different segments of the Hungarian housing situation and have to find international co-housing communities which deal with similar issues during the academic half year. They have to present their research to guest professionals two times per semester, on a final public presentation they have to explain their whole work to a wider audience. The “Community Living” project has two advantages: on one hand the students get an important overview about alternative housing forms and the basics of housing research and on the other hand the invited guests and the public audience can be injected with the co-housing phenomena.

(RESearch, 2015)

ENHR Workshop: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Co-Housing Knowledge Transfer for a Sustainable and Resilient Housing Future - the Community Living Hub in Hungary

Figure 3 -The final public presentation of the “Department Research” photo by Annamária Babos

Discussion Findings For a comprehensive knowledge transfer about co-housing developments, many different stakeholders from diverse levels and platforms have to be involved. Potential residents, activists, researchers, professionals, local and national politicians are the stakeholders who have to participate in the knowledge transfer process on individual, community, neighborhood, municipality, national and international level. The platforms and tools of communication and knowledge transfer vary from articles, books, online and offline platforms, lectures, workshops and meetings to conferences.

The mid level (somewhere between community and municipality) process is getting stronger but there are not enough developments on the individual and international levels in Hungary. The very first projects will be real life “pilot projects”.

Further research questions How can co-housing developments be started without top-down support in terms of legal- and financial frameworks?

Can the first co-housing project be realised within the existing legal- and financial system?

Who can finance the knowledge transfer and in what ways?

Conclusion Hungary, like many other European countries, is suffering from a serious housing crisis. Bottom-up initiated co-housing developments could be a potential solution, but the development process is blocked by several factors. The first step in the realisation of co-housing projects is knowledge transfer through introduction, promotion and education. This paper presents the importance of knowledge transfer in the co-housing movement through the work of the Hungarian “Community Living” knowledge hub. The work and projects of the knowledge hub show that promotion can take place on different platforms, through diverse tools and can be implemented on different levels. Since Eastern Europe has a similar historic background to Hungary, the case of the Hungarian co-housing movement can serve as Best Practice to other non-co-housing countries.

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