Public-community cooperation and possibilities of changes in living: reflections from the Cohabita Rivas Program (Rivas Vaciamadrid)

Abstract

Faced with the crisis of access to housing, decommoditized community initiatives are being launched, opening up new paths vis-à-vis public administrations and beginning to show some favorable results. In recent years, housing users’ cooperatives have experienced a remarkable growth in Spain and have made progress in questioning different public bodies. On the other hand, the hegemonic model of public care for the dependency of the elderly is increasingly being questioned, given the loss of autonomy implied by their transfer to geriatric residences. In this context, senior housing users’ cooperatives burst onto the scene of cooperative production as actors with their own particular demands, which are driving qualitative changes in housing and care management.

From the characterization of the organizational, legal, physical, economic and social dimensions of the Cohabita Rivas Program –which takes its central elements from the model, cooperative ownership and cession of use– possibilities of public-community alliances are discussed to transform the model of care for the elderly from the local scale and in adverse contexts of multilevel territorial governance. An attempt is made to show a socially innovative proposal, the advantages of the institutional impulse to this model and the limitations it faces.