The keys have been handed over to the new residents for the twenty officially protected homes in the cooperative housing project La Balma, at C/ Espronceda, 131-135, in the Poblenou neighbourhood. The building has been constructed on public land, which the Barcelona Municipal Institute for Housing (IMHAB) provided for the Sostre Cívic cooperative for a period of 75 years, with the option of extending this further.

The ceremony to hand over the keys was attended by the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the chair of Sostre Cívic, Carlos Alcoba; the chair of the Confederació de Cooperatives de Catalunya, Guillem Llorens; the director of the Delegació de Barcelona de Fiare Banca Ètica, Sònia Molina; the secretary for Housing and Social Inclusion at the Government of Catalonia, Carles Sala, and the representatives for La Balma, Sil Bel and Maria Badia.

La Balma is a five-floor building with twenty officially protected homes of three types: small flats, of 48.9 square metres; medium-sized flats, of 61 square metres, and large flats, of 75.34 square metres. Besides the homes, the building includes a series of communal spaces: a common room with a kitchen and a bathroom, a car park and a bike workshop, guest rooms, a care room, a laundry, and a communal terrace. The building is made from timber and features a geothermic system.

The group behind La Balma is heterogenous and intergenerational, with various types of families: single-parent, couples with and without children, young people and retired people. In addition, one of the homes is reserved for a particularly vulnerable household, where two young people formerly in care as minors will live.

The project started life in 2016, when the Sostre Cívic cooperative, with a promotor group of members and the team of architects from the Lacol i La Boqueria cooperative won the competition launched by the City Council to develop a cooperative housing project in Poblenou. The construction process got under way in September 2019.

Boost for co-housing

This is one of various actions by Barcelona City Council to boost the public rental housing stock as much as possible, a goal set out in the Right to Housing Plan 2016-2025.

The model makes Barcelona one of the first cities in the Spanish state with co-housing projects in progress. The goal of these projects is to guarantee access to decent and affordable housing, maintain the public ownership of land, fight speculation, provide temporal stability for users and foster the community management of buildings.

The first two pilot project were signed in 2015, for buildings which now have residents: Princesa, 49 (5 homes) and La Borda (28 homes). In 2016 this was increased to a total of 122 homes, with the first invitation to tender for municipal plots and buildings leading to four sites being awarded, including the plot for La Balma. In 2019, a second tendering process was conducted for three sites, for a total of 107 homes.

In addition, to promote this type of housing, the City Council created the Cooperative Housing Board, a new working group within the Barcelona Social Housing Council. Through the board, the City Council has signed an agreement with non-profit organisations to streamline the process to grant leaseholds for land and to boost the public housing pool. Since the agreement was signed in November, 15 sites and 3 buildings have been made available to these organisations, representing 497 homes for rent or as co-housing.