Collaborative real estate development
Collaborative real estate development aims to create physical spaces, buildings that meet the needs of communities while being affordable, yet economically sustainable at the same time.
At ACRED, we work on both:
- Affordable and secure community-led housing projects that are based on the principles of rental housing cooperatives, and
- Community spaces and collectively managed working spaces designed to meet the needs of social organizations and cooperatives.
During the development process we build on the material and knowledge resources of communities. We use participatory methods to involve the future users of the building in the development process, so they can shape the space according to their needs from the start. We flexibly shape the legal and financial models of the projects in order to meet the needs and opportunities of both the building and the community.
Social and environmental responsibility and sustainability are core values of ACRED.
- That’s why we work with organizations that operate democratically along cooperative principles and work towards social change.
- This is why we focus on recycling and renovating existing properties and reusing building materials wherever possible.
- We therefore favor investor models that have positive social impact such as the method of community financing and we prefer to work with socially sensitive, ethical investors.
Collaborative management
In addition to new project development, we have also gained considerable experience in managing collectively owned buildings in recent years. The most important thing about collaborative management is that the organizations using the building have the opportunity to articulate their own needs in relation to the building and are also transparently informed about the financial matters of the whole building.
The collaborative management model of ACRED is based on four pillars:
- ACRED takes on the operational management of the building, while tenants can choose the extent to which they take responsibility for the operation and finances of the building depending on their capacities.
- ACRED also acts as a facilitator to foster the creation of mutually beneficial collaborations between organizations, which promotes the sustainability of collaborative management.
- ACRED prioritizes energy efficiency improvements in the buildings it manages in order to ensure the financial and environmental sustainability of these buildings.
- The buildings managed by ACRED become part of a network of projects based on similar principles, thus joining an increasingly strong solidarity economy network.