Community real estate development
Community real estate development aims to create economically sustainable, affordable properties that meet the needs of the community. At ACRED, we work on both:
- community housing projects that provide affordability and security, based on the principles of tenant-led housing cooperatives, and
- community spaces and communal working spaces tailored to the needs of social organizations and cooperatives.
The real estate development will build on the material resources and insight of communities. We use participatory methods to involve the future users of the property in the developmental process, so that they can shape the property according to their needs from the start. The legal and financial models for development are flexible to meet the needs and opportunities of both the property and the community.
Social and environmental responsibility and sustainability are core values for ACRED.
- That’s why we work with organizations that operate democratically along cooperative principles and work towards social goals.
- This is why we focus on recycling and renovating existing properties and reusing building materials wherever possible.
- We therefore favor positive social impact investor models as a method of community financing and work with socially sensitive, ethical investors.
Community operation
In addition to real estate development, we have also gained considerable experience in operating community-owned buildings in recent years. The most important thing about community management is that the organisations using the building have the opportunity to assert their own needs in relation to the building and are also informed transparently about the finances of the whole building.
The ACRED community operation model is based on four pillars:
- ACRED takes on the operational management of the building, and tenants can decide to what extent they take responsibility for the building’s operation and finances, according to their capacity.
- ACRED also acts as a facilitator to foster mutually beneficial collaborations between organisations, which will promote sustainable community functioning.
- ACRED will prioritise energy efficiency improvements in the buildings it operates in order to ensure the financial and environmental sustainability of these buildings.
- The buildings managed by ACRED will become part of a network of projects based on similar principles, thus joining an increasingly strong solidarity economy network.