Self-Organization and Web3 to Combat Housing Challenges

Transcript

so let's get ready for our next speaker uh who will do a talk called self-organization and web 3 to combat housing challenges uh everyone give a huge round of applause to Barcelona's own clar ganes thank you that was really nice hello everyone good afternoon B cool so today I want to bring into the table the current housing challenges that we are facing in cities but also in rural

areas and it's something that is happening globally it's not think of Barcelona my name is CLA I'm an architect I build self- sustainable housing and also Cooperative housing organized as well like like social um cooperatives housing um apart from that I work on web3 at Dior which is a collective of web 3 developers they're building really cool stuff and um my goal is to bring the web 3 technology with uh my area of expertise so we are talking about housing today because it should be understood as the

real Universal right and as well as a public good at least a fraction of the total Market stock because honestly it's a fundamental human need because it provides shelter privacy security and also it's kind of like unlocks the well-being and also like the quality of life of individuals and also their communities and housing is also important because it unlocks the rest of the H the human rights say uh access to water hygiene educational uh professional and personal development as well as can like um enhances some of the other human rights like economic rights

cultural rights or even like social rights all right we know that but the reality is that we are contemplating how in our cities in our territories rents are getting higher and higher properties end up in in hands of um big landlords if not uh International funding and um our salaries are stagnant so I'm going to go through some numbers of Barcelona to you give you like a little bit of context but I'm sure you can relate to your own home places so in the last 10 years in

Barcelona we've seen how rents have raised more than 50% whereas like salaries only 3.4 that's a shame like the medium price for a renting apartment equals the minimum salary set by the government which means that 50% of households are in poverty risk if we take a look onto the millennial engine set generation we see that there are adults that cannot rent an apartment on their own because it's like a Financial Risk or just literally impossible and then we have like adults living sharing Apartments unwillingly add to that numbers that

there's a gender gap salary of 8% less if you are a woman or part of a minority um Collective so run your numbers we have a situation that increases the vulnerability of homes puts home stability as well at risk and then we cannot even talk about you know buying if renting it's already like an issue so what we can do some people can rely on governments or NOS public goods associations um to get you know access to emergency homes or social housing

prices like for example in the Netherlands the 30% of the total housing stock it's social pricing in Spain guess what are the numbers it's less than 2% which means that if you don't fall into the vulnerable enough category if you cannot rely on the government um what can you do so sure answer is self organization and and I'm going to walk you through on how through self-organization we can move towards a market of speculative housing

towards a self-organized self-owned and even like ecological self- sustainable Market owned by the community I'm going to give you examples that are happening here around Barcelona so that you can see real like practices and best use cases that are already taking place so if we want to you know self organize where we can start um in Barcelona there's a union of tenants Trade union of tenants that started in 2017 called syas where they organize themselves to defend the rights of tenants against abusive landlords which usually are big

corporations so every Friday they hold like assembly on the street where people people like can go there expose their problem and then get the help from the community and on the you know the road map and the exact steps to take action to defend themselves and this organization currently is a spread all over Spain actually like they have just a subsection that it's only dedicated to solve use cases from abusive use cases from Black Rock which is the largest property of homes in Spain the other thing that we can do is promote bottom up initiatives that

limitate the housing prices and again here in in Spain it started because of an initiative of syndicat delos that it's currently being approved actually like one month ago or so by the Spanish government that freezes and limites the rent prices and this is not something happening only in Barcelona we have um tenants trade unions all over the world that are fighting for defending rights and are also fighting for regulating the the housing market but let's raise the bar on self-organization we can even like create Collective Cooperative housing in the form of use of spaces and that means

the ownership it'ss at the cooperative and then users of the Cooperative can use the space by just paying um a monthly fee or even like a refundable initial payment and this is the case of the first Cooperative housing in catalunia it's called kazas and they bought a land plus a rwal home where they have like the main facilities the main kitchen where they have like this common um dinners and lunches and then they have the rest of the private spaces separately what is interesting about this project is the people of the community have to dedicate at least 20 hours per week to the project but they

can do that either by Workforce or by um working outside and providing the money they earn outside to the community another example maybe some of you know it it's Scala Fu um viik andir um they spend some time there so maybe maybe that does bring the B um this is another Cooperative where the collective bought an industrial colony and then they turn it into what they call a post capitalist eco-industrial Colony again it's right of us of spaces the way they organize themselves in terms of like ownership and governance and then um in this case like people just have to pay

like a small um amount of money that is lower than the market price and the other example I wanted to tell to you is masas venas which is another Cooperative housing but this time instead of like right of user spaces users own a part of the cooperative and the property and then in this case it is a regenerative um agriculture Cooperative that it's also a big um reference in in the permaculture uh movement here in catalunia because it's a school of permaculture as well so from these um private

initiatives that people um started because they were like self-organizing themselves the administrative um the administration so like an opportunity to create social housing with the collaboration of civil groups so I'm going to walk you through some examples as well there are happening here in Barcelona where the administration leaves some plot to the community communities and then communities organize themselves to develop the plot and kind of like create a home for themselves this is the case of uh laor which is a Cooperative housing in s uh the project started when the Civil Council leas the blood for 90 years in exchange of a small yearly fee um and

then members have their own private spaces and then they share a lot of like common um or collectivized services like solar uh panels like heating systems there's like working spaces and um even like uh a common place that it's kind of like um C can be used for whatever they want you see here downstairs and also like the design enhances social interactions which this is also like a really cool thing to to think when you are like designing this kind of like um community is and this is La balma it's kind of like follows the same pattern um

also legal organization and um efficiency in terms of like energy etc etc but the cool thing is like the city council here they Reserve like two apartments for including um vulnerable immigrants that were arriving to Barcelona so there's a way to also like provide social housing plus inclusive like communities inside the social housing and this example is a Cooperative that we are imposing in a rural area nearby here and follows the same structure as well but in this case the particularity is that the um city council wants to save one of these homes for emergency housing and they want to

be like an active member of the community and if we raise the bar on like self organization we even have like foundations of Cooperative housing and that's like a cool model let's say because it unlocks the properties outside the market and make sure that this model can stay like sustainable and long-term affordability but this model also comes with some challenges it's not all super like good news there are like challenges on ownership and governance because there's limited room for Innovation then the funding Banks doesn't recognize Collective entities so we have to go

through um ethical Banks public pools or subsidizing and then we have also challenges on you know teaching people like training people on how to self-governance and themselves there's analog coordination and the process is long so friends told me like CL I'm all in on this project but uh you know my rent expires in three months so what do I do we need to accelerate and scale this model and I believe we can do that with the web three and some technology on one hand we can customize ownership and governance and for example like isue you know like the same models

that I was explaining you like um own a share of the property or right of user spaces um for example like traditional Dream Factory just created a model where they issued token go governance power to members who are spending time contributing to their um living in Portugal but we can kind of like go further and we can create models where you know ownership is not only distributed by wealth but also by meritocracy so say that you um dedicate an amount of hours or provide some value to the community and then in exchange you can create and and receive some ownership and governance from that

and also web three can help us on you know manage treasuries because currently we are delegating the power of managing a huge amount of money to be honest because construction funds and costs are high to two three peoples and instead we can do that we can delegate that power to software smart contract that could be you know it's harder to get corrupted probably or haed in terms of votations we have the ability to customize setups we can use token voting like for example with b doni and I mention it because my mom knows how to use it and for me that's like a big Challenge and a big like great news for EMB boing new communities that not you know um Tech savy into the

space and this could help us to get like faster and acing coordination between the members of those communities in terms of funding we can create International and without intermediaries um real world asset oranization and also like transactions of course we can um create tokens that are you know um a part of like the ownership or they give you like the right to use of a space and um if there are like nfts involved of course we can use royalties so that if price of those nfts raise we can use the benefit money to kind of like reinvest it into the communities or even to expand a model and you know

replicate into to other new communities so at scale we can pull we can stake and we can use this money to build and create new homes for people or even like donated to you know um create more emergency um homes or more social housing so we've seen how through self organization practices we can defend tenant rights from abusive landlords we can also approve loss that limit runs and we can move move from ownership and Rental model towards a model of a stewardship that model gives us like permanent right of use or even we can meet Nomad needs and allocate you know

temporary right of use of the spaces and in this case we have like some communities in the web three space that are already working on that line like oaza Cavin kohir and even AK da so this is like no so like an Utopia this is happening in real time and um if I want you to kind of like go home with the takeaway from here like an idea for me it's like the vision um it to me I guess it just started when I was four and start like drawing this Giants and Collective housing but it has evolve and um imagine if you know a part of like the total housing a stock

instead of being in hands of a speculative International fans it could be be owned and run by Community we could move from a model where Community benefits serve for creating new housing it's we ensure that it's a long-term model it's efficient we can use like regenerative energies regenerative materials and we can create communities that can share spaces amenities utilities and even like you know social activities or an economy and not not stopping here because I know that housing is really powerful and it has like a great impact on people's life

so with housing communities we could even like have an impact on how we educate our children how we manage our older years how we integrate Elders in our lives also and how we consume Gods so by creating intern intergenerational communities we can do that now just show you that it's not um Utopia like again it's something that it's already happening so thank you for being here I really appreciate it and I hope uh this was interesting for you thank you Ean Barcelona for having me it was great