Self-organised and civil society participation in housing provision

Abstract

After 40 years of relative decline, self-organised and civil society participation in housing has ostensibly been resurgent since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Drawing on evidence from ten countries this Special Issue explores the socio-economic and policy drivers of community land trusts, co-operatives, self-help housing and co-housing within different societal contexts using a variety of analytical frameworks. A key finding is that the GFC alone is not a satisfactory explanation for the resurgence. Social origins and contextual drivers are often deeper, more enduring and vary between national contexts. The term ‘collaborative housing’ is now gaining ground as a generic descriptor–shifting the focus from self-organisation to partnerships with varying degrees of community leadership and benefit. This Special Issue provides a platform for future research at the micro-level of organisations, the meso-level of stakeholder co-production, and the macro-level of welfare regimes. It identifies tools to map co-production relationships between the state, market and civil society stakeholders, to track interventions throughout the policy cycle, and to evaluate values and outcomes throughout organisational lifecycles. Knowledge gaps and limitations that future research should address include the limited evidence on the profile of participants and beneficiaries. A more critically-engaged stance is needed to consider consequences of institutionalisation and scaling-up on social outcomes. Finally, we need to learn from the experience of the Global South where self-provided housing is more dominant.