The Dutch housing market is stuck due to a shortage of affordable, public anchored housing. Cooperative housing provides a more sustainable and collective alternative but scaling up remains difficult because its societal value is not sufficiently visible and divided among governments, cooperatives and society. In this project, we develop and test, together with cooperatives, municipalities and financers, a practical methodology to assess the societal costs and benefits of cooperative housing. We make the costs of doing nothing explicit through affordability, social cohesion, sustainability, and housing security, resulting in a brochure and manual supporting better governance, decision making, and finance.
Economic transition: the costs and benefits of (in)action
What does an economy look like that focuses not on GDP growth, but on well-being, ecology and justice?
What is needed to achieve this sustainable economy and how is our current economic system holding back these changes?
We are exploring these questions from a practical perspective as part of the program: ‘Economic transition: the costs and benefits of (in)action’. Together with partners from academia, the professional sector, government and social movements, we are working to shape this transition, set it in motion and anchor it. In doing so, we actively apply knowledge in practice to bring about a transformation of our current economic system.