Temporary use of empty buildings to host homeless people and build resilient communities
Do you know that 10% of our cities are empty? We use vacant buildings in order to provide temporary shelters to homeless people. We host refugees, communities of women, families and people who have drug addictions/mental health problems in empty social housing buildings . While our social partners provide individual support, we offer an affordable home to settle down and create self-led communities where users can re-socialise and regain control over their lives (job, emotional stability,...).
Regional
Belgium
Until now, we tested our model in 3 municipalities in Brussels: Ixelles (1050), Evere (1140) and Molenbeek (1080). However we believe that our model can be replicated not only all over Brussels but also in all cities that have vacant social housing in Europe, in order to end homelessness. For that reason, we work in close partnership with social housing companies in order to study our model, create KPI, prove our model's efficiency as well as spread the idea throughout Brussels first, then Belgium, then Europe!
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-10-18
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Communa asbl Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Antoine Last name of representative: Dutrieu Gender: Male Nationality: Belgium Function: Board Member Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 171 Rue Gray Town: Brussels Postal code: 1050 Country: Belgium Direct Tel:+32 476 30 93 06 E-mail:antoine@communa.be Website:https://communa.be
Our goal is to end homelessness. We aim to achieve this goal by hosting homeless people, refugees and people with physical/mental health problem or addiction in empty social housing buildings or offices, that are sometimes vacant for 5 years! First we renovate the buildings in a circular way in collaboration with companies for rehabilitation through work. Then we host inhabitants and create dynamic communities where people find mutual support and stability.
Each project is built around a sociocultural space where our public can attend as well as organise activities, with 2 goals in mind:
1. Create a community
2. Develop strong connections with the neighbourhood
Individual social work is essential. However, we believe that people in need also deserve a more holistic accompaniment which is about self confidence, learning languages, daily healthy habits, citizenship, find a job, being connected to our environment (both social and natural). We find gentle sociocultural work to be the best tool to support our inhabitants in this process.
Besides our work with communities, we constantly lobby in order to raise policymakers' awareness about the fact that 10% of Brussels is empty - and that a consequent part of it, is composed of social housing. It is therefore essential that policymakers not only provide access to these spaces but also legally facilitate their use as well as fund projects like ours on a regional scale. That way, we believe that it would be possible to start a snowball effect, which would slowly but surely end up in convincing/forcing private owners to make their spaces available for a similar purpose. We believe that working in this direction, we could end homelessness.
After ending homelessness, we want to use all spaces available for social, arts, community-led projects that would make our cities a greener, more beautiful and inclusive place to live in. That way, in addition to ending homelessness, we could end our cities real-estate emptiness!
End homelessness
Social temporary use of empty buildings
Resilient communities
Inclusive and holistic approach to social work
Circular renovation works and recycling
We always say that the greenest buildings are the ones that already exist. When a building is disused, real-estate developers usually treat the issue by destroying it and rebuilding it to fit new uses. We believe that it is possible to use buildings as they are, even though they might need to be renovated to fit new uses. We turned office spaces into co-living spaces for women victim of violence. We built wooden living modules in empty hangars in order to host homeless people. We installed crafts workshops in garage spaces. We organised kung-fu classes in office lobbies or kids events spaces in factories. Our project is exemplary in the fact that we transform empty buildings into resources, rather than considering them as waste (that would created more waste when being destroyed).
When we renovate empty buildings, we have some basic principles:
1. Use the materials that we find on-site as much as possible, in order to kick off virtuous circular cycles of resources
2. Renovate with recycled materials that we find thanks to our circular economy partners
3. Use natural and local materials as much as possible
4. Create circular economy cycles within the hubs we create, by promoting partnerships between our users
5. Start food recycling dynamics in all our buildings. Since Communa is considered a charity by supermarkets, we recycle food and distribute it to people in need
6. Promote the installation of gardens and playgrounds in public spaces. Although this is not our core activity, we try to implement green and playful patches in all available spaces that we manage.
After 10 years of activity, we have gathered a community of about 10.000 people all around Brussels, who share the values of circular and social economy, as well as recycling and upcycling. We support these great initiatives by providing them affordable and participatively-governed spaces so they can develop their own exciting and cutting-edge projects.
As the name "Communa" suggest and in addition to giving access to affordable spaces to people in need, our project focuses on the gathering of an active community as well as the promotion of the "commons". Restlessly, we gather people around the deep aspiration that the making of our cities should be in the hands of citizens. This approach has been theorised by sociologist Henri Lefebvre in 1968 in his book "Le droit à la ville". The book's main idea is that the "right to the city" is a basic right which is constitutive of democracy, and that it defines cities as common goods accessible to all inhabitants.
We believe that cities should be developed in an affordable, democratic, resilient and creative way. This is quite far from the way cities are currently developed by technocrats, experts and real-estate for-profit-driven developers.
We promote the idea that it is possible for citizens to be involved in the design of their neighbourhood, since they will be the main beneficiaries of those processes. Through this positive message backed up by concrete projects of temporary use of empty buildings, we hope to inspire people to take part in the making of their city as well as policymakers to support this process. Together with both citizens and policymakers, we imagine participative methods of gathering ideas, analysing needs and turning concrete solutions into realities.
Besides the lobbying aspect of our work, we also contribute to rehabilitate beautiful buildings by renovating them, adding life to their interior and add plants to their facades. We ask artists (visual artists, architects, dancers) to be an integral part of our process. Since our spaces are meant to be multipurpose, we are used to organise arts events as well as decorate our places with art installations. Since our spaces are cheap to activate, we dedicate parts of our budgets to make them beautiful, welcoming and colourful.
Communa was created by grassroots people who wanted to live in a different way and experiment temporary use of empty buildings. Ten years later, our organisation is part of those who propose new societal models. How?
- We are radically inclusive in the sense that we welcome everybody who has a respectful behaviour, whether they have money, papers, religion, gender - or not
- We believe that it is essential to improve the system we live in. Rather than criticise policymakers, we decided to work hand in hand with them. We ended up building meaningful connections with them, hence influencing their way of making the city
- We constantly experiment new ways of making the city, in a participative way that involves citizens in the process
- Communa's governance is horizontal and we test participative governance within our own team of 40 people before proposing it to our community.
- While we use money for Communa's economy, money is not a problem for users to be welcome in our spaces. People who cannot afford a rent are proposed other ways to contribute to our economy.
- We believe that new societal models will only be implemented if they are drawn from the richness of diversity. For that reason, we promote encounters between people who wouldn't meet otherwise by organising a multiplicity of events (flea markets, halal BBQ, discokids, playdates, repair cafés, etc).
Together with a strong vision on the making of cities, joy, respect and solidarity are the values that we share with our neighbours, regardless of the area where we occupy an empty building. This mindset usually spreads quickly and leaves a trace of hope within the people that we meet. This is how change happens (and why our project is exemplary): by rising people hope to have an influence on their lives.
Communa's purpose is to provide access to spaces that are affordable and creative. Given this, people who usually use our spaces are homeless people, associations that work for the common good, refugees, artists and youngsters. In a nutshell, we allow the forgotten people to have access to space and to either stabilise (by having a shelter) or realise their dreams.
Our second aim is to create communities among our spaces' users, that remain even after the occupation has come to an end. Through ephemerous use of spaces, we create long-lasting effects within the neighbourhoods that we pass by: people know and support each other, starter projects develop and root themselves within the community, policymakers give attention to the people we host, homeless stabilise and find permanent homes as well as jobs, refugees receive their papers, etc. The impact of our action, together with our 300 space users, is a never-ending snowball that only creates more hope, solidarity and civic involvement.
Regarding the creation of homes for the homeless in social housing apartments, we already had the chance to implement this project 3 times. It all started in the municipality of Ixelles in 2018, Brussels (9 apartments, ended in 2020). After this pilot's success, we gave it another try in Evere (first phase of 16 apartments in 2020, second phase of 7 extra apartments in October 2022). Brussels' government is supporting Communa for the third of these projects in Molenbeek (16 apartments, just started).
Every time, we work with different stakeholders that depend on a few factors:
- type of apartments (1 room for singles or 2 rooms for families)
- type of neighbourhood (senior, families)
- type of social partner (different patients: drug addiction, mental health issues, victim of violence, ...)
Every time, we design the project for a singular context, together with inhabitants, partners and neighbours. The project's success depends on their engagement since our method is based on solidarity, mutual support and the creation of a strong local community. This is achieved by the implementation of horizontal governance methods that we test within our own team of workers. Stakeholders usually organise diverse activities that slowly weave truthful relations between people (film clubs, community gardens, street parties and flea markets, food recycling initiatives, senior support, kids playgrounds, ...).
We hope that when our use of the building comes to an end and our workers are gone, the community among neighbours remains and keeps insufflating positive vibes in the neighbourhood. Thanks to ephemerous use of buildings, we create long-term effects.
Our innovative approach is a melting pot of various disciplines mastered by people coming from diverse backgrounds. In our team, we have:
- Architects who create genius ideas for creative renovations
- Low tech and circular experts handy(wo)men who work on the construction site
- Lobbyists who spread our model among policymakers
- Urbanists who analyse the city, its neighourhoods and trends in order to fit real needs
- Social workers who support our most forgotten users in their daily life
- Jurists who write contracts, document the project as well as make legal proposals to frame our practice
- Admins and business models lovers who make the non-profit work
- Graphic designers who make our project colourful
Our dream team constantly experiments horizontal governance practices inspired by sociocracy or holacracy (although we created our own mix of techniques by now, after 10 years of experimenting). Every Monday, we have a team meeting where we either share news, take important decisions or evaluate our Objectives and Key Results. All decisions are taken based on consent and we keep talking until everybody agrees with the decision.
We use a professional chat in order to exchange daily information and are used to help each other on a regular basis. We organise many events, participative workshops, parties, conferences, fancy fairs that are open to the public, as well as bi-yearly team-building sessions where the whole team of 40 people goes to the countryside in order to work and have fun.
The result of this method is the creation of a strongly bonded tribe of people who, rather than work together, have the feeling to be part of changing the world together. This is probably the secret ingredient of Communa's successful story: fun, mutual inspiration and the belief that together, we can make it!
We believe that our project proposes a great example of the priority that we selected: "Prioritising the places and people that need it the most". By hosting homeless people in empty buildings, we put people that need most support and forgotten places at the centre of attention. Isn't this the perfect match? We create lucky encounters between "people without place" and "places without people".
The result is that in 2022, we provided shelter to 150+ people from different backgrounds: refugees, homeless, people with drug addictions, women victims of abuse, associations working for the common good, hopeless youngsters, etc. We hope to be able to double this number by 2023 by making more buildings available for our users.
Their benefits can be segmented into different types:
- Homeless people benefit from stability that allows them to build self-confidence and time to look for a job as well as a long-term home
- Associations that work for the common good benefit from affordable spaces, which allows them to start their project without having too much financial pressure. They also meet like-minded people and find inspiration.
- Women victims of violence benefit from a temporary shelter when they flee their home, which allows them to have time to foresee how they will manage their situation in a near future.
- Hopeless youngsters benefit from a dynamic community and affordable space, which allows them to start dreaming again about a colourful future.
- Neighbours benefit from the activities that we organise for some years in their neighbourhood, which allow them to build tight connections with each other as well as solidarity. Those will be useful tools when the next crisis strikes.
Over the last 10 years, we gathered a 10.000+ members community that both creates individual good as well as a force of proposal on how our city should be fabricated for the common good.
Ten years ago, we thought that we could influence the making of our city by using the spaces that were easily available: empty spaces. Nowadays we realise that we started a trend and that policymakers get involved in the regulation of our practice. Therefore, we believe that the use of empty spaces is an innovative practice.
However, we find that empty spaces are often used as an affordable resource that makes it easier to create profit: party places, bars, pallet wood guingettes, etc. Temporary use is cool. While we think that a city needs this type of places, we also believe that policymakers should use empty buildings in order to answer urgent needs as well as prepare for the next crisis that will arise: emergency shelters, food solutions, sustainable labs, low tech research platforms. Our approach is to create a global methodology at the scale of a city in order to
Our methodology is deeply participative. Citizens as well as our future users are at the core our approach and governance system.
When we plan to occupy an empty building, we start by studying of the neighbourhood's situation (needs, demography, geography, etc). Then we examine the building that we have access to: size, state, potential uses, open for the public or not, gardens, etc.
Once we have gathered enough information, we can develop the concept for the occupation. What kind of public are we going to host? A mix of activity and housing? Events? We always do housing (since this is the biggest need in Brussels) and usually choose to host activities that will meet the neighbours' needs.
Once the concept is clear, we renovate the building with our team of creative technicians and external providers.
Once the renovation is ready, we make a public call for commons: who wants to share our spaces? Who wants to collaborate and make this occupation a successful project? We also work together with partners from previous buildings.
Once we have gathered enough users, organise participative events for them to take ownership of the project. We are just community facilitators and support users to work together.
Once the project has been successful and the occupation is over, we give back the key to the owner.
What happens to the community? Either we open another building in the neighbourhood or we go somewhere in order to share the fun!
We recently started to buy buildings with the exact same approach. Only that this time, we can stay forever...
We know for a fact that:
1. There are homeless people in all European cities
2. There are empty buildings in all European cities
3. Everybody suffers from inflation
4. Everybody needs to be connected to people and is keen to give/get support to/from their community
We believe that those are the ingredients to replicate our projects in many more cities throughout Europe. We have already started by creating STUN (Social Temporary Use Network www.stuneurope.org), which gathers like-minded initiatives that use empty buildings to support their local communities. In the frame of Erasmus+ "BITU" and European Youth Together "Come:On!", we collected data on our methods and created a manual for social entrepreneurs to replicate our approach in their hometown. Our manual "Building X" is documented in a Trello board that works like a Gantt chart and defines each step of a temporary use project, from the first meeting with the owner to the final handover of the keys, through the works, methods of community building and meeting facilitation, administrative procedures, etc.
STUN is the perfect vehicle to gather more members across Europe, that will convince their local policymakers to support their initiatives. On that note, we often travel to share our manual as well as present our approach through conferences, debates and workshops.
We believe that the exposure that winning the NEB prize could bring us, would definitely speed up the process for more social entrepreneurs to join STUN as well as policymakers to hear about our approach. Homelessness can be overcome and we need your support to achieve this goal!
There is no doubt in the fact that homelessness is one of the most important global challenges of our times, as it is estimated by the UN that 150 millions people are homeless worldwide. So far, Communa has provided local pilot solutions to fight homelessness. We have completed 3 projects of hosting homeless people in empty social housing buildings, renovated office buildings or modular housing. Using those innovative approaches, we gave shelter to 200 people in the last 3 years.
But this is just a start. We aim for our local pilot solutions to become global proven solutions as well as for them to be implemented all over Europe. In order for this plan to be achieved, we have the following steps in mind:
1. Open more shelters in empty buildings in Brussels, in order to turn our proof of concept (POC) into the next way to go
2. Convince Brussels' policymakers that our POC works and that it needs to be implemented on a regional scale
3. With our policymakers' support, institutionalise the model so that it becomes a joint project carried on both by civil society and public authorities.
4. Spread the concept beyond Brussels, both to a national as well as European level. For this purpose, we have already created the STUN (Social Temporary Use Network, www.stuneurope.org) that will be the best vehicle for our ideas.
5. Adapt our POC so that it fits to a maximum amount of situation (urban, rural, all EU legal contexts)
6. Train associations across the EU in order for them to be able to reproduce our model in their countries.
7. End homelessness. Together, we can make it happen!
