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# Research on Approaches to Collectivising Housing in Merri-bek & Darebin
Proposal summary: a survey of existing collaborative housing approaches that include on or more of the characteristics associated with treating [housing as a collective responsibility](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/CollectivingHousing), rather than a commodity. To ensure a feasible scope, this review will focus on collaborative housing approaches implemented in, or proposed for adaption to, Australian contexts. This research also aims to feed into larger collective projects and broader experimentation with prefigurative forms of housing justice.
EDIT: proposal idea parked as a large portion of the aims of this study are covered by a research project being conducted by Jasmine Palmer that includes articulating a taxonomy of alternative models to home ownership in Australia - for a taster, see [NENA presentation, 2022](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgmj_wp9EOs).
# Context
Research on collaborative approaches to housing have generated a wide range of case studies that each offer valuable lessons for those seeking to develop more just approaches to housing practices. However, more research is needed into comparative studies that focus on specific characteristics of collective housing projects.
Before attempting to implement new housing projects, it can help to articulate the specific goals of each project and how these relate to existing approaches. Therefore, to begin this research process I aim to articulate key characteristics of the housing-justice goals I want to prioritise within the collectives I contribute to (such as, collectivising housing resources across multiple locations, prioritising the use of existing housing-stock over new-builds efforts, incorporating a commoning model of participation that does not rely on financial capital, and committing to collective-initiatives that contribute to broader housing justice goals).
In this study I aim to:
1. Articulate a set of analytic characteristics that are relevant to the goal of supporting collaborative approaches to housing that contribute to prefiguring a future in which housing is a collective responsibility.
2. Identify a selection of housing projects located on Wurundjeri land currently within the Merri-bek or Darebin council service-areas.
3. Conduct a literature review of research on collaborative housing practices
4. Collect and analyse three types of textual data for each of the housing projects included in the study:
- Published case studies, reports, or analysis that include one or more of the selected housing projects
- Any unpublished documentation that the selected housing projects are willing to share (e.g., meeting minutes, initial plans, final plans, etc.,)
- Transcripts of interviews with people from Merri-bek and Darebin who are a) participants involved in one of the selected housing projects, b) interested in potential collaborative housing projects, or c) are potential impacted by additional collaborative housing projects in the area whether involved on not (e.g., the Wurundjeri Land Council).
5. Report on key characteristics of each housing approach, along with data on the relevant legal, financial, and sociopolitical contexts relevant to collaborative housing in Merri-bek and Darebin.
## Initial Housing Characteristics of Interest
Of the many different potential characteristics of collaborative housing, I am starting this research with a focus on the following:
1. Justice Oriented - the degree to which a housing approaches are oriented towards contributing to initiatives that support broader justice movements beyond any benefits gained by those directly participating.
2. Scales of Collaboration: the degree to which housing approaches contribute to multiple scales of collective practice. Examples of different scales include:
- Solo approaches: individuals contributing to collectivising resources with other individuals across different housing situations.
- Household approaches: agreements to collectivise specific resources between those living within the same house, such as in co-living practices,
- Co-located housing: agreements to collectivise specific resources across multiple co-located houses, such as in co-housing approaches.
- Housing collectives: agreements to collectives specific resources across diverse housing approaches at multiple locations.
- Housing networks: a space to share resources on how to live collaboratively within and across a wide range of housing approaches and build relationships between those that share goals aligned with the network’s stated vision (e.g., supporting housing approaches that contribute to prefiguring a future in which ensuring housing for all is a collective responsibility).
3. Reclaiming and retrofitting existing housing stock: 3.1 Reclaiming - the degree to which housing stock is transferred out of private ownership and into collective governance. 3.2 Retro-fitting - the degree to which housing approaches improve existing houses to reduce environmental impacts.
4. Participatory practices: the degree to which process for decision making at the property, collective, and/or network scale of collaboration include:
- Porous groups (practices that reduce the barriers of entry and exit from a group at each scale of participation).
- Relationship intentionality (participants have the opportunity to intentionally opt in/out of specific ways of relating with the other people at each scale of participation).
- Collective decision making processes (explicit processes through which participants contribute to collective decisions at each scale of housing practice)
- Commoning practices (remaining open to ongoing co-creation that may move beyond what current participants envision).
6. Flexibility - degree to which participation is flexible. Examples of practices that might increase flexibility include:
- Separating equity/tenure costs - allowing people to participate in the process of living within the network and/or becoming co-stewards of the network (and/or co-ownership of specific houses within the network) as distinct pathways. For instance, payments made that contribute to equity-building (e.g., mortgage repayments or payments to collective trust to buy new property) should be separate to payments (rent) made to the collective for use space within (one or more) houses and the ongoing maintenance and improvements of those houses.
- Intermediate-equity - providing pathways for people who currently ~own houses to contribute all or part of these to housing network.
- Intermediate-tenures - lowering the barriers of entry for people to participate in collaborative housing by not requiring financial ’buy-in to participate, while also not diverting resources away from effort to increase the availability of the social housing rental-cooperatives to those meeting low-income eligibility.
Having clarified the characteristics of housing projects I am most interested in, I will review existing research and conduct further analyses of the various perspectives about the degree to which these characteristics are feasible in different housing approaches. The goal of this review stage is to explore the degree to which existing housing projects naviagate barriers, challenges, and benefits in relation to each of the characteristics (with a focus on the social/legal contexts relevant to projects on Wurundjeri land within the Merri-bek and Darebin council areas).
Building on this review, an additional stage of the research project could then focus on interviewing a) participants involved in collective housing projects, and b) people in Merri-bek and Darebin interested in and/or impacted by potential collective housing projects (including Wurundjeri Elders, Council representatives, community groups, and people interested in collective housing but not currently involved in any projects, etc.,).
# Proposed Steps in this Research Process
- Planning:
- Draft a research proposal and circulate to interested parties for feedback (including initial set of characteristics I aim to focus on when analysing selected approaches to collaborative)
- Identify initial set of characteristics of housing projects relevant to research goals
- Research Design:
- Conduct a review of literature discussing collective approaches to housing
- Articulate a set of analytic categories by refining the characteristic elements of housing projects identified as relevant to housing goals.
- Define the inclusion/ exclusion criteria for selecting housing projects to study
- Write up a plan for collecting data on housing projects, including selection of grey literature and example semi-structured interview questions for a) participants involved in collective housing projects, and b) people in Merri-bek and Darebin interested in and/or impacted by potential collective housing projects.
- Clarify research questions, contextualised by literature and feedback from interested parties
- Re-write research proposal (combining and contextualising planing/design docs and integrating feedback)
- Data Collection & Management:
- Conduct and transcribe interviews
- Collect existing literature for textual data analysis (e.g., case studies of specific housing projects)
- Test database for recording key characteristics of each housing model
- Final database recording key characteristics of each housing model
- Data Analysis:
- Conduct pre-listed approaches for analysing selected housing projects in terms of analytic categories
- Record data-analysis queries and outputs
- Report findings:
- Periodically share research progress with interested parties
- Prepare draft report (for feedback from interested parties)
- Presentation of findings (e.g., as a ~1hr lecture/seminar)
- Integrate feedback and prepare final report (for wider circulation)
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Date created: 2022
Version: 2.3 (May 2023) - More detailed and up-to-date documentation of this research project available on request.
Attribution: created by [E. T. Smith](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/Bio) on unceded lands of the [Wurundjeri people](https://www.wurundjeri.com.au/).
[CC BY-NC-SA](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)
{%hackmd /E20qKLmUSK2xloQxRNbdYw %}