ThoseHousing in Geneva
Should we further support housing cooperatives?
On September 28, we will vote on an initiative aimed at increasing the number of housing cooperatives in the canton. An exciting debate on property and land use.
An example of a cooperative in Geneva, that of Soubeyran, inaugurated in 2021. © Steeve Iuncker-Gomez
© Steeve Iuncker-Gomez
- The initiative proposes to double the number of cooperative housing.
- Cooperatives offer rents up to 40% cheaper than the market.
- Opponents fear in particular expropriations or pre -empties of land.
- Supporters claim that the initiative leaves the choice of instruments to the Council of State.
The vote of September 28 on the initiative “For + cooperative housing” Lays the debate of the distribution and the property of the soil in Geneva.
Launched by the Grouping of Geneva housing cooperatives, l’initiative Requests that the State doubles the number of cooperative housing compared to today, ensuring that “that a base of 10% of the entire housing fleet be held by non -profit housing cooperatives”. The canton and the municipalities are responsible for acquiring the necessary plots by 2030, a purely indicative period, ensure the initiators, but which requires, if the objective is not achieved, that the State presents an action plan.
Long debates in parliament
Despite rather conciliatory positions at the start, the text was finally rejected on the Grand Council. For what? The deadline imposed to build the number of accommodation proposed seemed unrealistic to its majority of the right. Likewise, the exercise of the right of pre -emptive or expropriation to obtain the land gave it hives.
The idea of a counter-project ignoring this point, but generally taking up the objectives of the initiative, was defended by the Center and the MCG, but Finally the solution exploded in full flight In February 2025, leading to the rejection of the initiative. However, certain general assemblies held to decide on the watchwords then turned on board. Result of the races: if the PLR and the UDC recommend the rejection of the initiative, the center and the MCG support it, such as the left and the Council of State.
The arguments of for
For supporters of the text, “cooperatives make it possible to put housing on the market offering rents up to 40% lower than standard prices with rents that evolve very little,” said socialist deputy Caroline Marti, also secretary general of the group of housing cooperatives.
How is it possible? By the absence of performance research. Suddenly, rents are used only to cover construction, management and maintenance costs. “The cooperative model offers another important advantage,” says the deputy. It promotes environmental or qualitative preservation objectives by providing common spaces, collective management, associative activities or local trade. ”
In short, the cooperative solution would resolve the contradiction between the need for housing and the preservation of the environment.
A trap text?
But at what price? Christophe Aumeunier, secretary general of the Geneva Immobilière Chamber, explains: “The room is favorable to the diversity of housing and has nothing against cooperatives. But the text has a big defect: it plans to use the pre -emptive and expropriation mechanisms provided for by the general housing law. However, the law obliges, when it is used, to then build lups, that is to say the category of housing with the lowest rents, intended for the most modest income. ”
Another reproach is the binding rules of occupation of the LUP “will make transmissions to heirs impossible. In addition, this particular type of cooperative will compete with the perfectly experienced mechanism of public law foundations, which can put even less expensive housing on the market. ”
UDC: no to constraint
MP Caroline Marti puts reproaches into perspectives: “The initiative does not make expropriations and pre -empties compulsory, she simply reminds the Council of State that these instruments exist in law. To him to use them or not. ” The socialist also believes that cooperatives do not compete with public foundations: “They only build HBM, but this is not the case for cooperatives that can put other types of housing on the market, such as HM, HLM or free rent.” Questioned on the transmission of goods, Caroline Marti stresses that the rules are more flexible than for lup leases …
At the UDC, we do not believe a word of it: “It is not by constraint, but by the simplification of procedures, the release of the land market and respect for private property that we can really respond to the housing crisis”, assures the party.
Cooperatives in Geneva
Co-operatework together. The word would have been forged in the first half of the XIXe century by Robert Owen. LE movement is characterized by “the desire to produce goods or services of collective utility, by granting the primacy to humans on capital, and by choosing a limited lucrativity”.
In Geneva, the construction of cooperative housing jumped after the Second World War. In his report on the initiativethe Council of State explains that “almost half of the housing of this type (approximately 5,500 units) were built between the years 1945 and 1975; This production then experienced a “drop in diet” in the 1970s and 1980s (around 1,400 units built in ten years); A resumption was started in the 1990s (around 1350 cooperative housing units over ten years), and more particularly from the 2000s with the implementation in 2007 of the law for the construction of housing and the realization of around 3,700 units. ”
The rise in power resulted in the organizational level also by the creation in 1998 of the group of Geneva housing cooperatives, then that of the Foundation for the Promotion of Bon Marché Housing and Cooperative Housing in 2001. Nearly 12,000 dwellings which are currently in the hands of 128 cooperatives.
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