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addition, the private (formal and informal) rental sector is better targeted to lowerincome households (compared with housing finance schemes that mainly assist
middle-income households) and therefore may assist States in complying with the
obligation to give due priority to social groups living in unfavourable conditions.
Policies and legislation should correspondingly not be designed to benefit already
advantaged social groups at the expense of others. 88
B.
Collective forms of tenure
47. Common property is a regime that allocates a package of property rights to a
group. Such rights may include ownership, management, use, exchange and access
of shared resources. 89 The term “common property regime” refers to a set of
institutions, regulations and management practices subject to collective decisionmaking. Such regimes are distinct from communal tenure, which refers more
broadly to community-based tenure systems, in which some form of collective
authority (for example, an extended family, clan or other social grouping) holds
allocation rights. 90 The present section refers to common property tenure
arrangements in urban settings that have been implemented in recent years in both
developed and developing countries.
1.
Housing cooperative systems
48. A housing cooperative is a legal association formed for the purpose of
providing housing to its members on a continuing basis. It is owned, maintained and
controlled by its members. 91 Housing cooperatives are based on collective
ownership and management and can take various forms, including tenure
cooperatives (in which owns housing development are owned and the members own
equity shares in the cooperative), rental cooperatives (in which members pay rent to
the cooperative), finance cooperatives (in which the cooperative provides loans to
members for building construction or repairs) and building cooperatives (wherein
building construction is undertaken and land is developed on behalf of members).
Some cooperatives combine two or more of those functions. 92
49. The classic cooperative model has evolved mainly in Europe, and the
“Scandinavian” cooperative model, founded in 1923, is one of the most influential.
In Sweden, cooperative housing accounted for 22 per cent of all housing in 2011. 93
__________________
88
89
90
91
92
93
13-42184
Ibid., para. 11.
C. Hess and E. Ostrom, “A framework for analysing the microbiological commons”,
International Social Science Journal, No. 58, pp. 335-349; see also A. Fuys and others,
“Securing common property regimes in a globalizing world: synthesis of 41 case studies on
common property regimes from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America” (Rome, International
Land Coalition, 2008), p. 82.
J. W. Bruce, Legal Bases for the Management of Forest Resources as Common Property (Rome,
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1999); see also Fuys and others,
Securing Common Property Regimes (see footnote 89 above).
National Confederation of Cooperatives “Cooperatives in housing: starting housing projects — a
guide for cooperatives starting a housing project” (Philippines, 2004).
Sukumar Ganapati, “Enabling housing cooperatives: policy lessons from Sweden, India and the
United States”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 34, No. 2 (2010),
pp 365 and 368.
S. Moreau and A. Pittini, Profiles of a Movement: Cooperative Housing Around the World
(CECODHAS Housing Europe, 2012).
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