CoHab Athens  is an open group, an exchange platform for urban researchers, activists and anyone interested in claiming housing as a right and exploring alternative housing models through self-management and collective ownership. It was created as a research group in 2016, driven by the need of its members not only to understand and describe the crisis and the developments in the housing sector which has been taking place in Greece the past few years, but also to seek effective antidotes to it. Drawing inspiration from successful cooperative housing models that have been implemented abroad, CoHab Athens is holding an ongoing participatory design workshop since November 2017 in order to diagnose local needs related to housing, as well as to explore the possibilities for the creation of the first project of cooperative housing/collective ownership in Athens. Aiming to the decommodification of urban land and active manifestation of the right to the city we seek and  promote synergies  with existing paradigms that have successfully  been implemented and with similarly oriented ongoing projects.

CoHab Athens, in the context of Greek reality, aims to:
– explore the existing legal framework and propose appropriate regulatory amendments
– cultivate the imaginary of collective property and familiarize  people in Athens with the principles and practices of cohousing
–  work out realistic scenarios and  prototypes of  alternative ownership of urban land and test them through pilot case studies in the center of Athens.
– create physical and online tools to  promote and support the idea
– support and empower local groups that are interested to implement a cohousing project
– engage in international networks of cooperation and knowledge sharing