Communa
= commons-based temporary housing project ('legal squatting'), in Brussels, Belgium
URL = http://www.communa.be
Description
Maxine Zait:
"COMMUNA is a non-profit organization (ASBL) founded by students with the goal of repurposing Brussels' many empty or underused buildings. The non-profit combines housing with artistic, cultural, and intellectual aspects by organizing numerous activities in the spaces it occupies (debates, conferences, concerts, exhibitions, communal dinners, etc.) to breathe new life into these spaces and make them beneficial for everyone.
HISTORY
Driven by five young dreamers in search of meaning, Communa was created in 2013 with the mission of facilitating community living in temporarily vacant buildings. The name references the "urban kibbutz" movement, the "comuna okupas," and more broadly, the Anglo-Saxon concept of "Commons." The first residential community was established in Ixelles, in a massive 8,000 m² building. The enthusiasm generated by this project marked the beginning of an urban nomadism adventure, with a group that endures and expands. More and more formerly deserted buildings are being reactivated by Communa. These shared, hybrid places form a network that extends all over Brussels: Uccle, St-Josse, Schaerbeek, Molenbeek, Brussels-City, Ixelles, Forest…
THE VISION
The commons implemented by Communa in empty buildings will serve as a breeding ground for the emergence of a transition towards a mixed, decarbonized, and solidarity-driven city. The deployment of temporary uses will prefigure the final developments, and Communa will evolve to anchor its practices over time. This network of alternatives will become permanent within the urban fabric so that ephemeral practices can influence the city and become anchored in sustainability. The Communa ecosystem unlocks new possibilities for us to collectively build the city.
THE CREW
Communa brings together a large Tribe, composed of members and volunteers, without whom the project would never have progressed beyond a distant dream. The tactical level of the structure and the day-to-day management of the ecosystem are handled by a solid team with diverse profiles.
In French
COMMUNA est une ASBL (organisation sans but lucratif) fondée par des étudiants dans le but de réaffecter les nombreux bâtiments vides ou inoccupés de Bruxelles. L'ASBL combine l'aspect logement et l'aspect artistique, culturel et intellectuel en organisant de nombreuses activités dans les lieux qu'elle occupe (débats, conférences, concerts, expos, tables d’hôtes, ...) pour redonner un souffle nouveau à ces espaces, et en faire profiter tout le monde.
L'HISTORIQUE
Sous l’impulsion de cinq jeunes rêveurs en quête de sens, Communa est créée en 2013 et se donne pour mission de faciliter la vie en communauté dans des bâtiments temporairement inoccupés. Le nom fait référence au mouvement des « kibboutz urbains », aux « comuna okupas » et plus globalement au concept anglo-saxon de « Commons ». La première communauté d’habitant.e.s s’implante à Ixelles, dans un mastodonte de 8.000 m2. L’enthousiasme que génère ce projet marque le début d’une aventure de nomadisme urbain, avec un groupe qui perdure et s’élargit. De plus en plus d’édifices autrefois désertés sont réactivés par Communa. Ces lieux hybrides partagés forment un réseau qui s’étend un peu partout à Bruxelles : Uccle, St-Josse, Schaerbeek, Molenbeek, Bruxelles-Ville, Ixelles, Forest…
LA VISION
Les communs implémentés par Communa dans les bâtiments vides serviront de terreau pour l’éclosion d’une transition vers une ville mixte, décarbonisée et solidaire. Le déploiement d’usages transitoires préfigurera les aménagements définitifs et Communa évoluera pour enraciner ses pratiques dans le temps. Ce réseau d’alternatives se pérennisera dans le tissu urbain pour que les pratiques éphémères influencent la cité et s’ancrent dans le durable. Lécosystème Communa libère de nouveaux possibles, pour qu’ensemble nous fassions ville.
L'ÉQUIPAGE
Communa rassemble une grande Tribu, composée de membres et de bénévoles, sans qui le projet n’aurait jamais dépassé le stade de rêve lointain. Le niveau tactique de la structure et la gestion courante de l’écosystème sont pris par une solide équipe aux profils variés."
Governance
Communa as a Commons?
(source: Encommuns interview)
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: Coming back to Communa, could you talk about the different roles within your staff and tell us more about the association’s economic model?
Maxime Zaït: In terms of staff, we have all sorts of roles. Builders, technicians, graphic designers, translators, architects, lawyers, accountants—basically all the professions needed to run the organization. As for the economic model, it’s fairly simple. Some sites are entirely publicly funded: this is everything related to social issues, and that should not change. We absolutely do not want to finance these through other mechanisms, because they are effectively delegated public services. We are doing the work the State should be doing but is unable to do for many reasons, including lack of agility. It would be great if the State were more agile, but under current conditions, I think it’s a good thing that actors like us are taking this on. So all the housing sites I mentioned are 100% financed by public authorities, through different funding streams. For Ukrainians, funding comes from the region. For homeless people, funds come from the community.
Third-place models are harder to fund through subsidies, because “third places” do not really exist as a recognized institutional category in Belgium. So we patch together public funding from here and there wherever we can. Sometimes we get a bit of philanthropic support as well. In principle, the idea at Communa is that all occupants pay something for using the space. We work with suggested “conscious pricing.” We say: “For this to work, you should pay X; if you pay Y, that’s better; and if you pay Z, we’re in trouble.” Sometimes, amounts are constrained by the terms of our agreements. Communa’s economic model therefore combines: one part in subsidies, one part in own resources via user contributions, and a final part in consulting, expertise, or advisory services. Broadly speaking, we support the implementation of projects similar to those we have piloted ourselves, ranging from territorial studies to technical support and governance assistance.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: There is an intermediary dimension in what you do, but you don’t take commissions in connection with this role as intermediary, do you?
Maxime Zaït: I don’t know if “intermediary” is the right word. No money flows between occupants and owners. Money flows between occupants and us. We handle bringing buildings up to standard, paying utilities—unless the occupants pay them directly, which depends on the site—and coordinating the site. That is the service we provide. Since we are a non-profit, this revenue is used exclusively to fund the association so it can keep providing this service, ideally to more and more people. Each site has its own economic model, and each occupant has their own business model. So if I go back to the example of a third place, you have volunteer-run associations that need an office and arrange between themselves to put coins in the pot; a sports association funded by the municipality; others selling goods or services; artists selling their work. Each has its own model and co-finances site coordination by paying very different contributions depending on its means.
One last interesting element is Communa’s governance. Legally, we are a non-profit association, but I’d say we function a bit like what you call a SCOP in France. We really are a producers’ cooperative in the sense that all employees of the association—just under fifty people—become full members after six months’ seniority. These employees elect a board of directors. The hourly wage is the same for all 45 staff members, with one exception. Two years ago, we struggled to recruit for the administrative and financial director positions because these jobs are in a very tight labor market. We therefore agreed to make this exception, and it was at that point that we realized that strict wage equality no longer worked and would hold back the sustainability of what we were doing. We therefore voted to adopt a salary scale based on seniority and responsibility. People place themselves on this scale, and then a randomly drawn committee validates or rejects these requests. It’s a somewhat complex system, inspired by MakeSense, which we are now implementing.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: And have you capped the wage differentials?
Maxime Zaït: The scale runs from 1 to 2. In terms of governance, we operate through circles. We have what you might call departments: development, communication, technical, financial administration, and so on. Our functioning is based on sociocracy. Each circle is linked to a “first link,” a coordinator for that circle. Then there is a “super circle” that we call the “roundabout circle,” which brings together all the first links from the different circles. Major decisions are taken in the general assembly, which meets once a year; it approves the budget, strategy, and statutes, which are prepared by the board. Everything else is decided on the ground, within circles or within projects and sites. Coordination between circles is provided by the “roundabout circle.” Coordinators are challenged and re-elected every year, or even more often if necessary, through the principle of “election without candidates.” We use many sociocracy or holacracy tools, adapted to our context. I think governance is a huge issue for commons and not one we talk about enough. In the circles I move in, where people are interested in commons, we sometimes give the impression that everything happens naturally or that discussion is enough. In reality, beyond general democratic principles, there is a whole democratic engineering, an art of practicing democracy. It does not just happen by itself. We also have to meet an efficiency imperative.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: Where do your inspirations for these democratic tools come from?
Maxime Zaït: We draw from many sources. In Belgium, there are groups like Collectiva and the Université du Nous, which also exists in France. There are also more business-oriented approaches, such as holacracy, and Frédéric Laloux’s book “Reinventing Organizations.” Their tools are fantastic, but they make no distinction between a non-profit and a public limited company. If you put shared governance at the service of capital growth, that’s not at all the same thing… At the same time, from a certain perspective, it doesn’t matter. Governance tools are interesting in themselves, and we’ve tried to identify best practices. When people running companies aimed at capital accumulation use shared governance tools, I’m interested because these tools have passed through the filter of efficiency. These are mechanisms that work."
Interview
From the magazine EnCommuns:
* [[Maxine Zait on the History and Projects of Communa, Commons-Based Temporary Housing Project in Brussels, Belgiumm:
Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: Hello Maxime. Could you start by introducing yourself?
Maxime Zaït: My name is Maxime Zaït, I’m thirty-two, I’m from Brussels, and I studied law in Brussels. Today, I spend half my time working as an employee of the non-profit association Communa (ASBL). The other half, I’m at the VUB, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. I was involved in a research project that is now ending, DOMINIA, on urban commons and their relationships with institutions. I also co-founded COBHA, the Brussels Housing Cooperative, whose goal is to bring the Swiss model of housing cooperatives to Brussels.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: Could you go back to the creation of the Communa project and explain how it evolved over time?
Maxime Zaït: When I was eighteen, I lived in a kibbutz with Dimitri, who is also a co-founder of Communa. I lived there for nearly a year and found it amazing to live in an applied, radical socialist model, even though it was no longer what it had been in the 1950s. When we came back to Brussels, we thought it would be great to live in a similar place, but without the national or religious component, because I’m not interested in those aspects. This was in 2013. We were nineteen, five friends looking for a shared apartment. Rents had already risen a lot; we couldn’t find anything. Walking down the street, we saw all these empty buildings. By chance, we met squatters at 123 rue Royale, a legendary squat in Brussels. They showed us around and explained that they had a precarious and temporary occupation contract. One of them told us: “We originally broke down the door. The building belongs to the Walloon region, and they came to try to kick us out. We explained that by being here we were actually saving them money, because they don’t pay vacancy taxes, we secure the property, we pay the insurance, we take care of minor maintenance. In fact, it makes them money to have us here!” We thought: “This is brilliant, and we could carry this idea in a more presentable form.”
So we created an associative structure: the non-profit Communa. We made a brochure, organized a public conference, and gained the support of a few institutional actors. Then, for a year, we mapped Brussels. We walked the streets with paper maps, spotting empty buildings. We took photos and contacted the owners, especially public institutions, one by one, proposing that they give us sites. Everyone said: “Your project is great, but no! Who are you? What guarantees do we have that you’ll give us back the building at the end? It’s too dangerous, too risky.” Public authorities often say they want to promote social innovation, but they don’t want to take risks. Then one day, we contacted a property developer who had just bought a building near the university, a Flemish guy, who said: “This is amazing, I have squatters in one of my offices in Ghent. It’s going really well, they’re lovely. And now you’re asking for permission? Of course, go ahead!”
We therefore took over an 8,000 m² office tower, the day before our exams. At first, we just put in tables to study. Then we held an opening party and posted on various groups to invite people to join us. We were a community of twelve people living on one floor. On the other floors, we opened artist studios and a skatepark. A collective of undocumented migrants came and opened a neighborhood restaurant. Flemish musicians came every week for jam sessions. We organized three-day festivals! It lasted eight months, and at the end, we asked the owner to write us a letter of recommendation stating that Communa was professional and that vacant buildings should be made available to us. We left the building on time, he carried out his renovation works, and we left with his letter in hand.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: From there, how did you move from a student project to something more professional?
Maxime Zaït: We approached other owners with something that was better structured. We followed up with a second project in a villa in Uccle. More and more people came to us saying: “I’d like to live in this kind of place too. Can you help me?” And owners began to offer us buildings. When we finished our studies, we realized there was a huge unmet need that no one was addressing, except commercial companies pursuing a purely profit-driven logic, which raises the question of “uberization” or the enclosure of derelict spaces. We therefore decided to professionalize, to pay ourselves salaries so we could open more buildings. We experimented a lot with different models, especially in terms of governance. Gradually, we moved from a model where decisions were made in general assemblies—very radical, but also radically ineffective—to something much more decentralized. From 2016–2017 onward, we trained ourselves and became much more professional. Today, we have a staff of 45 employees and manage around ten sites in Brussels. Around 300 people are housed on the different sites, many of them refugees or formerly homeless people, as well as about a hundred project leaders from the social and solidarity economy or local neighborhood actors.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: What are the respective shares of the housing dimension and the other activities within Communa? How do living spaces and activity spaces fit together?
Maxime Zaït: The basic idea is to foster mixed uses. What seems to work, and that we think is interesting, is mixing audiences. We want shared resources for very different people, places where people who think differently and come from different backgrounds can meet. We want to show that living together works very well. So we mix things.
More concretely, if we want to typologize our projects, I’d say there are three main types. First, what we can call “third places”—even though I’ve never been particularly fond of the term. These are multi-use spaces that primarily serve local residents. At the moment, for example, we have a site in Forest where fifteen women—women living on the streets, exiled women—live in shared housing with their children. There are also two sports spaces with boxing and all kinds of activities, a youth center, shared offices, associations, a rap studio, and workspaces for craftspeople.
The second type of site is vacant social housing that we rehabilitate to accommodate homeless people. The logic is always that we launch an experiment and, if it works, we replicate it and try to scale it up. In this respect, we function like a laboratory for public policies. Ten percent of social housing units are structurally vacant, because when an entire building of fifteen apartments needs renovation, there’s an obligation to rehouse all the families. But it is not easy to rehouse fifteen families when social housing is saturated. So they gradually move out two or three families and empty the building one step at a time. For social housing organizations, managing this vacancy generates many problems: it costs money and is risky. And the fact that these spaces remain empty is a scandal given the unmet housing needs. What we propose is that as soon as an apartment is vacated, we take it over, renovate it with social-integration construction companies we work with regularly, and house homeless people there, who are supported by social work professionals—which we are not. What we add are socio-community spaces, where residents are involved again in managing the site. Depending on their vulnerability, they are more or less involved. There are assemblies, collective spaces, and they participate in the life of the site. We often organize meals that people prepare with us. We also have a social laundry, where people can come together to do their washing. These are the kinds of small things we try to put at the heart of our schemes. They also foster good integration into the neighborhood, because when you say that 1,500 homeless people are going to arrive, half of them foreigners, there can be negative reactions. But when people meet each other, things go well.
The third type of site, which we launched two years ago, involves hosting exiled people in semi-autonomous reception centers. When the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out, it was widely believed there would be a massive influx of Ukrainians into Belgium. This never really materialized, even if arrivals did increase. The regional authorities set up a reception scheme for these people, and the person in charge of the scheme wanted semi-autonomous systems, since resources were not unlimited. Moreover, these Ukrainian exiles did not have very complex migration trajectories; they were not coming straight from the street. They were literally people who got into their cars, drove for two days, and arrived. So we thought there was no point establishing centers where everything is done for them; self-management was the most appropriate approach. We offered to take charge of some of these centers, because the “classic” actors, like the Red Cross, are not very good at this type of model. They came to us saying: “We run our standard model; there’s a Sodexo lunch tray at midday, but people are depressed in these centers.” We replied that in the sites we manage, residents cook their own meals and set up their own activities, and we are simply there to facilitate the process. Today, we house about 200 people in this third type of site.
If we come back to the question of the commons, what we actually look at to assess the success of a commons are questions of management quality. A good indicator is: is it clean? Is there toilet paper in the bathrooms? Sometimes, in research, it is frowned upon to speak in such trivial terms, but things have to work very concretely. The level of cleanliness and organization in these centers is impressive. Each floor has its own assemblies, with its own cleaning shifts; you could eat off the floor!
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: And are you the ones who sign the leases?
Maxime Zaït: We operate with a cascading system. Essentially, Communa signs occupation contracts—whose exact terms may vary—that make us the managers of the infrastructure.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: You also play the role of assembler, in the sense that you determine the mix of users, right?
Maxime Zaït: Essentially, an owner signs an agreement with us and delegates the site to us, and then we, in turn, allocate spaces to occupants through sub-agreements. In practice, we act as the interface: occupants have no relationship with the owner, and the owner has no relationship with the occupants. We are the site managers. We’re a kind of “syndic of the commons,” like a condominium manager for commons.
To take the example of third places, our goal is for the site to be rooted in the neighborhood. At the beginning, we offer tours of the empty site for local residents, and we organize festive activities such as barbecues, because people do not usually show up to meetings. We often put posters on the walls in each room, and people say: “I’d like this” or “I’d like that.” Then we contact the local authorities to make sure that as many local actors as possible hear about the new site.
We also often do something else: instead of issuing calls for projects, we issue calls for commons. This means we try to avoid putting people in competition for the allocation of rooms by telling them: the more you’re willing to share your space, the higher your chances of being selected. From the outset, we seek to foster cooperation between actors, so that we can keep as many occupants as possible. We are the site managers, so we have responsibilities: we must comply with the law, with various standards, we do not want to make life impossible for the neighbors, etc. We therefore limit possibilities, while trying to be clear. Sometimes we imagine the commons as a blank page where everyone does whatever they like. It’s not that at all. There are rules of the game from the outset and, within this framework, it’s up to the community to self-organize. Our job is more to give people tools to run effective meetings, convene general assemblies, help set up cleaning shifts, and so on. We try not to reinvent the wheel each time, given that not everyone has innate skills in space management. At the same time, people are free to modify systems; we write the internal regulations (ROI) together, etc.
* Sébastien Broca – Corinne Vercher-Chaptal: We’d like to pick up on what you said about being the “syndic of the commons.” In commons, governance is a key issue. In your case, it seems that the residents, or future residents, often know the territory, the associations operating there, its risks, and what is possible or not. As we understand it, these actors are consulted on the rules of day-to-day management, but do they also have a say in the overall strategy of occupation and configuration of the site?
Maxime Zaït: Let me answer with concrete examples. I was the coordinator of “Tri Postal”: we had the ground floor of a building attached to Brussels Midi train station. It’s a station area, so there’s lots of foot traffic and widespread precariousness. We launched the occupation with the neighborhood committee, which was the project leader. We partnered with the neighbors, asked them and the municipality to contact all the local actors who might be interested. We conducted the initial site visits with them and held a first meeting asking who would be interested in responding to the owner’s call for projects. Those who stayed in the room became co-authors of the response. Together, with a whole series of actors, we submitted a proposal under Communa’s banner—which provided a bit of institutional credibility—and we won. When you bring together neighbors, a professional actor, and the whole local associative and cooperative sector, that’s an unbeatable alliance!
After that, we carried out an initial technical study to see who could go where, based on needs: dancers need a space with a wall, workshops require enough electrical wiring, and so on. In general, there are only a handful of options for how to allocate uses to spaces. We then convened an assembly with the occupants and presented three possible configurations, saying: “This one is clearly the best.” So we chose that one, and people moved into their spaces. We also put together the financial plan. We said: “To cover utilities, running costs, coordination, etc., we need X amount per month. Of that, we know we can secure Y in public subsidies, so the remaining amount has to be covered by the occupants.” People also take part in discussions on how to allocate these costs.
What I’ve just described applies to situations where we are working with mixed uses and other SSE entrepreneurs—people used to discussing business models and governance, and who understand what’s at stake. When we open sites housing homeless people, we don’t tackle these issues directly with that public, but we do work on them with the associations involved. Depending on the project, some actors are extremely keen to be involved in all of these preparatory stages; others simply want a service or an inexpensive office. In general, though, it tends to be the opposite: people see it as valuable to have access to pooled spaces, to commons. For example, at Youyou, one of the sites where we host homeless people, an association came and set up chickens in the garden that everyone can help look after. For social workers, this sometimes means extra questions they would rather not have to deal with, but for the public it’s very positive. Nevertheless, the commons also mean more management, and more management is not always welcome, to put it that way. Sometimes in research we paint a somewhat romantic picture—and I include myself in this. But I’ve been living and working in such spaces for over ten years now. There’s a whole layer of complexity that we need to be able to name."