FRIENDS IN COMMON
BEFRIEND A CAUSE
With a large community of supporters donating a small amount of money monthly we can build something significant
DONATELOOKING FOR FUNDS?
Donations will be given to groups that are committed to a commons-ownership model
APPLYPromoting
Community
Ownership of
HOUSING
We raise money by crowdfunding to buy property and keep it out of the market, helping build a network of community-owned housing projects. Join our mission to create housing groups where people live collectively, with secure, rent-free homes under resident control.
WHAT WE DO
We collect money and pass that money on to
provide beginning capital
We raise money by crowdfunding to buy properties and keep them out of the market, supporting a network of community-owned housing projects. Join our mission and donate a small amount each month to the Friends' shared fund, creating a better, more secure future for all.
WHY WE ARE DOING IT
We aim to create autonomous housing groups to show how collective living can work. We believe housing should be rent-free and controlled by residents, with no need to pay landlords. Everyone deserves a secure home as a basic human right. Housing security is key to freedom. It allows us to focus more on helping our communities, caring for the environment, and building a more social society.
We only support initiatives, that are willing to commit to Ownership in Common, a legal agreement between the property-owning legal entity of a project, and an external party: either Friends in Common, or a third-party aligned with our mission.This agreement gives enough legal power to the external party to block the resale of the property, making it impossible for a Friends in Common supported property to return to the market.
CORE IDEAS
A legal contract to keep property off the market
Each group receiving money from Friends in Common will have to make a legal contract, with FIC or another organisation, that will make sure that the property will not become a commodity again. This is our way of building up the Commons - something that serves the community, is maintained by the community, and will not be exploited for profit.
Housing Should Be Free!
Housing should be as free today as inhabiting a cave would have been ten thousand years ago. Whatever buildings have been built, should be considered as common inheritance of humanity, to be used for the greatest good. If you're paying rent to inhabit your home, you're not free as the caveman was - you're in fact in a relationship similar to slavery with your landlord.
Less housing stress leaves more time for political work
If your housing needs are covered, you'll have more capacities for political work. Donating money towards building the housing commons is therefore a way to support activists involved in important causes.
Housing cooperatives are social hubs for a broader community
They offer culture and spaces for meeting, solidarity services and temporary stays for travelers. They are also neighborhood hubs, where locals get to know each other, building connections to the society outside of the political niche.
With climate change, societal change is inevitable
There will eventually be massive shocks to the existing society through climate change, and adapting to the new conditions will be necessary for the individual as well as the collective. When we cannot reliably depend on the current structures of food and energy production, cooperation in every scale will become more important. It makes therefore sense to actively design new ways of providing our existential needs through cooperating. Additionally, the changes coming ahead will also require emotional and cultural adjustment, of which cooperative housing and collective care are sane answers.
Permanence of residence is necessary for a healthy connection with the Earth and vibrant cities
When urban residents don't have stability of residence, they will engage less with their
surroundings in positive and constructive ways. Gentrification is the process of
un-rooting residents through increasing rents, causing the degradation of a lively city
culture.
In a parallel effect, only by living for a longer time close to forests, fields, meadows and
bodies of water can we observe their health and progression through the seasons.
Living with community is good for you
Living in close contact with people you share values with is one of the best things against the depressive, atomized, post-industrial world, where traditional, location-based social bonds have been devastated. Sharing meals, sharing care, sharing joys and frustrations with the people around you is the stuff of life.
The Internet can be used to build social, economic networks
The Internet can be used for so much more than social media. It makes the transfer of money and information possible without geographic limitations. It makes the distribution of resources within a network possible. Using the Internet we can build economic strategy on a collective, international level, without the need for state planning and against the logic of an extraction-oriented market.
A hopeful narrative
We're working towards a vision of the future that is more social, more ecological and more whole. We think this vision will inspire hope, and through participation in the crowdfunding campaing the members will feel empowered. Reading about successful projects will hopefully inspire more people to join and grow the network.
Building a culture of the future
The long-term quest of Friends in Common is human liberation. We think that starting up hundreds of collectives with social-ecological values can have reverberations over time and over generations. Although it's not possible for us to have a say on the nature of future societies, it is possible in the present day to support communities, whose values we want to be passed on to future generations.
JOIN US
We want to increase the number of community-owned housing across the EU, while keeping homes out of the market
We aim to partially or fully fund 1000 new community-owned housing projects in the EU countries
within 5 to 10 years. Recipient projects of our support must agree on a contract* designed to
keep property away from the market.
We rank applicant projects based on how well they would benefit their neighbourhood communities,
contribute to ecological land stewardship and food security and how active their members are
within social and ecological movements.
THE POWER OF THE CROWD
If we get 200 000 people across Europe to donate €5 per month, in less than 4.5 years we’d reach the goal of donating 50k€ to 1000 new collectives
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