Mapping advantages and risks of “Umbrella” Housing Cooperatives – the case of Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen

Report prepared by Inês Santos and Joana Trindade, members of the Housing and Building Sector of Cooperativa Integral Minga, Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal

Through the eyes of members of the Housing and Building Sector of a multisectoral cooperative  in Portugal — Cooperativa Integral Minga — which has been working on the development of cooperative housing projects under collective ownership, our research focused on two main perspectives, aiming to frame:

1. The goals and role of “umbrella” housing cooperatives.
2. The role of the state, through its different agencies, in the development of affordable housing through collective-ownership housing cooperatives.
   

THE DACHGENO WOHNEN TÜBINGEN MODEL

Purpose
The central purpose of Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen (“Umbrella Housing Cooperative of Tübingen”) is to ensure the provision of sustainable and affordable housing for its members, grounded in the cooperative principles of self-help, self-organisation, and self-accountability.

To situate this initiative properly, it is important to consider the broader context of self-organised rental housing in Germany. The Mietshäuser Syndikat (Rental Housing Syndicate) model has been developing successfully since 1989, with the aim of “politically supporting and promoting the development of new self-managed housing projects: decent housing, a roof over everyone’s head,” as set out in its Statutes since 1992.

Today, the Syndikat encompasses 203 housing projects currently operating across Germany — including nine in Tübingen — with an additional 27 initiatives currently in development. The model is sustained by a shared political commitment to non-speculation and solidarity, while at the same time each housing project maintains legal and financial independence. Rather than acting as a formal governance body for individual projects, the Syndikat operates as a structure for securing collective ownership and providing organisational and developmental support to them.

Aligned with this approach, Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen emerged from the clearly identified need for an organisational structure capable of supporting groups seeking to develop cooperative housing under a shared legal and financial framework. By doing so, it reduces and redistributes the legal and financial management in collective-ownership housing initiatives.

Although established only four years ago, the cooperative has already successfully implemented two housing projects: the first, HEckPilot, located in central Tübingen; and the second, Weiller11, situated in Tübingen Kilchberg, in the Neckar Valley.

Governance Structure

In the governance of collective projects, an increase in the number of governance levels tends to increase the complexity in decision-making processes. Clear and well-defined decision-making responsibilities are therefore essential to ensure the effective functioning of such organisations. In response to this challenge, Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen establishes a governance structure that balances autonomy at the level of individual projects with shared principles and a common legal and financial framework.

Projects that join the “umbrella” cooperative commit themselves to:

• a non-speculative approach to housing development, implemented through a collective-ownership regime;
• a management model rooted in individual and collective accountability, summarised in the expression “an owner’s mindset within a renter’s contract”;
• a solidarity-based financial model, which combines contributions to a common solidarity fund; the creation of opportunities for inhabitants with low income and limited resources and the consolidation of a financially robust entity capable of providing stability and enhancing the attractiveness of both direct loans and bank financing.

At the same time, each housing project developed under this cooperative retains full autonomy over its architectural programme, selecting its inhabitants, the long-term management of the building,  and decisions concerning day-to-day operations.

Collaborative Governance Between Municipalities and Cooperatives in Housing Provision

Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen emerged within a specific political and social context in which the municipality does not simply “enable” cooperative housing from the outside, but instead becomes a co-founder and co-governor of the cooperative itself. The municipality of Tübingen is a member of the cooperative, holds seats on the supervisory board, and manages a solidarity fund dedicated to Dachgeno projects. In this arrangement, the municipality is not only a regulator or funder, but an integral part of the organisational infrastructure that supports non-speculative housing at the urban scale.

The composition of the board reflects this hybridity. Alongside municipal representatives (including the councillor responsible for urban development), it includes architects with long-standing involvement in Tübingen’s planning processes and delegates from the housing projects HeckPilot and Weiller11. Strategic decisions are therefore negotiated between three perspectives: public interest (housing and land policy), technical expertise (architecture, project management, business management), and the self-organised communities that inhabit the buildings. In this context, municipal actors’ role is better understood as connective, bringing information, contacts, and political leverage into a structure that remains formally autonomous.

This partnership is backed by clear and targeted financial commitments. In its start-up phase, Dachgeno received roughly €300,000 of public funding, co-financed by the federal state of Baden-Württemberg and the municipality of Tübingen. Crucially, this funding did not flow into a specific building, but instead into the organisational structure of the “umbrella” cooperative, covering staff, office infrastructure, and project development capacity. Public resources are thus strategically used to stabilise the form of organisation that makes multiple projects possible, rather than to subsidise individual dwellings.

At the regulatory level, Dachgeno Wohnen operates within the Landeswohnraumförderungsgesetz (state housing law), which offers subsidies per square metre in exchange for long-term rent caps and income thresholds. Housing projects can choose the duration of their rent stabilisation period, ranging from 10 to 40 years, and, given that Dachgeno Wohnen’s model is based on collective ownership and affordability, they consistently opt for the maximum duration of 40 years. Public funding increases with longer stabilisation periods and with lower rent levels: projects that set rents 30% to 40% below the local average receive higher subsidies.

In practice, these conditions allow the housing projects to access up to €2,400 per square metre in public funds, while overall construction costs in Tübingen typically range between €4,000 and €5,000 per square metre, depending partly on land prices. For an actor whose aim is to remove housing from speculation, these conditions are not experienced as restrictive, but rather as an alignment of incentives, since they allow affordability to be “locked in” over time.

The municipality also administers a solidarity fund of about two million euros, intended to lower entry barriers for low-income households. The fund can, for instance, support initial cooperative contributions or intervene in situations of temporary hardship. Each use of the fund is jointly negotiated, turning it into a permanent site of negotiation between social policy and cooperative autonomy.

Financial architecture and shared risk

Dachgeno’s financial model combines several instruments into a coherent and integrated architecture that aims to secure long-term affordability while systematically distributing risk. Four core elements structure this model: member contributions, public subsidies and subsidised loans, direct loans from individuals, and conventional bank finance.

First, future residents contribute equity to the cooperative at roughly €1,000 per square metre. For a 60 m² dwelling, this implies an initial contribution of about €60,000. These contributions form part of the cooperative’s equity base and strengthen its position vis-à-vis banks. They are not speculative investments: shares do not appreciate, and departing members are reimbursed at nominal value, financed by the contributions of new members. Capital is thus preserved rather than valorised, and rising real-estate values do not translate into private profit.

Second, Dachgeno mobilises state housing subsidies in the form of grants and low-interest loans. These instruments reduce the share of construction costs that must be covered by commercial credit and rental income. In return, the cooperative accepts long-term rent caps and income limits. In this way, public money thus effectively “buys” affordability and social mix, while the cooperative benefits from a more favourable capital structure and greater planning certainty.

Third, the cooperative raises direct loans from private individuals – friends, supporters, local residents, and politically aligned actors. These loans are subordinated and unsecured, typically bearing an interest rate of around a 1.5%, often below inflation. Minimum investment amounts are kept low, while maximums per lender are capped in order to avoid dependence on a small number of large creditors. Because these loans are subordinated, they rank behind bank loans in the event of insolvency; lenders therefore accept the risk of partial or total loss in exchange for modest financial returns and the possibility of materially supporting non-speculative housing. The instrument therefore serves a dual purpose, building both a financial base and a broader solidarity network around the cooperative.

Fourth, the remaining financing is covered by long-term bank loans secured against land and buildings whose market value is high in Tübingen’s tight housing market. Interest rates are generally fixed for around ten years, after which refinancing becomes required. The first projects illustrate the model’s sensitivity to macro-financial shifts: while HeckPilot was able to secure loans at interest rates of around 2–3%, Weiller11 was financed in a context of higher rates, at approximately 4–5%. Dachgeno Wohnen works with a target annuity of about 2% per year, corresponding to a repayment horizon of five to six decades.

For individual projects, the umbrella architecture offers clear and tangible advantages. Access to complex subsidy schemes is easier through a specialised, institutionally recognised actor than for isolated groups. Member equity and direct loans are aggregated, strengthening the cooperative’s negotiation power with banks. Over time, as projects amortise their loans, their increasingly robust balance sheets can support new developments, either through explicit cross-subsidisation or by enhancing the cooperative’s overall creditworthiness. At the same time, administrative functions – accounting, financing plans, and project management – are centralised rather than being repeatedly recreated by each project group.

However, risks remain. Dachgeno Wohnen is still in an early phase of development, with only two completed projects; as a result, there is not yet a large stock of amortised housing capable of buffering financial shocks. Interest-rate increases at future refinancing moments could place pressure on project budgets, since initial rents are tightly calibrated to remain affordable. Direct lenders bear a comparatively higher level of risk than other actors. Finally, the umbrella model introduces a form of systemic risk: while it reduces the vulnerability of individual projects, it also ties their trajectories together. For this reason, each new development is assessed through two interlinked financial plans – one at the project level and one for the cooperative as a whole – which must both demonstrate long-term robustness.

Dachgeno Wohnen as infrastructure for non-speculative housing

These organisational and financial arrangements become tangible in Dachgeno’s first two projects: HeckPilot in central Tübingen and Weiller11 in the Neckar valley village of Kilchberg. These projects can be understood as situated experiments, testing how an umbrella cooperative operates across different urban and social contexts.

In both projects, the rent structure incorporates not only debt service but also provisions for maintenance and the costs of central administration. Each square metre contributes monthly to a maintenance fund and to Dachgeno Wohnen’s organisational budget, and, where relevant, to external property management for shared infrastructures. Utilities are billed separately according to actual consumption. Rents are calculated on a strictly cost-covering basis, with no hidden profit margin. What is produced is therefore not only housing, but an economic system deliberately designed to balance costs over time rather than to generate surplus.

Taken together, Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen, HeckPilot, and Weiller11 represent an attempt to institutionalise non-speculative, collectively governed housing beyond isolated, one-off projects. This approach rests on three interrelated dimensions:

First, the municipality recognises the “umbrella” cooperative as a socially valuable actor and actively co-produces it at the institutional level, through co-founding, participation in governance, and the provision of dedicated funds. This marks a shift in local housing policy: away from treating cooperative groups as exceptions, and towards constructing a durable instrument capable of repeatedly delivering affordable, collectively owned housing.

Second, state housing subsidies and local land policies are strategically mobilised not only to lower project costs, but also to stabilise affordability and collective ownership over long time horizons. In this framework, subsidies, rent caps, and concept-based land allocation function as not external constraints, but as enabling conditions for the development of a non-speculative housing sector.

Third, the umbrella cooperative provides the organisational and financial infrastructure that many grassroots initiatives lack: professionalised project management, consolidated financial planning, shared legal expertise, and a gradually expanding asset base. At the same time, it preserves a high degree of autonomy at both project and living levels. Bureaucratic stability is thus combined with everyday collective self-management, rather than replacing it.

Although Dachgeno Wohnen’s model is not a template that can be simply reproduced, it demonstrates that an “umbrella” cooperative anchored in public partnership and solidarity-based finance can aggregate dispersed initiatives into a more resilient and scalable infrastructure for affordable housing development. If public authorities are willing to engage with cooperatives as long-term partners, and if housing movements are prepared to address the demands of institutionalisation and a large-scale financial planning, significant potential exists in this type of institutional arrangement – one in which municipal policy, state subsidy regimes, architectural expertise, and self-organised housing initiatives are effectively articulated.

The interview conducted with Wiebke Mollik, a board member of Dachgeno Wohnen Tübingen, was of instrumental importance in deepening our understanding of this newly established model in Tübingen. The interview took place on 28 August in the common space of the fifth House of the 4-Häuser-Projekt, a Mietshäuser Syndikat initiative located on Hechinger Straße in Tübingen.