From experiment to public infrastructure: Housing Cooperatives in Amsterdam at a turning point

Ten years after the revision of the Woningwet in 2015, and with local elections on the horizon, this is a good moment to evaluate the status and potential of housing cooperatives in Amsterdam. Over the past decade, the new wave of cooperatives has moved from a few fragile experiments to a functioning, albeit still vulnerable, part of the city’s housing system. What has been achieved so far? What remains difficult? And what choices will determine whether this movement can truly scale up in the coming years?

When the municipality launched its Action Plan for Wooncoöperaties in 2019, ambitions were high. Housing cooperatives were presented as a “third way” between commercial developers and traditional housing associations: resident-led, non-profit, and rooted in collective responsibility. Today, that ambition has partially materialised. A system now exists. The question is whether politics will allow it to grow.

At the time of the Action Plan, I was amongst the initiators of Wooncoöperatie de Nieuwe Meent (dNM), one of the city’s three pilot projects. My involvement with dNM has led me to co-found the architectural office Time To Access and, more recently, Wooruimte Coöperatief, which supports the development of several coops in the city. Over the years, with TtA and now with Woonruimte, we have assisted several groups and initiatives. This article stems from the work and research on the ground.

Building the path
The first generation of housing cooperatives in Amsterdam, including the three pilots De Warren (completed in 2023), Bajesdorp and De Nieuwe Meent (both completed in 2025), did not simply build affordable, collective housing, they also built communities and, most importantly, they paved a trajectory that new projects could follow. 

Between 2015 and 2025, these initiatives spent years navigating unclear rules, experimental financing structures, hesitant banks and unfamiliar municipal procedures. For these reasons, development timelines of five to eight years have not been unusual. We spent much of this time in collaboration with numerous stakeholders, inventing templates that did not yet exist: for governance, for valuation, for loans and for risk-sharing.

This pioneering work was demanding and often exhausting, but it laid the groundwork for everything that followed. Later initiatives could build on accumulated knowledge, institutional trust and political legitimacy. What was once improvised has slowly become routine, supported by templates and guidelines. Utrecht recently tendered a plot in Leidsche Rijn for their cooperative pilot, with a system largely modeled upon Amsterdam, and many other cities will shortly follow.

Where we are now: numbers and ecosystem
As of 2026, housing cooperatives in Amsterdam are no longer marginal. Across the city, around 708 cooperative homes across 13 buildings are currently at different stages of development: 87 units have been completed, 201 are under construction, and 420 are in advanced development. About 80% of these homes are in the mid-rent segment, around 18% are social housing, and only a small fraction belongs to the free sector.

These numbers may seem modest compared to overall housing development, but they represent a major shift. Cooperatives have moved beyond symbolic pilots, and they now form a recognisable production channel.

Alongside this growth, a professional field has emerged. Architects (among others, Time to Access, Naturified, Inbo, Sofia Valle, Dok), financial advisors (Kantelingen, Co-productief), legal specialists (Garibaldi project) and cooperative developers/project managers (Woonruimte Coöperatief, Common City) now work specifically with cooperative initiatives. Important knowledge sharing and lobbying bodies arose at local and national level (a new Platform Wooncooperatie Amsterdam, with new attention from the already existing Cooplink, Platform31, Stichting !WOON, Katalys). What once depended almost entirely on volunteer labour is now increasingly supported by specialised expertise. This is a sign of institutional maturation. Housing cooperatives are becoming a sector.

From niche to neighbourhood Infrastructure
Normalisation is visible not only in numbers, but also in social function. A telling example is De Walvis, another project we are involved with. De Walvis is developing 72 homes for nurses from the OLVG hospital. This echoes the origins of Amsterdam’s housing cooperatives in the early twentieth century, when workers organised collectively to secure decent housing. Then, as now, cooperatives emerged as a response to market failure and social need.

At the same time, the municipality is increasingly using cooperatives as instruments for neighbourhood anchoring. Projects such as De Bundel in Nieuw-West (for which we founded Woonruimte Coöperatief in 2022) originate from long-standing local networks and aim to reserve at least half of their 132 homes for people already living or active in the area. In H-Buurt Midden in Zuidoost, local engagement is explicitly part of the selection criteria of the ongoing tender procedure

This reflects a deliberate strategy, especially in neighbourhoods facing social and economic pressure. The aim is not to create isolated “alternative islands”, but grounded communities that strengthen existing social fabrics and counter displacement. Housing cooperatives are gradually becoming part of the city’s place-based urban policy.

Financing: what works, what still doesn’t
One of the central barriers identified in the 2019 Action Plan was financing. Cooperative projects often struggle with the “last 10 to 20 percent” of their budgets: the part that banks consider too risky. Since then, important steps have been taken. 

Amsterdam’s revolving fund, administered by Stichting Stimuleringsfonds Volkshuisvesting Nederlandse gemeenten (SVN), of which De Nieuwe Meent was the first beneficiary and a “guinea pig”, now exceeds €20 million, with annual lending caps of roughly €6–7 million. While the fund has enabled many projects, it also shows that scaling up the housing cooperative sector will require larger and more stable public backing. At the same time, banks are slowly gaining experience with cooperative models, and a national revolving fund is expected to become operational in the second half of 2026 (for a total envelope of ca. €60 million). At the same time, banks are slowly gaining experience with cooperative models, and, hopefully, we will soon not depend just on Rabobank, the only Dutch bank financing the sector at the moment.

In the long run, the dependence on public instruments can decrease. As the first generation of cooperatives repays its loans, capital can begin to circulate within the sector itself. In 20-30 years from now, older cooperatives will be able to reinvest in new initiatives, gradually turning public seed money into a lasting, collective housing infrastructure.

Social housing: possible, but political
Housing coops appeal the most to people struggling in the current housing market and most of the existing groups scouting for plots want to include social units in their projects. A recurring question is whether housing cooperatives can contribute to social housing. The answer is: yes, but only with strong policy support.

Projects such as De Warren and De Nieuwe Meent demonstrate that social units can be realised within cooperative models without compromising on housing quality and sustainability

Projects such as De Warren and De Nieuwe Meent demonstrate that social units can be realised within cooperative models without compromising (and actually achieving high ambitions) on housing quality and sustainability. But they also show that this does not happen automatically. Rising construction costs and land prices push projects towards middle rents. Without clear steering, cooperatives tend to drift toward the segment that is easiest to finance, the mid-segment. Only with political backing, social housing becomes possible.

Ambition vs. reality: the 2019 plan
The 2019 Action Plan set an ambitious course. Within two years, 15 to 20 projects were to be launched. By 2025, at least 7,000 cooperative homes were supposed to be realised, in development or acquired by coops.

In practice, around fifteen serious initiatives have now emerged, but several years later than planned. And instead of 7,000 homes, the current pipeline stands at roughly 700. Only about 10% of the original ambition has been achieved.

Nevertheless, the plan’s deeper goal, which is to build a functioning system, has largely been accomplished. Procedures, expertise, and support structures now exist. What is missing is scale. Now we are ready to surf the mid-term phase of the action plan.

The next wave: 2026 and the moment of choice
The coming years offer a real opportunity for growth. In 2026 or early 2027 at the latest, several new plots are expected to be tendered for cooperative housing, including two plots in Zuidoost (H-Buurt, which is ongoing, and Nelson Mandela Park), one in Noord (Elzenhagen Zuid), two in Zeeburg (Strandeiland and Sluisbuurt), and two in Nieuw-West (the Jacob van Deysselbuurt and the Lumion Kavel).

These locations are spread across districts and social contexts. Together, they could form the basis for a new wave of cooperative development. The physical space is there, together with an organisational capacity able to respond to a growing social demand.

What remains uncertain is political commitment. If housing cooperatives are to become a stable pillar of Amsterdam’s housing system, four conditions are crucial. Without these measures, growth will remain slow and fragile:

Space: Structural reservation of plots for cooperatives, embedded in long-term planning,  remains key. Starting to work with the existing building stock has a great potential for expansion, as the city is full of underused buildings, such as empty offices. Another big opportunity is the incentivisation of the much needed Beheer Cooperaties (management coops), developed by housing corporations, but managed by coops.

Finance: Expansion and simplification of revolving funds, with faster access and lower administrative burdens. The national fund could be a game changer, but Amsterdam needs to stay committed to financial support for coops. 

Capacity: Political commitment at the city government and city council level, as well as stable advisory committees. This means more and permanent municipal teams dedicated to cooperative housing that share knowledge with each other, rather than temporary and isolated pilot structures. 

Social Mix: Clear guarantees for social housing within cooperative projects to prevent systematic drift toward middle rents and potential distrust of the format caused by the shadow of gentrification.

Housing cooperatives have shown that collective, non-profit housing can exist outside speculative market logic. The challenge is no longer technical. It is political

Conclusion: scale or stall
After a decade of experimentation, Amsterdam has built a functioning ecosystem for housing cooperatives. Knowledge has accumulated. Professionals are in place. Groups are ready. New plots are coming, and the successes of existing coops inspire potential new groups. The foundations exist.

The success of cooperatives has not gone unnoticed in city politics. Political parties, such as de Vonk, BIJ1, SP, Groenlinks, VOLT, PvdA and D66, share in their election manifestos strong commitments to the support of coops. But if cooperatives are to truly fulfill the promise to grow from promising alternatives into a structural part of the housing system, we can no longer accept politicians backtracking on their promises.

Whether this system will now scale up or slowly stagnate depends on the choices made in the coming years. Housing cooperatives have shown that collective, non-profit housing can exist outside speculative market logic. The challenge is no longer technical. It is political.

We close with a shout-out to three emerging initiatives that we hope will soon be firmly on the map: De Lage Drempels, focusing on accessible housing; In Eigen Handen, formed by precarious cultural workers; and House of Hopes, a cooperative initiative emerging from the H-Buurt in Bijlmer.