# CoHabitat - open database of community-led housing (global)

* **CoHabitat is an open database of community-led housing**: users can browse the information about partners and projects and add new information.

* In the words of the **CoHabitat Network**, which manages the project:
  * (CoHabitat) is an open data and collaborative tool to document and connect community-led housing projects and their allies.
  * ***What is the scale of community-led housing? How many people are involved in or housed in non-speculative, collective housing and neighborhood developments? What are the existing models of community-led housing? How do inhabitants organize, plan, finance and implement their community-led housing projects? What are their difficulties? Who supports community-led housing?***
  * Documenting and sharing the stories of community-led housing is essential for acknowledging the scale and potential of people-driven habitat solutions. The collaborative online platform [co-habitat.io](https://www.cohabitat.io) crowdsources information and stories around community-led housing. The process by which the documentation is generated is as important as the data itself: CoHabitat partners develop collaborative, youth-led documentation strategies for storytelling and data collection.
  * Source: <https://www.co-habitat.net/en/tools#cohabitat-io>

* The **CoHabitat Network** describes itself as:
  * We are a network of community-led housing organizations and allies, who work together to secure housing through collective, non-speculative, people-led solutions

* And they define community-led housing as "a process by which inhabitants organize to build cities from the bottom up. **Together they plan, finance, build, manage housing, and improve public spaces and neighborhood facilities**. With the right financial and political support, community-led housing processes result in permanently affordable, more sustainable and inclusive urban spaces to meet the needs of local communities and provide solutions to contemporary urban challenges". (Source: <https://www.co-habitat.net/en/about>)

* **The CoHabitat Network was launched by UrbaMonde** ([https://www.urbamonde.org](https://www.urbamonde.org/en)), an association founded in Switzerland in 2005 and then also based in France since 2015 with the goal of promoting collaborative housing at the local and international levels.