SOLVE-H · Mapping social value of participation in collaborative housing: From a knowledge-based to evidence-based perspective

The rising housing cost overburden rate, increasing house prices and rising rents in the EU, and lack of access to affordable/ adequate/ quality housing has increasingly become a major concern for low- and middle-income groups and vulnerable communities. As a response to this on-going crisis, the last two decades have witnessed a shift and re-emergence towards several forms of decentralisation, co-creation, and participative planning in housing in Europe, often referred together as forms of collaborative housing (CoH). Despite these prevalent forms that are typically driven with the need of affordability and social inclusion, the challenges around housing continue to increase (eg. Migration, gentrification, ageing population) leading to greater socio-demographic issues (social exclusion of vulnerable groups, socio-economic segregation, displacement in rental housing markets etc.), and making it a chronic crisis.But, lack of verifiable systematic and quantitative evidence is a major barrier and does little to support the potential of these CoH forms in mitigating the issues. The knowledge around participation in CoH or its impact remains qualitative and fragmented, compromising a comprehensive understanding of the actual social value brought by them in terms of how they are capable to address the changing dynamics of housing in Europe with ongoing and emerging issues.Thereby, SOLVE-H proposes a clear structure to develop an evidence-based index, enabling to map of social value of participation and capture the social impact of ‘collaborative’ trends in housing. The project addresses the social complexity project through mixed-method approaches from interdisciplinary disciplines (eg. sociology, citizen science).The main objectives are to:• understand the social value of participation in CoH• enable evidence-based quantification of social value of participation in CoH• localise the developed social value index and facilitate its application for CoH in Europe