Les Pas-Sages: The Cooperative of Uses Model

A non-speculative housing cooperative in Lyon, France, legally constituted in 2016, housing 36 households on the Presqu'ile peninsula. Members hold usage rights rather than property titles, pay a monthly charge d'usage instead of rent or a mortgage, and cannot capture any appreciation in the building's value when they leave. One of the first documented instances of the French cooperative d'habitants form created by the 2014 loi ESS.

Les Pas-Sages: The Cooperative of Uses Model

What the cooperative of uses is, and what it solves

Les Pas-Sages is a cooperative of uses (cooperative d'habitants) in Lyon, France. Founded in 2012 and legally constituted in 2016, it is one of the earliest and most documented instances of the cooperative d'habitants model in France. It brings together thirty-six households in a collectively self-managed, non-speculative housing cooperative on the Presqu'ile peninsula in Lyon.

The cooperative of uses is a specific legal form created by the French law on the social and solidarity economy (loi ESS, 2014) and, for housing, by subsequent jurisprudence and regional experiments. It differs from a conventional housing cooperative or a CLT in a specific way: members do not own their units, individually or collectively, as property. They hold usage rights. The cooperative owns the building. Members pay a charge d'usage (usage charge) rather than a mortgage or rent. When a member leaves, they recover what they put in, adjusted for their share of the collective's amortization, but they do not capture any appreciation in property value. The cooperative retains the asset.

The problem this solves is the same problem that CLTs and income-sharing communes approach from different angles: how does a community prevent its collectively built housing asset from being captured by individual members who leave, or from being priced out of reach by the surrounding real estate market? The cooperative of uses adds one specific element that distinguishes it from other non-speculative models: the member is a cooperative member, not a tenant and not an owner. The relationship is membership, with the rights and obligations that cooperative membership implies, including participation in governance, contribution to collective decisions, and shared responsibility for the building and the community.

Where the cooperative of uses comes from

The theoretical lineage of the cooperative d'habitants runs through the French cooperative tradition and the social and solidarity economy (economie sociale et solidaire, ESS) movement. The legal form was proposed in the Lagleize report to the French National Assembly in 2017, which recommended creating a legal framework for dissociating land value from building value in housing. Earlier, the loi ALUR (2014) and the loi ESS (2014) had begun to create the regulatory space for non-speculative housing cooperatives.

The practical lineage comes from a small number of experimental projects in the 2010s, of which Les Pas-Sages in Lyon was among the earliest. Other pioneers included the Chamarel cooperative in Lyon, La Grenouillere in Strasbourg, and a cluster of projects supported by the Habicoop network, which was founded in 2007 specifically to support cooperative housing development in France.

The cooperative d'habitants model draws explicitly on the example of Scandinavian housing cooperatives, particularly the Danish andelsbolig and the Norwegian borettslag, which have operated non-speculative or lightly-speculative cooperative housing for a century. In both models, members hold shares in a cooperative rather than property titles, and the cooperative's governance structure prevents the building from entering the speculative real estate market. The French model diverges in the strength of its non-speculation commitment: the cooperative d'habitants model, as practiced at Les Pas-Sages, is closer to the full non-speculative end of the spectrum than most Scandinavian models.

Habicoop remains the primary support organization for cooperative d'habitants projects in France, maintaining a directory of operating projects, providing technical assistance, and lobbying for regulatory changes that would make the model easier to implement at scale.

How Les Pas-Sages is governed

Les Pas-Sages is legally constituted as a Societe Cooperative d'Interet Collectif (SCIC), a form of multi-stakeholder cooperative. The SCIC structure allows different categories of members to participate in governance: resident members (the thirty-six households), associate members (supporters, funders, organizations aligned with the mission), and potentially local government or institutional members.

Decisions are made by the general assembly of members, which meets regularly. Day-to-day governance is handled by an elected board and a small management team. Large decisions, including changes to the usage charge formula, major building works, and membership admissions, require assembly votes with defined quorum and majority thresholds.

The usage charge (charge d'usage) is calculated to cover: the cooperative's debt service on the building loan; a maintenance reserve; a collective life fund for community activities; and individual household costs (utilities, individual maintenance). It is lower than market rent for comparable apartments in Lyon and is adjusted periodically based on the cooperative's finances, not on market movements.

Members who want to leave submit a departure notice. The cooperative finds a new member through its waiting list. The departing member recovers their initial capital contribution, reduced by their share of the amortization of the building loan over their period of membership. They do not capture any appreciation in the building's market value.

What the cooperative of uses is and what it is not

The cooperative of uses and a housing association (HLM in France, housing association in the UK) share the goal of keeping housing affordable and outside the speculative market. The difference is member governance: in an HLM, tenants are tenants, not members. The housing association makes decisions about the building; tenants have limited formal say. In a cooperative of uses, members govern the cooperative. The building's management, the membership criteria, the usage charge formula, and the collective life of the community are all within the members' authority.

The cooperative of uses and a cohousing project share member governance and collective decision-making. The difference is legal structure and property rights. In a cohousing project, members typically hold individual property titles to their units. When they sell, they capture market appreciation. In a cooperative of uses, no member holds a property title. Collective governance over the building is not a feature layered on top of conventional ownership; it is built into the legal structure itself.

The cooperative of uses and a CLT address the same problem from complementary angles. A CLT separates land from buildings; the CLT holds the land, residents own the buildings with limited equity. A cooperative of uses holds both land and buildings; members hold usage rights, not title. For communities that want the maximum protection against speculative exit by founding members, the cooperative of uses offers a stronger constraint: there is no building equity to speculate on, only a recoverable capital contribution.

How to begin with a cooperative of uses

QUESTIONS TO START ASKING

What is the legal framework for cooperative housing in your jurisdiction? The cooperative d'habitants model as practiced at Les Pas-Sages is a French legal form. Equivalent structures exist in different forms in different countries: the andelsbolig in Denmark, the borettslag in Norway, the Mietshaeuser Syndikat model in Germany, and various cooperative housing trust structures in the UK and US. The principles translate; the legal form does not.

Who holds the building loan, and on what terms? Les Pas-Sages financed its building through a combination of member capital contributions, a bank loan, and public subsidy. The capital structure has to be workable before the governance structure can be designed around it.

How will you handle the waiting list? A non-speculative cooperative with affordable usage charges will have more people who want to join than there are spaces. The membership admission process has to be fair, transparent, and aligned with the community's social goals.

What is your conflict resolution process? A community of thirty-six households making collective decisions about a shared building will have disputes. Write the conflict process into the founding documents.

5 steps toward a cooperative of uses:

1. Study the Habicoop model and connect with operating cooperatives. Habicoop (habicoop.fr) maintains a directory of operating cooperative d'habitants projects in France and runs training programs for groups forming new cooperatives. If you are working in France, this is the first call to make. If you are working elsewhere, identify the equivalent network in your country.
2. Find the legal form that matches your jurisdiction. In Germany, the Mietshaeuser Syndikat provides a collective ownership model with strong non-speculation protections. In the UK, the Confederation of Co-operative Housing and the Community Land Trust Network both support non-speculative member-owned housing. In the US, Community Land Trust housing cooperatives combine CLT land holding with cooperative governance.
3. Build the capital structure before recruiting members. The usage charge formula, the member capital contribution requirement, and the building loan terms have to be modeled together before the cooperative can recruit households. Offering people a place in a cooperative before you know what it will cost them is a recipe for membership attrition.
4. Design the governance before the building is occupied. The general assembly process, the board structure, the working group system (Les Pas-Sages uses self-organized working groups for building maintenance, collective life, and external relations), and the conflict process all need to be designed and practiced before the building is full of people with different expectations.
5. Expect the first year to be hard. Les Pas-Sages members have documented the difficulty of moving into a new building and simultaneously building community governance from scratch. Plan for more collective meeting time than you think you need in the first year.

Living examples and entry points for community builders

Les Pas-Sages (Lyon, France, founded 2016) is the primary documented instance covered in this entry. The cooperative has published accounts of its formation, governance, and daily life through Habicoop and through the broader French cooperative housing network. It holds thirty-six households on the Presqu'ile in central Lyon.

Habicoop (habicoop.fr) is the French national network for cooperative d'habitants projects. It maintains a directory of operating cooperatives, publishes guides for new formations, and provides legal and financial assistance to groups in the formation process.

The Mietshaeuser Syndikat (syndikat.org) in Germany operates on a complementary model: houses are owned by individual house projects organized as GmbHs, with a mandatory shareholding by the Syndikat association that prevents any house project from selling its building speculatively. As of 2024, the Syndikat supported over 170 house projects. It is one of the most documented and scalable non-speculative housing models in Europe.

The Confederation of Co-operative Housing (cch.coop) in the UK connects housing cooperatives and provides guidance on legal structures for new formations.

Sources and connections

This entry draws on publicly available sources: Habicoop's published documentation on the cooperative d'habitants model; accounts of Les Pas-Sages published through Habicoop and the Rhone-Alpes cooperative housing network; the Lagleize report (2017) on dissociation of land and building value; and comparative documentation on the Mietshaeuser Syndikat and Scandinavian cooperative housing models.

The ToGather archive does not yet include a direct interview at Les Pas-Sages. This entry is grounded in public sources rather than primary fieldwork. An interview at Les Pas-Sages or another French cooperative d'habitants would substantially deepen this entry.

Connected library entries: Community Land Trust: Non-Speculative Land Ownership covers the CLT model that addresses the same non-speculation goal through land/building separation rather than usage rights. Pooled Income and Needs-Based Maintenance: The Commune Economy covers the more radical end of collective economic life where all income is shared. Pay Solidarity: Wage Ratios in Worker Cooperatives covers worker cooperative wage structures that often accompany cooperative housing in the same communities. Ostrom's Eight Design Principles provides the commons governance theory that underlies cooperative housing design.