The Trade-Off Between Capital and Community: The Conditions for Successful Co-production in Housing

Housing is an area in which the active involvement of citizens in the provision of services has the potential to enrich individual
lifestyles, local communities and the organisations providing housing, regardless of whether public, private for-profit or
non-profit. Yet in current housing markets, housing tends to be purely individual, in the form of home ownership, or collectively
managed through social rented housing. The article explores the conditions under which co-production in this field could be
successful, as an alternative model. The analysis, which draws upon the work of Ostrom, is based on empirical fieldwork carried
out among German housing cooperatives. As it turns out, successful co-production depends primarily on the long-term maintenance
of group boundaries and specific trajectories of organisational development. This can make co-production an attractive model
for specific social groups, but there are drawbacks: it also tends to lead to limited use of the invested capital and an inward
orientation.