Corona delayed the project - but now the founders of the Murnau citizens' cooperative are going on the offensive.
Your goal: You want to create affordable living space for local people.
This requires capital, members - and above all: a piece of land.
Murnau
- The construct of the Murnauer Bürgergenossenschaft eG has existed on paper for months; now it's about filling it with life. The founding team - the board of directors with Franziska Besser and Franz Reger as well as the supervisory board members Veronika Jones, Elmar Hayn and Jan-Ulrich Bittlinger - must first attract members of all kinds and acquire capital so that the ambitious project of creating affordable living space only for Murnauer or People who work in place doesn't end up in a desk drawer. The cooperative had already announced that it would “get started” in spring 2021. Corona did not allow that. Now seems the right time. It's not about a bowling club, emphasizes Jones, who sits on the local council for Alliance 90 / The Greens, “but about a lot of money and responsibility.You can't do it half way ”.
Murnauer Bürgergenossenschaft: Municipal areas are to be built on as part of a lease model
The plan provides for communal land to be built on a cooperative basis as part of a long lease model - “with a rather symbolic lease rate,” explains Jones.
"Otherwise it is not possible to create affordable living space." Besser points out that several plots of land have already been offered by private individuals - but this model is ruled out, she says with a view to high standard land values.
The calculation would no longer work.
Members must acquire at least a share of the Murnau Citizens' Cooperative
If you want to be part of the cooperative, you have to purchase at least a share worth 1,000 euros (the upper limit is 500,000 euros) - and more, staggered according to income, if you want to be allocated an apartment with affordable rent. The prerequisite for this is that you live or work in Murnau. “From local to local,” says Besser. If you only want to become an investing member, you can also come from outside. In order to make the project profitable and to achieve diversity among the residents, a certain number of tenants is also required. In a calculation, an investment sum of around three million euros was assumed for 14 apartments. Of this, says Besser, around a third should be covered by member shares. The equity is raised,if every twelfth person in Murnau bought a single share.
Community land for development is still missing
So much for the plan - in practice, however, one important prerequisite is missing: the communal land on which the cooperative can build. Jones immediately think of several suitable areas. The community and the local council would have to go along with it, otherwise the whole structure would collapse. So far there has been no exchange with the administration. Didn't the founding team, which, according to Jones, have neither party nor personal interests in the cooperative, wasted valuable time? No, means better. Rather, she believes that it is advantageous to gain members first and then, when many Murnauers are behind the project, who give weight to the issue, to seek contact with the community. This has to be “taken into account”, the Murnau “should build up a certain pressure,so that something goes forward ”. Pressure always sounds so bad, knows better. It aims to get citizens to show politics what they want. Jones also thinks it is good that the exchange takes place in the second step because of an area: "I consider the procedure that everything is dry first and that we first have the support of the people on site is a correct and serious approach."
Cooperative housing: the municipality can set guidelines
The councilor sees it as important to first “establish information about what is possible about a cooperative.
It can do things that a commune cannot do ”;
they in turn have the opportunity to make specifications.
The Murnau residents seem to be interested.
At least around 300 interested people had gathered behind the cooperative idea before the pandemic.
Also interesting: On hold: the residential project at the James Loeb House in Murnau
