Lessons from Danish Housing Cooperatives and Non-profit Housing

Henrik Gutzon Larsen: Public Interest Between State and Market: Lessons from Danish Housing Cooperatives and Non-profit Housing

Larsen will examine the development of housing cooperatives and non-profit housing as distinct third ways between state provision and market-driven development in Denmark. As long-standing forms of collectively owned housing, these housing forms demonstrate how durable and socially oriented housing can emerge when collective governance, limited- or non-profit principles, and long-term stewardship are aligned. His lecture will highlight the crucial role that the broader Danish non-profit housing sector plays within the national housing system, where strong regulation, public oversight, and a tradition of collective responsibility have created a robust foundation for socially accessible housing. At the same time, he will address the structural challenges that arise when cooperative and non-profit housing models encounter financialisation and growing market pressures.

In the context of the S AM exhibition, the lecture underscores how the Danish experience with both housing cooperatives and the wider non-profit housing sector offers valuable insights for addressing the current housing crisis: it shows that resilient, affordable, and socially equitable housing solutions can be realised when civil society initiatives, public regulation, and cooperative organisational forms work in concert.

Henrik Gutzon Larsen is a human geographer educated at the University of Copenhagen. He teaches human geography at Lund University. Before coming to Lund, in 2013, he taught geography at the universities in Copenhagen, Roskilde, and Aalborg. His current research addresses urban geography and housing, particularly alternative housing forms, and history of geographic thought. Henrik is living in a housing cooperative in Copenhagen.

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