Reviving the Egyptian cooperative housing through an integrated development framework

ABSTRACT

Despite the efforts to solve housing problems in developing countries, there are still several issues with providing affordable housing sustainably because of population density and high demand. Cooperative housing is a housing type that realizes affordability and quality of life based on cooperation among members. Although Egyptian cooperative housing relies on community participation, inefficient management and unaffordable units have halted Egypt’s cooperative housing. Therefore, the State stimulates the cooperative’s performance through subsidies and research to provide an effective system for integrated cooperative housing. The purpose of this study is to investigate and propose a framework for activating an integrated cooperative housing role to enhance residents’ quality of life through an inclusive sustainable system. The research methodology is based on set of scientific research methods, using a theoretical approach to identify the relationship between cooperative housing and urban systems and to define the cooperatives as pivotal in sustainable urban development within a participatory framework. This research presents guidelines aimed at improving the concept of integrated cooperative housing. Furthermore, this research works on analytical approach by relying cooperative housing objectives with the international sustainable goals, the research analyzes various types of frameworks working on urban aspects at all building stages and non-urban aspects related to members’ financial needs, environmental and socio-economic indicators. The paper focuses on monitoring and reporting performance through an integrated system on multi-dimensional aspects deduced from models’ policies analyzed, with a particular emphasis on national and international frameworks. By enhancing national frame by merging SDGs, these guidelines aim to positively impact the Egyptian housing market, especially low-income housing.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperative housing
• affordability
• inclusive housing
• Integrated cooperative housing
• framework
• Guidelines
• sustainability reporting

Introduction

The cooperative housing is a legitimate, membership-based organization that varies in structure between nations but has common principles. Cooperative housing has a democratic imprint that aligns with the idea of ‘one person, one vote’ through this rule. It is considered a type of joint ownership where members collectively own the entire building, while everyone has the right to inhabit one housing unit [1]. A cooperative housing is a part of the global cooperative movement where it has taken many definitions and forms, adapted to suit the institutional context in which it operates, with its different legal structures and performance [2]. Cooperative movements help raise development rates in several countries worldwide at all social and economic levels. Cooperatives improve their sustainability tools to continue providing community ‎services. The research highlights the development of cooperative housing as an influential system for communities by linking its targets to international sustainability goals. Moreover, the current study analyzes the types of frameworks recommended for monitoring and reporting on cooperative housing performance, and shows some cooperative housing initiatives and models to provide helpful information. The research findings aim to extract an integrated preliminary framework for reviving and developing the Egyptian cooperative housing status. Through this hypothesis, some important terms can be presented for monitoring and achieving the principles of sustainable living in cooperative housing, including:

• Green Living in Housing Cooperatives: All environmentally friendly features are considered the green living phase that highlights the main perspective of sustainable lifestyle through a focus on the healthy community environment and forms of less resource consumption [3] to achieve environmental goals by providing integrated approach from engaging householders [4].

• Inclusive Housing: It is about giving people a living environment that supports their choices to take part fully in their preferred living environment mode to involve with the wider community in addition to maintain the links between different groups [5]. Inclusion in housing can also be considered as a kind of interaction between community partnerships as an important part of quality of life improvement processes [6]. Cooperative housing works as an ideal model for community integration that members share a common building development to achieve a balance between public, private and shared spaces at the neighborhood planning getting high-quality place.

• Housing Affordability: It is considered an important economic aspect of the housing process sustainability. Cooperative housing helps to achieve the affordable housing goal through three basic elements: enabling families to collect resources to obtain the tenure, access to appropriate financing, and reducing construction costs. Affordability is not only related to the house price; it is about obtaining finance. This requires an improved organizational and institutional framework for cooperatives to operate appropriate financing options that can meet the cooperative housing approach [7], offering opportunities to promote socio-economic and environmental development.

• Sustainable Housing Cooperative: a type of cooperatives that improve the housing energy efficiency, reduce costs for the members, in addition to increase the cooperative asset value. This genre of cooperation provides a quality of the community environment where members can live and work with appropriate conditions [8,9].

• Integrated Cooperatives: Integration in cooperative housing is achieved through the incorporation of tangible and intangible considerations and characteristics, social, cultural, administrative and environmental aspects, working to search for accurate solutions locally according to a holistic spatially focused approach [10,11].

By defining some terms of sustainability and integration, the cooperative housing system aims to achieve the highest benefit from community participation that helps in achieving sustainable development goals and plans for developing countries. One of the cooperative housing contributions in supporting the continuity of urban development can be identified through The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The following section will display the Sustainable Housing Cooperative goals according to the SDGs and New Urban Agenda (NUA), then proposing how they can measure progress toward meeting each target with indicators for cooperative housing.

Cooperative housing contribution in the sustainable development

In its fundamentals and objectives, cooperative housing works on the principle of participation in the housing continuity through the residents and their daily interactions. The cross-linking goals of the cooperatives with the modern terms of housing can be drawn by the International Cooperative Alliance with the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda to help cooperative housing around the world achieve integrated living.

Relation between housing cooperatives and the UN-SDGs

While the United Nations adopted a sustainable development agenda to achieve it in 2030 consisting of 17 common goals among all countries to mitigate them. The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) is also working to help achieve these goals, as it works toward define sustainable housing goals meet and linked with the SDG goals [12], where identifying 12 goals that could focus on producing more effectively cooperative housing, as shown in Table 1 for the Cooperative housing alliance targets according to SDGs [8]:

Table 1. Cooperative housing alliance targets according to SDGs.

SDG Goal	Cooperative housing alliance target
1: Solutions to end poverty	Poverty reduction through affordable housing cooperative provision. Increase secure housing tenure with service access.
2: Zero Hunger	Enhance food supply chain due to tenure stability in co‑op. Increase to grow food through secure tenure for coops.
4: Ensure equitable quality education	Provide to households to educate about the co-‎op movement and principles, and vocational ‎training program.
5: Achieve gender equality	Reduction of violence in cooperative housing. Increase proportion of women in leadership within CHI organizations and gender diversity acceptance in cooperative Increase formal recognition of unpaid voluntary work. Increase equal rights for all types of housing tenure.
6: Ensure clean water and sanitation availability.	Availability of clean drinking water and cleaning purposes. Increase in cooperative units’ numbers ‎equipped with effective water treatment. Measures adopted in water conservation.
7: Ensure affordable clean energy.	Availability of clean electricity for cooperative units.‎ Increase cooperatives depending ‎on clean energy ‎relative to total ‎consumption.‎ Increase energy efficiency in housing cooperative.
8: Decent work and economic growth.	Economic growth of cooperative households ‎in the least developed countries.‎ Ratio of paid employment from housing cooperatives.
10: Reduced inequality	Raise awareness of the importance of inclusionary practices and cooperative equity values.
11: Resilient and sustainable cities	Increase access to adequate and affordable safe unit with protection ‎against weather events.‎ Increase using of technologies for sustainable and low-emission construction practices in housing cooperative.
12: Responsible consumption and production	Work on energy efficiency and waste management and anti-contamination practices to reduce the cooperative carbon footprint.
13: Take urgent climate action.	Prepare to face natural ‎hazards and disasters.
15: Life on land.	Apply stewardship practices for housing coop lands.

Co-operative Housing International, https://www.housinginternational.coop/.

These targets meet the main goals of Sustainable Development Goals to achieve and implement an effective model to build Cooperative housing.

Relation between housing cooperatives and the new urban agenda

New Urban Agenda has been adopted to create partnerships, share visions and implement the affordable inclusive cooperative solutions improving the people’s housing needs through its principle which states ‘Developing and implementing urban policies at the appropriate level, including in local-national and multi-stakeholder partnerships, building integrated systems of cities and human settlements and promoting cooperation among all levels of government to enable the achievement of sustainable integrated urban development’, supporting creating links between cooperative sectors and members [13].

The seriousness of the initiative in achieving sustainable urban development and shared prosperity considering the importance of cooperative movements can be observed by monitoring the following effective implementation points through various articles, especially Article No.58 that mentioned: ‎‘We commit ourselves to promoting an enabling, fair and responsible business environment ‎based on the principles of environmental sustainability and inclusive prosperity, promoting ‎investments, innovations and entrepreneurship. We also commit ourselves to addressing the ‎challenges faced by local business communities by supporting micro-, small and medium-sized ‎enterprises and cooperatives throughout the value chain, in particular, businesses and enterprises ‎in the social and solidarity economy, operating in both the formal and informal economies.’‎, emphasizes the possibility of achieving sustainability principles through various cooperative processes that help in developing economic and social range.

By encouraging entrepreneurship and raising capitals, cooperatives contribute to the creation and growth of small size enterprises to better their socio-economic life [14]. Through Article No.107: ‘We will encourage the development of policies, tools, mechanisms and financing models that ‎promote access to a wide range of affordable, sustainable housing options, including rental and ‎other tenure options, as well as cooperative solutions such as co-housing, community land trusts ‎and other forms of collective tenure that would address the evolving needs of persons and ‎communities, in order to improve the supply of housing (especially for low-income groups), ‎prevent segregation and arbitrary forced evictions and displacements and provide dignified and ‎adequate reallocation. This will include support to incremental housing and self-build schemes, ‎with special attention to programmes for upgrading slums and informal settlements.’‎, it is possible to conclude the importance of developing policies and controls for cooperative societies that help in achieving sustainable living.

The Article No.140 indicates ‎‘We will support the development of appropriate and affordable housing finance products and ‎encourage the participation of a diverse range of multilateral financial institutions, regional ‎development banks and development finance institutions, cooperation agencies, private-sector ‎lenders and investors, cooperatives, moneylenders and microfinance banks to invest in ‎affordable and incremental housing in all its forms.’‎, explains the importance of different financing programs in supporting housing projects and working on diversifying them to meet the largest possible number of different social groups.

Indices to measure cooperative housing integration

The various indicators help the local governments of each country to measure levels of development through different factors. In this section, two indices will be reviewed that determine the cooperative housing evolution to prosperous integrated process.

Cooperative housing alliance indicators

The Co-operative Housing International (CHI) works to set determinants that help in monitoring and evaluating the sustainable development goals that share its goals with the cooperative housing, as shown in Table 2, these indicators focus on collect and disseminate information to set in order to achieve that purpose

Table 2. Cooperative housing alliance indicators.

SDG Goal	Cooperative housing alliance Indicators
No.1	Number of families accessed to affordable cooperative housing to relieve from poverty. Number of members securely and safely housed. Count of cooperatives units with access to acceptable water quality standards. Number of cooperative membership with property rights and secure ownership.
No.2	Number of residents have a sustainable diet or contributes their land to provide a fresh food system.
No.4	Number of coops providing information about the co-op movement. Number of families have access to quality schooling for children.
No.5	Number of households fleeing violence that are housed. Number of women cooperative member in leadership positions. Number of supporting policies for women. Amount of unpaid voluntary work time by gender. Number of cooperative units that adopt the voluntary work. Numbers of households escaping discrimination ‎and persecution. Count of housing cooperatives with legal ‎framework and policies support women’s ‎rights to land ownership.‎
No.6	Numbers of residents with access to clear water supplies, and effective wastewater treatment.
No.7	Numbers of cooperative houses ‎gaining access to electricity. Cooperatives proportion using clean energy relative to total consumption. Increased spending on energy-efficient property renovations. New-build coop proportion using energy-efficient ‎construction method.‎
No.8	Numbers of coops with economic well-being. Numbers of employees by housing cooperatives from all age groups. Value of employees’ equality in responsibilities and payment. Number of coops offering internships for youth.
No.10	Increase inclusive membership practices.‎ Number of units to support needs of refugees, people at risk, or indigenous ‎peoples. Number of employees doing paid work for housing coops ‎relative to the cost of living with dignity.‎
No.11	Count of flee residents from inadequate housing into cooperatives. Percentage of resilient projects for weather events. Ratio of used sustainable technologies and low-emission construction practices.
No.12	Ratio of increased renewable energy consumption. Number of coops using environmentally recycling and reusing programs. Number of cooperatives with carbon neutrality strategy.
No.13	Numbers of coops with prepared emergency plans. Number of associations with business continuity plans.
No.15	Numbers of coops creating habitats for wildlife Proportion of organically coop lands. Water conserve strategies through sustainable planting practices.

Co-operative Housing International, https://www.housinginternational.coop/.

City prosperity index

The CPI is a multidimensional index designed using the main components of the ‎New Urban Agenda, proposing a limited number of key ‎of interventions from three-pronged approaches: urban legislation, urban economy and urban planning, the index helps to make informed decisions for several ‎policies and regulations, these approaches are implemented to support governments in ‎monitoring mechanisms and reporting indicators based on six ‎dimensions for the prosperous city concept. Each dimension is ‎composed of sub-dimensions that are measured for each city [15]:

• Productivity: (Economic Strength – Employment/Unemployment Rate)

• Infrastructure Development: (Housing and Social Infrastructure, Urban mobility)

• Quality of Life: (Health, Education, Safety & Security)

• Equity and Social Inclusion: (Economic equity, social inclusion)

• Environmental Sustainability: (Air quality, waste management, energy)

• Urban Governance and Legislation: (Participation, Institutional Capacity).

These indicators help determine the levels of sustainable development in cities in general and for cooperative projects in particular by analyzing how the goals are achieved and how far they are reached. For indicators to be used and measured, the achieved set goals must be done through an effective framework. The next part of the research paper presents some frameworks for cooperative housing.

Sustainability cooperatives frameworks

This section of the research proposes a set of frameworks recommended by the international cooperative alliance (ICA) that can be used in the cooperative field generally and in the cooperative housing as a part of the cooperative movement’s sectors established to promote the development of housing, with a variety of circumstances and sectors to be appropriate, especially that there is no specific unified framework for the cooperatives, but they will be analyzed as productive organization in the community and how to evaluate them by collecting and classifying the available evidence, data and reports for quality of these projects. Most of these frameworks are used for different purposes with general scope to be more comprehensive and wider for the analysis, monitoring and reporting, targeting community developers, investors and stakeholders based on available data for developing and process integrating tracked over time.

1. AccountAbility: It is an international standard designed to support organizations in recognizing the effects of policies, decisions, procedures, products and associated performance, aimed at setting development strategies while setting goals and standards [16]. It works in the cooperatives field by providing information on the participation of stakeholders in the development plan [17].

2. B-Corporation: A for-profit organization in the United States that works on the legislation of some states in environmental and social aspects. It tracks the sustainability reports for all levels of cooperative projects [18].

3. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): a full sustainability framework incorporating social, economic, and environmental dimensions. It works on developing and preparing sustainability reports and methods of measuring their efficiency by stakeholders and organizations [19]. It is considered one of the most used initiatives by cooperatives to compare their performance with non-cooperative reporting.

4. International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRC): is a reporting initiative through several information, including financial, environmental, social and governance aspects in an integrated form, used by few co-operatives to provide integrated report structure [20].

Cooperative housing paradigms

The following section will analyze cooperative housing models, explaining how the policies can be prepared to support the cooperative community.

Sweden integrated cooperative housing paradigm

Sweden is considered one of the highest countries in the world pursuant to cooperative systems and movements, especially in the field of housing, where the proportion of cooperative housing represents 22% of the total housing sector in the country by 37% of multi-family dwellings, as shown in Figure 1, were connected to tenant-owned co-operatives serving more than a million and half inhabitants [21,22].

Figure 1. Dwellings in newly constructed multi-family buildings by type of ownership (1971–2010).

Source: Swedish official statistics, Yearbook of Housing and Building Statistics, 2012

This cooperative model has strong rights and legislation-like private property, where tenants can buy a home – that is, a share of the cooperative, in case of the housing associations or the tenant ownership act – while giving them security of tenure, the right to use a specific home and an interest in the debts and assets of the cooperative. Every tenant owner has equal voting rights. Any cooperative housing project can be established starting from three individuals or more with a registered legal entity and does not require initial capital as project start-up. The secondary co-operatives develop an innovative co-operative to be a self-sustaining entity by supporting the organizational, technical, and financial resources that strengthens co-operative associations. The advantages of Swedish cooperative housing can be enumerated through the three main points:

• Affordability model: availability of saving schemes for their members to help them purchase of their co-operative by encouraging partnerships with other housing co-ops or by being coordinated by a national organization. Municipal housing companies ‎were given the subsidy distribution authority and ‎allocation for a part of newly established cooperative housing to ‎facilitate the rental housing built make an alternative for affordable ‎housing.

• Site Efficiency: co-operative housing in Sweden sector adopted the off-site construction techniques to be assembled units, increasing construction efficiency, promoting energy efficient environments and developing innovative assembly-line building practices.

• Sustainability model: Policies for cooperative housing in Sweden are using modern technology to provide renewable energy for buildings, improve the members’ quality of life and achieve stability in the planning and production phases [23].

The Sweden quality of housing can be seen from its City prosperity index (CPI) 2015, as Stockholm reached 98% at the improved shelter in Housing infrastructure category, and about 85% in average of urban governance and Legislation category, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The top 10 city prosperity index containing Stockholm, Sweden.

Source: City Prosperity Index (CPI 2015)

There are two national secondary co-operative organizations under the control of the Swedish Central Organization of Tenant-Owner Co-operatives (SBC): HSB Riksførbund (HSB) and Riksbyggen. These have a mandate to produce and manage housing projects:

Riksbyggen (the co-operative housing organization of the Swedish trade unions)

It consists of trade union construction partnerships with union-owned construction companies. The organization worked to put policies for 2019–2021 in line with SDGs, as the construction sector negatively affects the environment in Sweden at the rate of 10% to 40%, which seek to develop the Positive Footprint Housing concept as a new building method to meet people housing needs without negatively affecting the environment. This model incorporates the sustainability aspects of socio-economic and ecological sustainability, ‎with research and education to reach the ideal housing projects. The model of Brf Viva is considered a smart application of the positive footprint housing to provide solution for small sustainable projects [24].

HSB Riksförbund (National association of tenants’ savings and building society)

The association works to integrate SDGs goals with its policies, as it adopts achieving four goals of the strategy of sustainable growth: resource efficiency, climate, sustainable services and products. They also support Goal number 5 and 7 to 13, by contributing to achieve the Swedish environmental quality objectives within the categories of good built environment, nontoxic environment and limited climate impact, through co-creation approach, integrating research and innovation into real communities, for example, HSB Living Lab that are created as small cooperative housing for students to test new technical innovations for sustainable living [25].

Through presenting the Swedish model of sustainable integrated cooperative housing, it is concluded that the success of the project depends on several important points:

• Pledge to housing policies linked to SDGs and International Cooperative Alliance.

• A full interlink between residents, designers and researchers in collaborative processes helps to develop ideas leading sustainable living.

• Develop good inclusive housing conditions and well-functioning services.

• Promote marketing of cooperative by establishing new tenant owner associations.

The Swedish cooperative movement was not limited to the local role only, but rather it established an organization called (We Effect) to help the other cooperatives in the developing countries to prepare the structure and frameworks with participatory approach from members and stakeholders designed to ensure the long-term sustainability of the process, this organization contributes to alleviating poverty and injustice for agriculture and housing sectors. One of the most important experiences that the Foundation helped develop is the Uruguayan FUCVAM model, to implement the model with financial aid in addition to support for mutual aid cooperative housing. Cooperation also took place between the two institutions to spread and support the principles of cooperative housing in most Latin America countries [26].

Uruguay cooperative housing paradigm

The first cooperative housing appeared in Uruguay in the late 1960s within the framework of a large-scale national housing program funded by the Inter-American Development Bank. The program aims to address the growing deficit in the country through various projects in which both the public and private sectors participate. These were distinguished by their high quality, low cost, and speed of completion. It has developed significantly over the years, and new and rehabilitated housing has been provided through a system of mutual aid and self-management of resources [27,28].

The cooperative housing system is based on two models: Uruguayan Federation of Mutual Aid Housing Co-operatives‎ (FUCVAM), and the Federation of Housing Cooperatives (FECOVI). FECOVI is the organization targeting the individual characteristics of middle- and low-income families, while FUCVAM is for housing cooperatives that work on the principle of mutual aid among its members, which includes families with low and informal income.

FECOVI (the co-operative housing organization of the Swedish trade unions)

The Federation is a democratic organization consisting of representatives of all its affiliated cooperatives. Its institutional objectives are defined as activating the prior savings system as a solution to the housing problem, encouraging and establishing new cooperatives housing, planning and implementing cooperative training programs, in addition to coordinating procedures with other types of cooperative organizations in strengthening cooperative principles and solving the housing shortage [26,29].

FUCVAM (Uruguayan federation of mutual aid housing co-operatives)

The Foundation works to provide support for the establishment of housing cooperatives through mutual aid, organizing cooperatives, and supporting their sustainability. In addition, it works to find financing and develop alliances among cooperatives and their members’ participation in activities and the articulation to build and manage their housing and improve their environment. ‏ [30] The FUCVAM concept aims toward sustainability, which necessitates reproducible techniques and reusable materials. The construction of the cooperative organization is based on mutual assistance and self-management to obtain decent housing [31]. This is ensured by a system that generates mechanisms to promote new cooperative groups, with the help of stakeholders, as well as the mutual relationship between the main elements that strengthen the cooperative organization [32]. Through collaboration with the Swedish Cooperation Agency (We Effect), the FUCVAM housing concept has been implemented in numerous Latin American countries since 2004. This initiative supports the growth of the cooperative movement’s social model with organizational, legal, and technical support; it is a key model for mutual aid housing cooperatives forming nationwide umbrella groups to support local cooperatives during the whole development and building phase [26].

Egypt integrated cooperative housing status

The Egyptian cooperative housing is considered one of pillars to meet the people needs in finding affordable residence for low and middle income, working under supervision of The General Authority for Construction & Housing Cooperatives (CHC) that acts to facilitate the housing projects and planning processes and provides for stakeholders the required information, aiming to be part of the Cooperative Housing International (CHI).

Co-operative housing in Egypt is ruled under Law 14 of 1981 which works to define the authorities concerned with managing cooperative operations and services needed for members and undertakes its ‎administration in accordance with cooperative principles with the aim of raising ‎the level of members economically and socially.‎ Cooperative housing projects are supported by providing subsidized lands with a value to 50% of the land price with access to state land and soft loans from the government. The law also provides for the exchange of cooperative experiences between countries, with coordination between housing cooperative activity and other types of cooperatives [33].

Recently, cooperative housing has flourished in the implementation of projects type in Egypt, which has a positive impact on the economy and contributes to achieving sustainable development goals by providing access to decent and affordable housing, obtaining State land at very low prices, assisting by soft financing and loans from the National Investment Bank at concessionary rates. The authority has planned to reestablish the cooperative housing with many directions from planning to build units at all over the country, making them integrated economic centers and stipulating new regulations to protect the system [34]. The absence of management with an updated legal framework, besides the provided small business project scale, is one of the most important weaknesses of the Egyptian cooperative system, which limits their capacity. Therefore, the Egyptian cooperatives should develop the old cooperative laws [35]. During the past years, the authority also worked in conjunction with the Ministry of Housing to study the concept of sustainability and integration in cooperative housing by holding several special conferences beneath the title of ‘Sustainable Cooperatives’ that discuss and study the Egyptian cooperative housing situation. The conferences discussed how to achieve cooperative integration through rearranging and developing mechanisms for institutional integration of cooperative activities in encouraging, supporting, legislating and funding for cooperative systems [36].

• Example: The Cooperative Housing Complex in the 6th of October city, it is one of the largest projects the authority established. Approximately, 6,000 apartments are offered in the project provides covering 109 feddans. Low-income beneficiaries are eligible for cooperative loans through the project, enabling them to pay for their apartments over 40 years, at a 7% annual interest rate. The project comprises cooperative housing units, investment housing, public spaces and services [37].

According to CPI 2013, Cairo has been recorded as a city with strong prosperity factors – second category (CPI: 0.700–0.799) that is a heterogeneous group, appearing a ‘less coordinated’ due to the standardization of institutions and legal frameworks and management practices. The report confirmed that the city needs to take steps through an integrated pathway and balanced growth with some dimensions such as the quality of life and infrastructure that housing is one of its main branches, which is progressing much faster than other equity and social inclusion [38. Cairo performs well balanced in terms of pattern of prosperity, but otherwise the weak point in the index of the city may be the environment stage in a well-balanced pattern of prosperity, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Cairo CPI dimensions.

Source: UN Habitat, State of the World’s Cities Report 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities, World Urban Forum Edition

In spite of the sustainability goals set and the eligibility criteria have been established to access a unit from cooperative housing projects, including not benefiting from any other subsidized project. However, the project may not reach its beneficiaries in the event of increased costs, which leads to unaffordable payment conditions for low-income groups.

Cooperatives are sustainable process in the long term as they work to form residents’ connection to know their needs and self-solve them through establishing facilities in their community for mobilizing and managing resources on a self-sustaining basis [10]. Integrated cooperatives may provide sustainable development by managing the natural resources while providing shelter and services to members.

Comparison between the cooperative housing models

After reviewing and studying the cooperative housing models in developing the housing cooperative toward a comprehensive sustainable system, comparison can be made between experiences through a checklist extracted from the GRI guidelines shown in Table 3, which is one of the most important evaluation methods in the cooperative field.

Table 3. Proposed checklist from GRI guidelines to compare between housing cooperative models.

GRI Guidelines for Sustainability Reporting Related to Integrated Cooperative Housing			Indicators	Applied on models
				Sweden Model	Uruguay Model	Egypt Model
Economic		Economic performance	Total coops with business continuity plans	■	■	■
		Indirect economic impact	Employment rate	■	■	■
Environmental		Materials	Number of coops using energy-efficient method	■	-	-
		Energy	Proportion of cooperatives using clean energy	■	-	-
		Biodiversity	Proportion of coop lands with organically gardens	■	-	-
		Emissions, Effluents and waste	Total coops working ‎towards ‎carbon neutrality	■	□	-
Social	Labor practices	Labor management relations	Rate of interactions between stakeholders	□	■	□
		Training and education	Total housing coops offering Internships	■	■	■
	Human rights	Non-discrimination	Members’ diversity	■	□	□
		Associations Freedom	Number of members creating the cooperative	■	■	□
	Product Responsibility	Customer health and safety, privacy	Number of residents have property rights	■	■	□
		Marketing communications	Branding and advertisements	■	■	■

■ Good status □ Moderate – Low status.

Global reporting Initiative G4, 2013.

Through studying the current situation of cooperative housing paradigms that show the extent of reaching the concept of sustainability and integration in cooperative projects to achieve international sustainable development goals, there are main points affecting the integration policies of Egyptian projects such as:

• Current legislation in the Egyptian law leads to monotonize the cooperative projects and control monopolistic policies without giving the authority to implement small cooperatives for low-income groups, which has led to transform most of these societies into real estate companies producing housing units or subdivide land.

• A weak credit system that has led to slackening in activities and support growth and development of co-operatives as a business enterprise process.

• Lack of the appropriate techniques for sustainable development, suffering from the law restrictions with ‎the absence of the sustainability framework and important expertise‎.‎

• Lack of inclusivity in the Egyptian cooperatives, given the terms and conditions only for low-income people without setting other standards to serve the other social strata.

Discussion

From an academic point of view, this research emphasized the significance of integrated cooperative housing. It analyzed the models to demonstrate how stakeholders’ engagement can be achieved to enhance the sustainable living of inhabitants through sharing performance. Some cooperatives may need to establish programs for small-enterprise projects as mentioned in the New Urban Agenda, Sweden and Uruguay models, which help to tighten the inclusivity and sustainability policies while preserving a semi-central authority to give the required support and control regionally the rules of cooperative projects. This can be achieved by transforming the urban network efficiency to meet the needs, while reducing the demand pressure through minor cooperatives.

The Egypt’s cooperative movement can achieve sustainability in housing projects by creating special programs and setting mandatory standards to establish integrated models in efficient development processes linking between all types of cooperatives without negative impact on the members. These programs can help to provide the required investments for cooperative housing development in Egypt which affect on the economic sector by providing market responsible for meeting low-income housing demands.

The integrated cooperative housing cycle should be completed with a tool of monitoring and reporting the cooperative performance according to international frameworks that serve the sustainability and integration goals. This paper has highlighted the importance of integration between tangible and intangible aspects of cooperative projects as fundamental pillars for development. Hence, a conceptual framework is proposed to guide the integrated cooperative housing in Egypt. This framework passes many steps starting with the literature review, case studies and comparison to state the current situation. Figure 4 shows that this framework includes the general goals of sustainable development for cooperative housing with their different indicators to measure the effectiveness of projects’ performance.

Figure 4. Integrated cooperative housing framework guidelines.

Source: Researchers

Furthermore, the research proposes guidelines for creating Egyptian integrated cooperative housing, realizing communities’ sustainable development goals. The guidelines can be useful to the cooperative members to develop through a systematic process to organize. These guidelines can be divided into five inter-related sections:

A- Legislative and administrative interventions:

• Giving freedom and responsibility for associations managed by the General Authority for CHC to advice and guide associations, and monitor projects’ performance.

• Enabling environment and institutional, legislative and regulatory structure.

• Achieving integration opportunities by exploring new types for cooperatives.

• Creating integrated database of all cooperative associations to evaluate performance.

B – Economic interventions:

• Providing affordable lands for ‎concession right to encourage self-aid cooperative housing, and affording other different types of cooperative tenure.

• Providing integrated projects with opportunities through different cooperative sectors.

• Collaborating between public and private sector to invest in cooperative housing.

• Establishing cooperative bank, a financial source to improve cooperatives’ economic performance, support and offer services to low income groups with low interest rates.

C – Social interventions:

• Sustainable living and social equity by adopting the cooperative movement principles.

• Achieving the sustainability by social justice to make population distribution balance.

• Raising awareness of cooperative thoughts and creating training for members.

D – Environmental intervention:

• Using modern technologies in power extraction by applying sustainable concept.

• Reducing energy consumption while encouraging the renewable energy use.

E – Urban interventions:

• The participatory principle between all stakeholders must be carried out before and during construction, including setting a code with clear responsibility distributions.

• Modifying designs to fit with the concept of integration, taking into ‎account the site nature and residence traditions of each region.‎

• Attempting to build small cooperative communities that help to develop faster or dividing project to sectors related to a central advisory administration.

A set of recommendations could be drawn up that contribute to develop the integrated cooperative housing:

• Supporting linkages between all cooperative sectors as key pillars of development.

• Setting local indicators that follow the international guidelines to monitor and report ‎the cooperative housing, realizing their effectiveness ‎impact on the SDG vision.

• Re-classifying of the inclusive cooperative housing projects for all strata, while establishing a participatory framework among the ‎inhabitants and the authorities.

Through the guidelines, it is possible to conclude an initial framework that works to evaluate, monitor, and prepare reports that help produce integrated cooperative housing in points derived from several related frameworks, shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Set of standards for an initial framework for an integrated housing cooperative.

Source: Researchers

Conclusion

The literature review reflects the possibility cooperative housing movements toward applicable results for an integrated sustainable system that can be achieved by creating a suitable framework and guidelines with some indicators to measure the integrity and comprehensiveness of this effective urban housing system.

It is necessary at this stage to consider the measurable indicators for the established integrated system of housing cooperatives to monitor the progress. Accordingly, some of points of integrated cooperative housing concept can be inferred at all levels:

• At the administrative level, the study clarified the necessity of distributing roles between the local cooperative authority, public and private sector, organizing and determining the administrative status and giving the ability to decide. It is also possible to develop programs that address sustainable development.

• At socio-economic level, it can find the importance of members’ participation at all stages of planning and implementation processes, as shown in FUCVAM/We Effect model and mentioned in the New Urban Agenda articles. The study pointed to the necessity of financial activities in providing types of tenure, as well as using regional resources while trying to diversify investment fields and support sustainable living needs.

• At the environmental level, the research shows especially in the Swedish cooperative housing model, the importance of finding an integrated system for energy consumption and recycling materials, while introducing appropriate technology for cooperative projects.

• At urban level where it works to relieve pressure on major communities with establishing small cooperative projects as shown in Riksbyggen small apartments for members or HSB living lab model for students to accommodate housing needs.

The study clarified the extent ties between the principles of integrated cooperative housing to the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda by presenting the objectives and indicators common points of each with international cooperative alliance. As per the presented models, cooperative housing projects are working to achieve their principles that meet the SDGs concerning their needs through different frameworks that help to provide a solution for affordable housing inclusive for all social strata.

This cooperative process can be applied in many other rapidly urbanizing countries with housing demand escalation by playing a role among important challenges in alleviating urban poverty and tenure insecurity, to meet many of the SDGs, by creating a local guidelines related to the international cooperative frameworks that promote self-sustaining communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).