The services for people experiencing homelessness often focus on covering their most basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. The Lazare co-housing project stems from the recognition of homelessness is not limited to a lack of material goods but also a damaged sense of dignity and visibility. Lazare maintains and develops solidarity-based co-housing initiatives between young professionals aged 25-35 and people experiencing homelessness or highly precarious living conditions. As an alternative to larger shelters, Lazare homes are of ordinary size and may usually house between 6 and 12 people. Every house is equipped with individual rooms and a common kitchen, living room, and bathroom. The homes are run on principles of self-organization and responsibility and each house residents have responsibility for all daily activities for example to clean and buying groceries. It is a good social exclusion by homeless people. This project is presently found in many cities across France. It is also being established in Switzerland and in Mexico well.

Incremental informal settlement upgrading projects start with empowering the community members to do community enumeration, facilitate dialogue between the community and the local government and to engage the community in custom-made participatory action planning and help the community to establish a structure for their self-representation. Recently I came across a very inspiring initiative in Central Europe: the MOBA Housing Network is a regional cooperation between brave new cooperative housing initiatives from Prague to Budapest to Zagreb in a region where the word cooperative still has bad connotations from the Communist past. At policy level, the Warsaw Revitalisation Programme for 2014-2020 recently dedicated 4% of the total project budget to ensure over 7 years the participation of civil society in the design and implementation of the programme. This is a best practice of how you can make community-led housing financially sustainable.