POC Voisinerie of Wazemmes
A Highly Social Public Housing system
“It’s the Public Housing unit of the future!” for Laurent Courouble, from ‘Compagnie des Tiers-Lieux’, that’s to say how to combine community entertainment and inclusion of the vulnerable, the ageing and the disabled, all thanks to a social utility service at the ground floor …
‘La Voisinerie’, a third place coffee-canteen-concierge service
The implementation of collaboration depends on ‘La Voisinerie’, a service at the building’s ground floor, an interface between the social housing unit’s community and the inhabitants of the working class neighbourhood surrounding Wazemmes.
It has everything needed to make connections, which is generally missing in conventional Public Housing. To begin with, a “neighbourhood canteen” to grab a bite to eat in a family atmosphere or have a drink with neighbours. This small neighbourhood restaurant targets locals but also people casually coming from afar. Regulars can find 5 € meal deals fitting the needs of the community.
This third place coffee-canteen inhabits a multifunctional space at the building’s ground floor that hosts monthly services for residents such as a hair salon, sewing workshops and all kinds of initiatives carried out by the community associations.
At the heart of Maïté Malet’s system, there is a social entrepreneur who carries ‘La Voisinerie’. She acts as a concierge-animator who brings life to collaboration in the neighbourhood, stimulates the exchange of small services between neighbours, merchants and non-merchants such as handy-work, in order to strengthen local employment.
The layout of the place is the result of a close collaboration between the project coordinators of ‘La Voisinerie’Maïté Malet and Laurent Courouble, and the furniture designer Damien Bertin. The layout of ‘La Voisinerie’has been designed to encourage the gathering of people with diverse aspirations, whose first common point is the inhabitance of the same neighbourhood. Without a specific target group, with a given age, taste or purchasing power, ‘La Voisinerie’aims to be inclusive even with its furniture. In a warm and cheerful setting combining rough lumber with bright colours, the layout portrays the good spirit and generous atmosphere that Maïté Malet breathes into this living space.
The rest comes from Emmaüs for the family feels. ‘La Voisinerie’just opened in December 2019 and is waiting for the sunny days to invest time and take advantage of the unit’s shared garden. Its walls are already covered with children’s drawings, posters and messages that cheerfully add to the current layout, each one capturing ‘La Voisinerie’in its own way.
Collaboration in the project’s DNA
If this unit is promising in terms of collaboration between residents and in the neighbourhood, it is also because collaboration has been in the project’s DNA of since the start …
At first, two adjacent plots are brought together in the Wazemmes neighbourhood, one originally owned by the CCAS, the other by the City of Lille. A joint project therefore in collaboration with support structures for people with mental or physical disabilities (APF-France Handicap and ASRL), Générations et Cultures (an intergenerational resource center that innovates and affirms family, social and generational solidarity processes, in which neighbourhood relations play an essential role), SIA the social landlord, the CCAS of the City of Lille and the APES for solidarity entrepreneurship. The expectations of the specification are consistent with, for example, shared accommodation, allowing elderly people or young disabled people to stay close to their family housing, or a student to cohabit with an elderly person.
A call for expression of interest is made in order to explore the best way to meet these expectations: third place, resource center, object library, tea room, cooperative coffee … Before making a decision, the 11 nominated candidates are trained as start-ups in thematic meetings about the Social and Solidarity Economy, disability areas, the medical-social sector, intergenerational issues, merchant and animator functions, all to gain maximum knowledge and tools before starting.
Finally, the invention of a “Commercial Social Utility Lease”, with in particular a rent set in accordance to the compliance to societal utility criteria.
To go back to Laurent Courouble’s exclamation, the design of the Public Housing unit of the future, if it requires the magic of a third place like ‘La Voisinerie’and the talent of its concierge-animator, it is also the result of the design of a system that brings together all the players since the start and throughout the project.
Photo credit : Damien Bertin, La Voisinerie, Lille, 2020.
- Holders : Malet Maïté
- Designer : Bertin Damien (NEMUS)
- Stakeholders : La Ville de Lille, son CCAS, Sia Habitat ,APF France Handicap, l’ASRL, l’APES, Laurent Courouble (Co-Porteurs).
- Photo credits : Damien Bertin et François Jégou, La Voisinerie, Lille, 2020.