The housing crisis - affecting many cities across our regions - is driving the demand for ‘more’ affordable housing. However, the construction of new housing often conflicts with cities’ sustainability ambitions and circular economy strategies, including the preservation of open space and the reduction of resource consumption.
At the same time, the urgent need to renovate the existing housing stock to meet climate targets, including achieving energy neutrality by 2050, presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The Community Land Trust (CLT) model, known in France as Organismes de Foncier Solidaire (OFS), offers an innovative and hybrid form of ownership that is particularly well suited to this approach.
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In a refurbishment-based CLT model, the community secures ownership of the land while existing homes are renovated and improved, ensuring that public investment creates permanently affordable housing rather than future real-estate speculation.
The partnership is observing growing interest in this innovative model among communities and public authorities, as well as significant potential for CLTs to accelerate a just urban transition by promoting energy renovations while expanding the stock of affordable housing.
Through the UpCycling Trust project, we aim to explore how the combination of (1) a comprehensive circular renovation approach and (2) the decommodification of housing (removing housing from speculative market pressures) can contribute to more sustainable and affordable cities in a scalable, systemic and thus lasting way.
Moreover, by placing local communities at the heart of the model, we seek to strengthen the resilience, inclusiveness, and long-term sustainability of our cities.
(Side question. Why are city centres more affordable than their suburbs in some cities, while in others the opposite is true? The answer lies in the balance between accessibility, housing quality, environmental amenities, income distribution, and historical urban development patterns. Affordability is therefore not simply a matter of distance from the city centre, but of how different households value location, space, and quality of life.)
The Upcycling Trust offers however more than a technical fix for Europe’s aging buildings, it’s a call to rethink how we direct public investment, manage land and property and protect the right to decent, affordable housing in a changing climate. By focusing on existing buildings and long-term affordability, the model challenges the logic of short-term retrofits that drive up housing costs or push people out.
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While energy consumption often dominates public debate, roughly 40% of the climate impact associated with buildings is linked to the materials we extract, manufacture, transport, install, replace, and dispose of throughout their life cycle.
Affordability and sustainability are often presented as competing objectives. Circular solutions are perceived as expensive, while affordable housing is too often associated with choosing the cheapest option available. According to Prof. Waldo Galle, this is precisely where the problem begins.
The danger of urgent, yet "cheap and dirty" refurbishments.
"Under pressure to renovate quickly and cheaply, we risk creating the waste streams and affordability problems of the next generation."
When refurbishments are driven only by short-term budgets, buildings may become more energy-efficient today, but they often remain dependent on short-lived materials, difficult maintenance, and future replacement cycles. The result is a renovation that appears affordable at first, yet creates additional costs, waste, and environmental impacts for the next generation.
Life-cycle thinking instead of €/m² thinking.
"As long as we continue to make decisions about renovation based on budgets per square metre, we will never start thinking in the long term."
A truly affordable renovation therefore requires a longer view. It should not only consider the cost of the intervention itself, but also the cost of maintaining, adapting, repairing, and refurbishing the building over the decades that follow. In that sense, affordability is not about minimising the initial investment, but about reducing the total cost of ownership throughout a building's life.
The hidden material footprint of renovation.
"Before looking for new materials, we should learn to appreciate the buildings, spaces and materials we already have."
This is where circularity becomes essential. Circular renovation starts from what already exists: the buildings, spaces, materials, and knowledge that are already present. It seeks to preserve what still has value, reuse materials where possible, and introduce new components in ways that allow future repair, adaptation, and reuse. Rather than creating waste for future generations, it keeps materials in circulation for as long as possible. At the same time, it reduces the need for extraction, replacement, demolition, and reconstruction, helping to keep future renovation costs manageable.
Need for new forms of capacity and governance.
"We need to spend less energy controlling singular objectives but more energy building the capacity to act and innovate together."
Too much time and energy are often spent on protecting individual objectives, whether reducing carbon emissions, preserving open space, controlling budgets, or meeting regulatory requirements. Each objective may be valid on its own, yet when pursued in isolation they can make integrated solutions more difficult. As a result, many organisations remain focused on short-term control rather than long-term action. Enabling circular and affordable renovation therefore requires investment in people as much as in buildings: training professionals, public officials, community organisations, and residents to work across disciplines and develop a shared understanding of housing, materials, finance, and stewardship.
Future affordability through future adaptability.
"I never try to convince people to renovate their homes. I try to understand what matters to them first. It evolves all the time."
Circularity is therefore not only about environmental performance. It is also about residents needs, today and in the future. Buildings that are designed to evolve, adapt, and be refurbished more easily will require fewer resources, less labour, and lower costs later. They are better prepared for changing needs and changing circumstances.
Circularity as both a material and governance concept.
"Circularity is not only a material concept. It is also a social concept built on the collective knowledge, care, and labour of the community."
The CLT model plays a crucial role in this transition. By taking land out of speculation and placing it in long-term stewardship, it could create the conditions for decisions that look beyond immediate returns. In this sense, circularity is not only a material strategy. It could also be a governance strategy, one that enables communities, public authorities, and residents to think and act across generations rather than market fluctuations.
"Circularity is not about materials having a second life. Circularity is about creating the conditions in which buildings, materials and communities can continue to care for one another over time."
Ultimately, affordability and circularity are not competing objectives. Both depend on the same principle: taking a long-term view. The UpCycling Trust project explores how Community Land Trusts can provide the governance, stewardship, and collective capacity needed to make that long-term perspective a practical reality.
More can be read in the PhD research of Margaux Lespagnard: Equitable Housing in a Circular Economy.
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The refurbishment-based CLT model, shows what’s possible when renovation is not treated as an isolated construction task, but as part of a wider shift toward social and environmental resilience, led by communities, supported by public institutions and grounded in long-term stewardship.
If we are serious about delivering a just transition, we must move beyond generic policy targets and embrace locally rooted, people-centred solutions like Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and Organismes de Foncier Solidaire (OFSs). These approaches already exist, what’s needed now is the will to support them, align them with local, regional, national and EU frameworks, and scale them responsibly. Only by bridging climate goals with housing justice can we deliver a future that is sustainable, equitable and truly inclusive, one renovation at a time.
To give shape to their shared principles, the project partners co-created a manifesto: a collective document that reflects the values guiding their work. It is meant as an invitation to others who wish to reimagine renovation in ways that are both just and sustainable.