“Not in my Stairway”: How do Neighbours Cope with P2P Rental in Housing Cooperatives?

This research reports on neighbours’ responses and subsidiary regulative approaches to peer accommodation rental in Danish housing cooperatives. One-third of the residential stock in Copenhagen entails housing cooperatives (DST-Analyse 2018), offering a unique opportunity for less affluent social groups to enter the housing market. Since the withdrawal of government subsidies in 2004, housing cooperatives are struggling to maintain a financially viable business model, which has led to a more lenient attitude towards members subletting apartments. However, subletting on short-term rental platforms is at odds with communitarian practices and traditions of cooperatives, and puts social cohesion, perceived safety and trust between neighbours at risk. Based on qualitative interviews and questionnaires distributed to members of housing cooperatives in fashionable Airbnb-neighbourhoods (Østerbro and Christianshavn), we explore how mediatized, anticipated and real incidents divide peer rental hosts and their neighbours. Perspectivated through theoretical frameworks on neighbor conflicts and NIMBYism, our findings reveal how new practices of neighbourhood activism and vigilantism (individuals intervening on behalf of the tenants) challenge the social cohesion and operation of housing cooperatives.