Croatia
MOBA Accelerator liberates private wealth, testing an ecosystem where capital flows through communities rather than markets. Each euro cycles through cooperative rents, powering the next community-owned housing project.
Design & Implementation
1 - 6 months
$30,000.00
Last update: October 05, 2023
Across Central and South-Eastern Europe (CSEE), housing has become one of the clearest mirrors of inequality. In our cities, homes are treated as financial assets rather than safe places to live and come together. Speculative real estate and unregulated rental markets are driving prices beyond reach while wealth concentrates in the hands of a few. The promise of home ownership has turned into debt servitude, and the public sector has withdrawn from its role as a guarantor of the right to housing. What used to be a public good has turned into a speculative asset class, a mechanism for transferring public wealth into private profit.
Over the past decade, housing prices in CSEE have grown at double or even triple the pace of wages. Between 2015 and 2023, average housing prices rose by over 80%, while median wages increased by less than 40%. In cities like Budapest, Zagreb, or Belgrade, the rise has exceeded 100%, making them among the fastest-growing housing markets in Europe (IMF, Addressing Housing Affordability in Croatia, 2024; BIS Residential Property Prices Overview, 2025).
At the same time, more than 35% of households in the region spend over 40% of their disposable income on housing—a level the EU defines as “housing cost overburden.” For low-income families and young people, that figure surpasses 50% (Eurostat, Housing cost overburden rate, 2025). Meanwhile, the supply of public and social housing in most CSEE countries has dropped to below 2% of total housing stock, compared to over 16% in Western Europe (PH4.2 Social Rental Housing Stock, OECD Affordable Housing Database, 2024). This dramatic gap reveals how the dismantling of public housing systems has left the region almost entirely dependent on the private market.
What these numbers conceal are the human consequences: young people leaving the region because they cannot imagine stable housing; families trapped in intergenerational debt; seniors unable to heat or maintain their homes; and communities eroded by speculative urban development. Across CSEE's capitals, urban cores have been hollowed out and transformed into investment portfolios. The region is experiencing not just a housing crisis but a crisis of belonging.
This situation is not accidental, but the product of a decades-long process of financialisation. After the transition in the 1990s, CSEE countries underwent rapid privatisation of public assets, including housing. In the name of efficiency and growth, ownership was transferred to private hands, while financial institutions and speculative investors filled the space once occupied by public responsibility.
Financialisation has turned homes into commodities and citizens into financial subjects. Mortgage markets expanded, credit became a substitute for wages, and owning property became synonymous with security. Yet, for many, this “ownership society” led to indebtedness and precarity. In cities where foreign investors and domestic elites now dominate the rental and development markets, housing has become a vehicle for storing and multiplying private wealth, rather than for meeting human needs.
This dynamic deepens the broader pattern of wealth inequality. Across CSEE, the richest 10% own more than 60% of total wealth, while the bottom half owns less than 10%. Housing is the primary medium of this imbalance: those who inherited property or entered the market early have seen their assets multiply, while the rest are excluded or forced into exploitative renting. Wealth inequality is no longer just about income; it is spatial, generational, and architectural. (World Inequality Database, Wealth share of the richest 10 percent – Our World in Data, 2023; OECD, Society at a Glance 2024 – Incomes and Wealth Inequalities; Eurofound, A Picture of Wealth Inequality across EU Member States, 2025)
The impact radiates far beyond individual households. Housing precarity undermines social mobility, mental health, family formation, and demographic stability. It reinforces gender and class divides - women, single parents, and Roma communities are disproportionately affected. In rural areas, depopulation accelerates as younger generations migrate toward unaffordable cities or abroad. In cities, gentrification displaces long-term residents, erases local economies, and replaces diversity with speculation.
The erosion of housing as a collective resource is also an erosion of democracy. When citizens lose control over the spaces where they live, they lose agency over their lives. The right to housing is the foundation of civic participation: without a stable home, there is no stable citizenship.
Despite these trends, public institutions in CSEE have largely failed to develop systemic responses. Housing policies remain fragmented, often focused on ownership incentives rather than collective or rental solutions. Financial institutions refuse to lend to community-led initiatives because there are no precedents or recognised collateral models. Governments cite a lack of budget and legal frameworks as justification for inaction, while EU funds flow has mostly been invested in energy efficiency or infrastructure, not affordability or cooperative models on an adequate scale.
This creates a policy vacuum in which communities are left to self-organise, but without access to capital, their potential remains trapped. Innovative projects exist in isolation, unable to scale or connect into a broader movement.
The financialisation of housing is not just a housing issue; it’s a symptom of a broken wealth system. Capital no longer flows where it’s needed but where it can multiply fastest. Housing reveals how wealth extraction and inequality reproduce themselves across generations. Reclaiming housing as a social good, therefore, means reclaiming the possibility of redistribution as a systemic act, not a philanthropic exception.
In this sense, the housing crisis in CSEE is both local and universal. It shows what happens when global finance meets post-socialist fragility—when the promise of the free market collides with the right to a home. The result is a region that exports its youth, imports its landlords, and internalises inequality.
Behind these structures are stories of people pushed to the margins: / Students sharing overcrowded flats or facing eviction from dormitories that become commercial hostels. / Workers spending half their income on rent in cities where wages stagnate. / Parents choosing between heating and food. / Communities losing shared spaces as speculation erases local identity.
The psychological toll is immense—a sense that security and dignity have become luxuries. Housing is no longer a place to build a life but a battlefield of survival. This loss of stability feeds political disillusionment and the rise of reactionary narratives that exploit economic despair.
Yet, in the cracks of this system, new forms of resistance and experimentation are emerging. Across Europe, and increasingly in CSEE, cooperatives, community land trusts, and solidarity-based funds are reclaiming housing as a collective right. MOBA Housing SCE, a European cooperative (incorporated in 2020 in Croatia) uniting housing initiatives from Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Czechia and beyond, is part of this wave.
These movements show that another economy is possible: one based on mutualism rather than speculation, shared ownership rather than extraction, and solidarity rather than accumulation. But for these initiatives to grow, they need access to financial tools that align with their values—tools that redistribute wealth rather than reproduce inequality.
The MOBA Accelerator was initiated precisely to fill this gap. It is a community-owned, revolving fund that starts by channeling liberated private wealth into cooperative housing. Instead of relying on banks or state subsidies, it aims to build its own ecosystem of solidarity-based finance—democratic, transparent, and regenerative.
The MOBA Accelerator is more than a funding tool; it is an experiment in rewriting the operating system of finance. Its potential impact reaches beyond individual housing projects:
It builds collective ownership, reducing inequality and precarity.
It creates a proof of concept for cooperative finance in the region.
It reframes giving as liberation rather than charity.
It builds a culture of redistribution, reconnecting personal wealth to public good.
It inspires replication, offering a practical model for other communities.
By testing this approach in the context of the Hacking Wealth Challenge, MOBA aims to generate concrete evidence that wealth can circulate differently—that redistribution can be designed, tracked, and celebrated as part of a new economy of solidarity.
The housing crisis in Central and South-Eastern Europe is not just a failure of policy—it is the logical outcome of a wealth system that extracts rather than regenerates. Every home sold to speculation is a piece of democracy lost. Every cooperative home built is a piece regained.
Our hack is simple but radical: to reroute the flow of wealth. Through the MOBA Accelerator, we will test whether private capital can be liberated to serve communities instead of markets. If successful, this experiment will not only finance homes— it will prototype a new logic of ownership, proving that redistribution can be systemic, participatory, and permanent.
The MOBA Accelerator is a rebel fund—a revolving financial instrument that redistributes wealth by channelling it into cooperative, community-owned housing projects. It is designed and owned by MOBA Housing SCE, a European cooperative of grassroots housing initiatives from Central and South-Eastern Europe.
The Accelerator starts from transforming one-time donations into regenerative capital that circulates indefinitely: each euro contributes to housing development, returns via cooperative rents, and is reused for the next project, multiplying its social impact in perpetuity.
It transforms redistribution from a charitable gesture into a systemic tool. It is designed to bridge the prevailing financing gap for community-led cooperative housing and to demonstrate the model's impact and scalability. Getting to the MOBA Accelerator’s first million is our sprint. Our starting point is the premise that liberated private capital can unlock a revolving, solidarity-based infrastructure for the right to housing. Once this foundation is proven, we will activate additional mechanisms—including cooperative shares and other tools—to grow and sustain the model.
Through the Hacking Wealth Challenge, we will run a six-month sprint to test how private wealth can be liberated, activated, and tracked for social use. The sprint focuses on three hypotheses:
1. There are wealthholders ready to redistribute capital once they see transparent, systemic alternatives.
2. Narratives that reframe giving as liberation, rather than charity, can unlock dormant resources.
3. Transparent, feedback-driven financial tools can build trust and sustain the circulation of redistributed wealth.
The Sprint
Our six-month sprint will test and iterate on the model through four stages:
1. Mapping wealthholders
We will identify and profile up to 100 wealthholders, intermediaries, and advisors across Europe who are open to redistributive giving. This mapping will build on existing solidarity networks, family foundations, and progressive finance circles.
Learning goal: understand motivations, barriers, and the emotional language around redistribution.
Output: database of 50+ aligned wealthholders.
2. Narrative and campaign design
Based on the initial mapping and profiling, we will co-create stories that position giving as an act of wealth liberation, redirecting dormant capital toward collective ownership. The campaign will blend emotional storytelling and evidence-based argumentation, showcasing existing MOBA members and their housing initiatives.
Learning goal: identify which messages generate curiosity and trust.
Output: donor engagement pathway and narrative package.
3. Refinement and outreach
Using feedback from pilot donors and allied experts, we will refine the outreach strategy, test donation pathways and operationalise a donation mechanism. Five to ten pilot donors will participate in testing, from first contact to final contribution.
Learning goal: map the decision journey from awareness to action.
Output: validated engagement process and giving pathway prototype.
4. Building the wealth liberation toolkit
We will turn our process, findings, and tested instruments into an open-source toolkit—a practical guide for others to replicate the approach.
Learning goal: make wealth liberation accessible and repeatable.
Output: “Wealth Liberation Toolkit” publicly shared and presented through public online sessions from June 2026.
The first proof of concept
The first project to be supported through the Accelerator is the student housing cooperative in Budapest, organised by students from the College for Advanced Social Theory who face eviction from their dormitory in the Summer of 2026. The building they plan to renovate (project value: 1,200,000 EUR) will house 40 students in a collectively owned cooperative.
This will be the first demonstration of the Accelerator’s ability to enable the creation of a permanent, community-owned housing asset in the region. An anonymous donor has already provided the first 100,000 EUR to the fund, confirming that the model works—we now aim to systematise and scale this pathway.
Methodology and learning framework
Our approach follows an agile, open-source learning logic:
Phase: Mapping
Hypothesis: Wealthholders exist who are open to redistribution
Test: Create a database and test approach
Expected Output: Map of 50+ aligned wealthholders
Phase: Narrative Design
Hypothesis: New language can reframe giving as liberation
Test: Prototype stories and visuals
Expected Output: Donor package
Phase: Outreach
Hypothesis: Personalised contact through trusted intermediaries builds trust
Test: 10 pilot donors engaged
Expected Output: Refined outreach strategy
Phase: Giving Pathways
Hypothesis: Transparency and feedback reinforce trust
Test: Pilot giving process and tracking
Expected Output: Operational donation mechanism
Phase: Tool Sharing
Hypothesis: Knowledge sharing multiplies impact
Test: Document and publish toolkit
Expected Output: Open-source Wealth Liberation Toolkit
The process will be coordinated by MOBA’s Accelerator, Communications, and Fundraising working groups, with support from Cooperative for Ethical Financing (Croatia) and external ethical wealth management experts.
We will track both quantitative and qualitative results: number of donors reached, total redistributed capital, and learning narratives about motivation, trust, and resistance. Our impact framework combines metrics from the Economy for the Common Good and New European Bauhaus methods to capture both social and ethical value.
Why now
The gap between private wealth accumulation and social need has never been wider. Traditional philanthropy perpetuates donor–beneficiary hierarchies; mainstream finance rewards speculation. The MOBA Accelerator tests a third way—an ecosystem where wealth circulates through communities rather than markets.
Instead of waiting for governments or banks, we are demonstrating that wealth redistribution can be a community-driven act of systemic change.
1. €1M liberated wealth channeled into the Accelerator
In its first operational stage, the MOBA Accelerator aims to mobilise €1 million by converting dormant capital into an active, reusable community-owned resource. The Budapest student cooperative housing project will serve as a proof of concept that private wealth can circulate for social use and help drive breakthroughs towards systemic change, beyond philanthropy or profit. Each euro will be revolved across multiple projects, multiplying its social impact through the cooperative model. By demonstrating measurable redistribution at this scale, the Accelerator will challenge existing narratives about wealth, ownership, and responsibility in Central and South-Eastern Europe.
Expected effect: a working demonstration that community-governed capital can be both regenerative and transparent-setting a precedent for public-policy innovation and civic finance models in the region.
2. 50+ wealthholders mapped; 10 engaged in redistributive giving.
Through systematic mapping and outreach, we will identify and profile at least 100 wealthholders, intermediaries, and advisors across Europe who are open to rethinking the role of their assets. From this group, at least 20-30 will engage through an exchange about the project, and from this group, 5-10 will actively engage in redistributive giving, testing transparent and participatory mechanisms of wealth liberation. Beyond numbers, this network represents an emerging community of practice around ethical wealth and systemic redistribution. The learnings from their engagement—motivations, trust triggers, and emotional barrier—will form a knowledge base for scaling redistributive finance.
Expected effect: early formation of a European network of “wealth hackers” experimenting with cooperative redistribution and non-extractive finance.
3. A replicable governance model for community-owned finance (the Accelerator):
The MOBA Accelerator will develop and test a governance model for community-owned finance, rooted in transparency, democratic decision-making, and solidarity-based accountability. The model will outline the procedures for fund allocation, revolving mechanisms, and decision-making, ensuring that wealth redistribution remains ethical, inclusive, and regenerative. This model will serve as a template for other cooperatives and solidarity funds seeking to build autonomous financial ecosystems. In doing so, it will bridge the gap between activism and institutional finance, turning redistribution into an organised, scalable practice.
Expected effect: a transferable governance model adopted and adapted by at least three peer organisations by 2027.
4. 40 students housed through the first student housing cooperative project in Hungary:
The first project launched through the Accelerator will address the urgent need for affordable, collectively owned student housing in Budapest, where rents now discourage young people from accessing higher education. The cooperative will house 40 students and also provide space for local solidarity-economy organisations. As Hungary’s pioneering student housing cooperative, it will stand as a living prototype of how redistributed wealth can directly respond to a community's needs and (re)produce stable, equitable, and inclusive urban futures.
Expected effect: a visible and replicable proof that liberated private wealth can transform exclusion into belonging by creating long-term, community-owned housing that anchors affordability, solidarity, and inclusion in one of Europe’s fastest-gentrifying urban contexts.
5. Public sessions reaching 10+ movements.
The Accelerator’s process and results will be shared through public sessions engaging around 10 movements and practitioner groups active in community finance, solidarity economy, and alternative ownership. A “Wealth Liberation Toolkit” capturing the tested methods and practical insights from the experiment will be published open-source for these movements to explore replication or adaptation in their own contexts. By opening its methodology to peers, MOBA ensures that the learning extends beyond its own network—supporting collective reflection, mutual inspiration, and the gradual emergence of a shared language for redistributive finance in the region.
Expected effect: strengthened collaboration among 10 pioneering movements using the toolkit to prototype their own wealth-liberation approaches and expand the reach of community-owned finance across Central and South-Eastern Europe.
Systemic goal: permanently decommodify housing and create a replicable model for redistributive, community-based finance.
The Accelerator creates a collectively owned financing model by transforming private wealth into a revolving fund to kickstart and scale-up cooperative and community-led housing projects in the CSEE region. We are hacking the system by offering a fund accessible to all groups working on collectively owned housing projects that are unable to access traditional bank loans. Each contribution becomes regenerative capital—reused, not extracted—proving that redistribution can be institutionalised as a democratic practice rather than a one-off act of philanthropy.
By demonstrating that wealth can circulate through communities instead of markets, the Accelerator provides a replicable model for policy innovation and civic finance — one that aligns ethical wealth use with social infrastructure and long-term affordability
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