When community action is matched with local democratic powers we can halt big developers building second homes for wealthy visitors – as the resident-led St Ives neighbourhood plan has shown – and boost affordable developments that meet the needs of local people – as proposed by the StartHaringey group in north London.
At the New Economics Foundation we’re working on scaling up the possibilities for community-led housing. We are furthering the case for large scale, democratically run social housing models, such as renters cooperatives, and the rolling out of ownership models that offer long term security but with less debt, such as community land trust homes and mutual home ownership schemes.
With levels of home ownership at an all-time low, the promise of right to buy to give more people a share in the nation’s property wealth has failed dramatically. In fact, in the midst of today’s housing crisis, people in all tenures are losing what control they had over their homes and the areas in which they live.
The loss of social housing puts those who cannot afford to buy at the mercy of private landlords, with weak protections against eviction or rent hikes. Even those who own a home are not really in control. Home ownership does not mean safety, security or control if you find yourself unable to pay the mortgage, or in negative equity.
Not just individually, but as a society we’ve lost control of our housing system. With the house price gap between regions growing bigger since the Brexit vote, and a London-driven housing bubble looming over the wider economy, this is the time to ask: what would real control look like over how we do housing?
Some communities affected by the housing crisis are managing to change how it affects people in their area. We could learn from their achievements in seizing back some control.
Groups such as like Focus E15, Cressingham Gardens People’s Plan and the Butterfields Estate residents, who have proposed alternative plans for preserving and improving their homes, demonstrate the resilience and ingenuity of London tenants threatened with eviction.
Another example is St Ives’ prohibition on building second homes, which shows a commitment by the community to prioritise local need over wealth from holiday makers. And the building of affordable homes through urban community land trusts – such as developments going up in Liverpool, Bournemouth, Bristol and Leeds this year – shows demand for models of ownership that allow people long term security in a home, without the expectation of rising prices. It is this price expectation that has been turning homes into assets for 40 years.
But endeavours like these are up against it. The soaring value of land, particularly in cities, skews the wider market and encourages developers to hoard sites while prices climb.
At the New Economics Foundation we are pursuing routes to enable communities, in partnership with local institutions and civic powers, to take back some control over housing locally. The aim is to empower more people to demand and create housing projects that really meet real local need. What could this look like?
In Wales the government is working in partnership with the Welsh Cooperative Centre and Confederation of Cooperative Housing to build homes led by local communities that are cooperatively managed.
Across the rest of the UK, community-led projects have not yet gained similar levels of political championship, but are nonetheless catching the attention of many local authorities struggling to provide affordable homes and protect them from being lost to private landlords through right to buy.
One way non-profit and low cost housing can work for all types of locations and people is to keep as much land as possible in public or community ownership. As public land is sold off, we’re working to improve local knowledge and interest in sites we already own, and devising ways to level the playing field of who gets access. Without action, private developers backed by big finance will continue to win.
The housing crisis will not be solved by communities going it alone, but bolstering and rolling out their achievements and building partnerships with powers locally, are important steps to be taken now.
Alice Martin is Housing and work lead at the New Economics Foundation
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