Communities are innovating to fix the housing crisis

Artist’s impression of new housing being built on the former St Clement’s hospital site in Mile End, London, of which 23 homes will be a community land trust

Community land trusts and social enterprises are springing up in the capital to tackle the housing crisis, as Alan Southern reports

The housing crisis means different things to different communities. Too many people face unfathomable and often unaccountable rent levels, and owner occupation is often out of reach.

In London, with probably the most severe housing market conditions in the UK, it ultimately means addressing the most basic of physiological needs, about where you can find a place to live safely and securely.

In response to the housing problems in the capital we see groups like the women-led Focus E15 organising against evictions and Rooms of Our Own, which is a social enterprise – again led by women – that aims to generate revenue from housing to support women’s groups.

Communities have responded to the difficulties in the housing market in socially innovative ways, seeing in the conditions they face both problems and opportunities.

The London community land trust falls into this category of novel response, with their first homes on offer on the Mile End Road, on the former St Clement’s hospital site.

Think about this name, ‘community’, ‘land’ and ‘trust’. The CLT tries to encourage individual home ownership while at the same time, collectively owning the asset (land) on which those homes sit.  This can cause some friction because the asset helps to regulate price and therefore growth in ownership equity, as a necessary part of ensuring future home affordability.

In terms of trust, this is about protecting the asset base by formalising the legal structure of the CLT to resist the sale of land held in perpetuity.

Affordable housing is usually the key objective of a community land trust (CLT) although they often also espouse core principles such as the control of neighbourhood resources and empowerment through participation. On the one hand they are quite reformist, can be cost efficient and, although in the UK they tend to be small, they can achieve economies of scale as part of the social economy.

We know this from the experiences of the CLT movement in the USA with well known examples in Vermont, Boston and Manhattan. Community land trusts have the potential to address the multi-dimensional problems of the UK housing market, particularly, but not only, in urban areas.

In a radical sense, community land trusts can buck the market. They can build into the development affordability in perpetuity through the control of assets, usually by owning the land on which the homes are built, and often with a formula for sale or rent that ensures access to housing from those with lower than median incomes.

This is particularly so if they are supported through an endowment or grant of some type, whereby the CLT is able to keep the subsidy under their control, locked within their ownership of the land. Yet without the correct support and right management capabilities, CLTs may replicate many other community-based development initiatives and struggle to achieve the right balance between social objectives and securing an ongoing revenue that provides the foundation for their endurance.

The CLT has the potential to provide a variety of solutions in the housing market around affordability and community sustainability. As a response to the housing crisis, it is one of a number of forms of self-help housing that should be encouraged.