Community Led Housing: untapping the wherewithal and power in communities
BY LINDY MORGAN, BRISTOL COMMUNITY LAND TRUST AND COMMUNITY LED HOMES WEST
In October 2019, the Bristol Housing Festival teamed up with Bristol City Council in order to deliver an event on Self Build and Community Led Housing. This included guests such as Richard Bacon MP who steered the Self-Build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 through parliament, Keith Cowling and Lindy Morgan from the Bristol Community Land Trust, and Susan Cataldi from Community Led Homes West. In this blog Lindy Morgan writes about the value and possibilities Community Led Housing offers a city.
WHAT DOES COMMUNITY LED HOUSING (‘CLH’) MEAN?
In general it means a housing project led by the community, it may also be delivered, owned, managed and lived in by the community.
WHY DO IT?
Because it is absolutely the right solution for many communities and delivers more than just housing.
Across the West of England we are working with a diverse range of groups and people, but they have key drivers and goals in common:
The driver to provide sustainable housing opportunities for themselves and/or others; and
The goal to deliver this with and alongside communities (not to do to or thrust upon communities).
Our current situation highlights the importance of having a home where you can take refuge and be safe. But what makes a home? Is it the four walls, roof and strong foundations, or is it a feeling? A feeling of being safe, empowered and part of a community full of opportunities for people to thrive and reach their full potential? All of this makes up a home. Of course, it also needs to be in reach of everyone; it needs to be affordable.
Our government has made a welcome commitment to deliver 300,000 much needed houses each year. While this top-down approach to development will help us reach the number of houses we need, there will be many who will want to assess it’s worth based on return on investment. We have to face up to the fact that, despite our best intentions, these homes are beyond the reach of most people and won’t normally include social value.
In the social housing sector, at local authority level, both officer and political, people are striving to improve sustainable housing options to differing levels of success.
There are plenty of ways to do this, but Community Led Housing is the biggest contender.
CLH has seen a steady rise in use over the last ten years, delivering, on the whole, small but highly impactful projects. Like most development options there are pros and cons. CLH has in the past been viewed as expensive in resources, complex, and inefficient for delivering on-scale or offering great return on investment. I’m not denying any of these issues, but it’s not all about the numbers. CLH is not the solution to solving the housing crisis, but it is a solution to delivering sustainable communities and homes of value, that said many CLH homes are developed on windfall sites.
A CLH galvanises communities. It brings together people who take responsibility for their local housing, meeting long-term affordability needs for local people, using the resources and skills that already exist in the community.
In terms of sustainability, a CLH enables communities to have assets that provide a long-term income to invest back into their community, with the potential to tackle all sorts of issues such as loneliness, lack of amenities, provision for children and young people or opportunities for older people to cohabitate or downsize. These are all things a community needs to survive; it’s not just about housing, it’s about sustainable homes and empowered communities.
COMMUNITY LED HOUSING IN BRISTOL
At Bristol Community Land Trust (BCLT) we’ve witnessed first-hand how communities can be empowered. In 2016 BCLT completed 12 affordable homes on Fishponds Road. Each resident had to be a member of the BCLT and help self-finish their homes, not only sharing and developing skills but to get to know each other and literally build their community together.
CLH schemes are typically smaller but that doesn’t have to be the case and Southmead Development Trust are a clear demonstration of that where they are delivering urban regeneration of the centre of Southmead in North Bristol. It will be the UK’s biggest community-led development. Southmead has one of the lowest life expectancies in Bristol and is within the top 10% of the most deprived wards in the UK. This scheme will see the development of 120 affordable homes and delivery of much needed community and commercial space.
WHAT ELSE HAVE WE LEARNT FROM COMMUNITY LED HOUSING?
A process which embraces a high degree of community involvement, ownership, leadership and participation has shown us that this is where some of the best decisions can be made. This understanding can be applied across a local authority’s operational area and across a arrange of issues as a matter of course.
There are excellent examples of community involvement in decision making. Why isn’t this applied in all decision making? Some will say we don’t have enough resources. I would argue we don’t have enough resources not to. If you want enable and empower communities you will get sustainable and cohesive decisions that deliver.
To learn more about Community Led Housing in Bristol, click on the above highlighted links or visit the Community Led Homes West webpage. You can also learn more about CLH from the Bristol City Council webpage.