How citizens are seeking to solve the housing crisis from the bottom up

Tower Hamlets is the fastest growing London borough, yet is already very densely populated, with 250,000 people living in just eight square miles. No wonder then that the borough is proving to be fertile ground for innovative ideas about how to house the growing number of heads.

Community land trusts

Earlier this year 23 ‘community land trust’ homes in Mile End came on sale for about a third of the market rate. Popular in the US, a Community Land Trust is the name for a model that builds and sells homes at an affordable price that is directly linked to local average income.

Now London Community Land Trust (LCLT) is set to deliver the first urban community land trust in the UK, on the grounds of the former St Clement’s workhouse and hospital in Mile End. The 23 homes are the first of their kind in London and designed for those who will never be able to afford to buy their own property in the capital, but are ineligible for social housing.

Calum Green, Communities and Campaigns Director at LCLT, says he hopes schemes like these would avoid people being priced out of where they grew up.

The properties are among 252 homes being built on the former St Clement’s workhouse and hospital site, delivered in partnership with Linden Homes. The housing is 35 per cent ‘affordable’, with 58 socially-rented homes and 23 community land trust homes. The rest are for sale at market rate.

Coming up with answers

LCLT was born out of a initiative by community organisers Citizens UK, but now operates independently. It is a non-profit organisation that anyone can join.

“We had been waiting for government or private developers to come up with the answers but we came up with answers ourselves,” says Green.

The LCLT team’s original campaign was to deliver land trust homes at the East Wick and Sweetwater neighborhoods in the Olympic Park. “Unfortunately we were unsuccessful”, explains Green, “they wanted us to pilot the scheme first before allowing us to deliver it in the Olympic Park.”

“It’s very difficult – the housing sector generally is anti-risk, which stops innovative schemes coming forward. But we need more of a bottom up approach, to deliver something for people whose needs are not being met.”

The homes are still being built but applications to live in one have closed. In the eligibility test, applicants had to give evidence of “five years of demonstrable connection to Tower Hamlets,” explains Green. A one bed property costs £130,000, a two bed £182,000 and a three bed £235,000.

Should residents want to later move away, they are contractually bound to sell on their home also at a price related to local earnings at that time. “Hopefully we’ve shown that this type of development can work in London,” says Green.

Still, Linden Homes is marketing the homes for sale to ‘investors’, a reminder of what schemes like community land trusts are up against in London.

East Shoreditch Forum

While the land trust’s scheme targets specifically those on middle income who are “slipping through the net”, as Green puts it, East Shoreditch Forum is devising an entire Neighbourhood Plan. The forum was set up by Chance Street resident Rebecca Collings, in response to “intense development pressure”.

“The minute there’s a spare square of land round here someone wants to put 25 storeys on it or luxury flats,” she says. “But it’s all at the expense of the local community. People get priced out of the neighbourhood. If you can afford a croissant at £2.50 then good for you. If not, you are excluded, which enhances the problem of cultural separation.

“The gentrification process is inevitable but you must take community with you, otherwise it’s a recipe for social unrest.”

The only way to get the community more in control of what was going on around it was to start a neighbourhood plan, Collings decided.

In 2011, the Localism Act introduced the right for communities (forums) to help shape development in their area through the production of Neighbourhood Development Plans. The policies put forward can eventually form part of a Local Plan, helping to determine planning applications and shape developments.

After an arduous process of agreeing the neighbourhood boundary with the councils of Tower Hamlets and Hackney, Collings rallied neighbours to put forward ideas for their area.

“Residents of a neighbourhood know more about it than any professional. They’re dealing with dog fouling, anti-social behaviour – all the things that make a neighbourhood good or bad to live in – every day.”

Supporting the forum

Councillor Rachel Blake, Cabinet Member for Strategic Development at Tower Hamlets Council, has helped support ESF through the process. Asking residents where to build houses is a good example of how a neighbourhood plan can work, says Blake.

“Tower Hamlets is already quite a developed, densely populated borough,” says Blake. “We have 20,000 households on the waiting list who are in desperate need of new affordable homes.”

The East Shoreditch residents suggested some of the bollards be removed to make it easier for cyclists. “Only residents would have been able to come up with that,” Blake points out.

“So it’s important we make the most of their knowledge and understanding of area, rather than just imposing ideas on them, as some developers or housing associations can do.”

The role of the council in this is to support the Neighbourhood Forum. The council approves the forum, and then the area which they want to plan. It supports the forum through the process, for example by advising on planning legislation and helping develop ideas.

Cllr Blake hopes the community-led planning will set a “positive example” to housing associations which are seeking to build new homes.

“By working from the ‘bottom up’ – encouraging meaningful and significant engagement from the very start of the process – proposals from Housing Associations are more likely to go down well with residents.

“And it means developers are less likely to face opposition to their plans and residents feel they have some agency in shaping their area.”