Community-led housing can help solve Wales’s housing problem, says Casey Edwards.
Community-led housing can take various forms, including community land trusts (around 300 in England and Wales), co-housing projects, mutual home ownership societies, and housing co-operatives, all planning their own affordable, low carbon homes. In England and Wales these projects have built or renovated around 1,700 affordable homes, and there are over 5,000 more in the pipeline.
Cwmpas’s Communities Creating Homes programme is Wales’s only official community-led housing hub with a team of accredited advisors. We are currently supporting 50 community-led housing groups in Wales, all looking to deliver affordable homes for people that cannot currently afford or access a decent, affordable home. These homes will be affordable for the first occupiers, and for future generations.
Some of the community-led housing groups we’re supporting are delivering affordable homes for themselves, like Gwyr Community Land Trust. This group of local families in Swansea is planning a co-housing scheme of 14 affordable homes.
Some groups are working in partnership with housing associations and local authority partners to deliver housing for local people, like Nolton and Roch Community Land Trust and Solva Community Land Trust, both in Pembrokeshire. The Letitia Cornwallis Trust is working with Bro Myrddin Housing Association to release a piece of land for affordable housing that would not have been available otherwise, and regenerating an old almshouse into homes for local people at the same time.
Nefyn Town Trust in Pwllheli is a community-led housing organisation established well over 100 years ago, which is working to develop homes for rent to locals at affordable prices.
Other community-led housing groups are providing housing to meet a specific need, like Dream Home Swansea, a co-operative development led by young people with learning difficulties who are determined to have choice and control over their future homes and community. It is working with a housing association to make their housing dream come true.
Some groups are safeguarding assets for community benefits, like Ysgol Cribyn, a community group taking over the former primary school in the village to use as community hub and provide affordable homes. And Capel Prion, a village that’s come together to reutilise the former church for affordable homes for local people.
In community-led housing, a group of individuals with a shared vision decide what kind of homes and communities they want to live in.
Community-led housing projects are based on democracy. The community focuses on what’s important for them, with the individuals who will live in the homes deciding what they want and need.
Community-led housing groups can play an important role in helping councils, developers and registered social landlords to reach the target of supplying an additional 20,000 low carbon home for rent by the end of the Senedd term, by creating genuinely affordable homes designed and managed for, and by, the local community – especially now that community-led housing is recognised in Planning Policy Wales and the Programme For Government a way of delivering affordable homes.
But challenges remain and community groups cannot do it alone.
Objections to community-led housing projects tend to suggest that the concept is too new, or too different.
That’s just not true – community land trusts are a town planning idea that has been alive and well since the 19th century when housing co-operatives were a big part of the garden city movement.
There can be issues with access to finance, securing the support of development partners, and securing planning consent and access to land.
But the Welsh Government strongly supports community-led housing, and local planning authorities and registered social landlords should too.
Those 50 community groups and organisations that we’re supporting can deliver over 300 affordable, low-carbon homes to people who need them – truly putting tenants and residents at the heart of decision making.
Community-led housing encourages wider regeneration and placemaking by turning small, infill sites into homes – sites which larger developers might not be interested in.
Community-led housing can help to reduce the stigma often faced when developing affordable homes. With the community involved right from the start, and making the decision, developments are less likely to face objections at planning stage.
The community-led process can help combat individual isolation and loneliness, develop new skills which boost confidence, competence, and employability, and grow supportive communities which take great pride in the homes they have created for themselves.
Community-led housing also keeps assets and investment within the community, growing the local economy and boosting resilience and opportunity.
We all know that the target of 20,000 new social homes is unlikely to be delivered.
That makes it even more vital that community-led housing groups should be seen, and supported, as partners in the delivery of affordable and social homes.
These are groups which have creative solutions to address the housing crisis, solutions which benefit individuals, communities, the economy, and the environment.
We’d love local authorities and RSLs to add their support and maximise the opportunity for community-led housing to create a more balanced housing system.
On Thursday 1 May, we’re hosting Wales’ inaugural community-led housing conference in Cardiff. Come along to find out how you can be involved and support the movement.
Contact co-op.housing@cwmpas.coop for further information on the support available from the Communities Creating Homes programme.