Let's talk about housing - could Community Land Trusts be the solution?

I’m sure I don’t need to turn this into yet another think piece about the housing crisis, especially if you’re a Londoner (like me). However, what you might need to hear is some good news about the housing crisis - that there are solutions floating around and people are being proactive in trying to address the issue at hand.

But before we get onto the positive stuff, I’m gonna attempt to simplify this highly complex issue for the purpose of framing. SO, the main driving forces behind the worsening housing crisis in London are: the lack of homes/supply not keeping up with demand, the lack of quality social housing that hasn’t been flogged off by the Right To Buy scheme (thanks, Maggie!), long waiting lists for social housing and foreign investors buying up property in London and creating demand for luxury apartments that no one actually lives in. However, as I said, the issue is deeply complex and so there are other factors at play. I personally feel that London-centricity plays a part because I’m sure the crisis would be alleviated by the government actually investing in other UK cities, rather than ways of making travelling into London easier.

I could write you a whole reading list of articles, think pieces, journals and books that would explain the issues raised in far more detail, but that’s not the purpose of this post. Rather than go into the rather depressing statistics, I’d rather be at least slightly optimistic about the housing crisis (although if you DO want the depressing stats, check out Shelter's website.)

So, what is this ‘magical solution’ I hear you ask, well, it’s called a CLT (Community Land Trust). As defined by Citizens UK housing experts, ‘Community Land Trusts are a form of community-led housing, set up and run by ordinary people to develop and manage homes as well as other assets. CLTs act as long-term stewards of housing, ensuring that it remains genuinely affordable, based on what people actually earn in their area, not just for now but for every future occupier.’

Now, when I did a session about CLTs with a group of 18 potential housing campaigners with the Advocacy Academy (which I will get to in a sec), they had questions. So I’ve done a little myth-buster to clear some stuff up:

What does ‘affordable’ even mean?

What it should mean, no more than ⅓ of the average income in the area the CLT is located. For example, the average salary in the London borough of Lambeth tends to float around £36,000 (as of 2014 at least.) Therefore, the mortgage payments of a Lambeth CLT home should cost the residents no more than ⅓ of £36,000 per year. The same applies for the Affordable Rent concept. If the average Lambeth salary changes significantly enough to warrant a re-adjustment of the pricing structure, this system offers a degree of flexibility.

Great, but how do you keep CLT homes affordable?

Well, this whole campaign is based around the idea that a house should not be an investment...it should be lived in...like a damn house. Oh, and that this shouldn’t be a revolutionary concept in the first place! We ensure sustainability through making residents sign a contract that states that they cannot sell the house at a profit after they move out. Instead, they have to sell it at the new formulated affordable price, based on average incomes.

Oh wow, that’s amazing! But who gets to live in these magical homes?

Well, Citizens UK have devised a points-based system that favours young families and key workers. The whole idea behind CLTs is that they allow locals to stay within their community, rather than be priced out, even if they work decent jobs. A recent report by Lambeth Council estimated that a household would need to be earning £70,000 per year to afford a house in Lambeth - which is way above the average salaries for teachers, nurses and other key service providers in the borough, especially those with children.

Well this seems totally far-fetched and impossible to implement. Try again, Snowflake!

WELL, you’re wrong. Why? Because it has already been done, successfully. Boom.

Obviously many of you reading this will have yet more questions, which I would suggest you refer to the CLT website. But that does leave the question of what exactly I have been doing since I began working on the campaign back in October 2015 (!). Well, the Lambeth CLT campaign started with a group of eager budding affordable housing campaigners, James Afsa from Citizens UK and a network of their member organisations. The first step was getting in the room with someone with the power to put some wheels into motion (in this case, the then-Head of Housing at Lambeth Council - Cllr Matthew Bennett). From here, we were able to introduce the concept, rather excitingly, to Sadiq Khan, just weeks before he was elected Mayor of London in May 2016 and he pledged his support for this campaign.

Besides planning and attending meetings with Citizens UK and various influencers from Lambeth Council, I, along with the rest of the Board (Ilhan, John-Paul and Darren, as seen in the pictures) have been not only visiting potential sites (see, the lovely picture of us grabbing onto a TFL-owned fenced-off ‘open space’ in Streatham at the end of the post), but writing and delivering sessions to engage the young people who will soon be joining us on the campaign.

The next step is to secure the sites that we have deemed suitable, and if all goes to plan, we might be seeing some CLT homes pop up across Lambeth in the next couple of years. I’m far from an optimist, but with such a brilliant team, I hope we can overcome bureaucracy to really make a positive difference to this growing problem facing London.

P.S. Genuinely and permanently affordable housing for all!