Haringey Branch Co-operative Party – Open Meeting: “Can co-operatives help solve the housing crisis?”

Community-led housing is about ordinary people developing and managing homes to ensure genuinely affordable housing based on what people actually earn in their area, not just for now but for every future occupier.

It is a broad movement encompassing Community Land Trusts (CLTs), co-operatives, co-housing, self-help housing and group self-build, and can involve new build, regeneration or the use of existing buildings.

In the UK community-led housing has grown six-fold in the last six years but it still only makes of 0.6% of supply. Look across at Europe and we can get a sense of what is possible – in Sweden it is 18% of supply and 6% in Germany.

We have two speakers who can shed a light on what community-led housing is, what is stopping it from growing at scale in the UK and what we can do locally to support it.

Speakers

• Levent Kerimol – Community-Led Housing London: Supported by the Mayor of London, CLH exists to help communities bring forward housing schemes, and work with boroughs, developers, housing associations, and funders to create the right environment for the community-led sector to thrive. Lev is the Project Director there and has a wealth of experience in planning/housing including being part of the GLA’s Regeneration team, contributing to the London Plan and teaching postgraduate courses in Design and Planning.
• Tony Wood – StART Haringey: The St Ann’s Redevelopment Trust (StART) is an organisation made up of local people in Haringey who hope to develop genuinely affordable community-led housing on the St Ann’s hospital site. In 2018 the GLA purchased the land from the hospital, and StART are currently working with the GLA on a community-led development on the site.

We will have a very brief business meeting at 7.30, and the speakers will start at 8.00.