The recent report from the London Assembly Housing Committee shines a light on Housing Co-ops and Community Land Trusts. It’s encouraging to see community-led housing being taken seriously at this level. We appreciate the positive recognition our work has received from the Assembly and the groups we work with.
The full report recommends the Mayor should advocate for and allocate more funding as well as land for CLH projects. It also emphasizes the need to ensure that more Black and minoritised people can bring forward community-led homes.
We welcome the recommendations for funding. Land is essential for groups pursuing development, although we know this a complex, risky, and lengthy path for communities to achieve control over their housing, and even more so for marginalised communities with limited time and resources.
To see real growth in community led housing, we believe new approaches such as Collective Ownership are essential. We are working to establish the Collective Ownership Society as a scalable vehicle for long-term investment focusing on acquisitions to addresses the instability and disempowerment faced by private renters.
We encourage the Mayor and Assembly, as well as third-sector funders and investors, to get behind Collective Ownership as a way of making the day-to-day control and security offered by community led housing, quicker and easier to access by London’s diverse communities.