Sanford Housing Cooperative is a fully mutual housing cooperative in South East London.
Initiated by housing activists in the late sixties, the co-operative is now home to 125 tenant-members living in 14 houses and a block of flats.
We caught up with Matina and Marie from Sanford as they discuss their cooperative’s plans to expand and build a new community space.
Formed by a group of single parents during experiences in temporary accommodation, the main aim of Heads2Gether Housing Co-operative is to provide safe, secure, and affordable homes for single parents on low incomes.
With plans to live as a cohousing community, they are also looking to establish a community childcare system as well as safe community spaces for their children to play.
In this video, we catch up with Lorraine and Jessica from Heads2gether as they explain the motivations behind and future aspirations of their community led housing project.
Read more about Heads2gether here.
Over the past year, we have seen the community led housing movement in London continue to grow, with many of our projects reaching important and exciting milestones.
In order to celebrate some of these successes, we’ve commissioned a series of videos to capture the story behind four inspiring community-led housing projects from across London. In each episode, we meet the people behind the projects and understand what brought them to community led housing.
Watch the series now:
Crystal Palace CLT – watch video here
Heads2gether – watch video here
Sanford Housing Co-op – watch video here
Bonny Downs Cohousing – watch video here
Crystal Palace Community Land Trust is made up of local people aiming to acquire land to provide affordable homes, workspace and other community assets in consultation with local residents.
The CLT were selected as the preferred bidder for The Lawns site which was released by Croydon Council in 2019 and they are now looking to build around 7 homes on the site.
Using a resident-led design process, the homes will be designed for the community, by the community.
We caught up with Dichewa and Chris from the CLT to find out how their project at the Lawns is progressing.
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has just released two sites which are specifically available for community-led self-build schemes.
We supported the council in developing their Affordable Self Build programme, which was delayed due to covid-19. Lark Row and Christian Street are the first of the 4 sites to be released by the borough.
The Council are looking for proposals from groups of local people by the 16th of April 2021, and will want to see how28 affordability is protected for future residents beyond the initial self-builders. To find out more about the programme, check out the Tower Hamlets self-build guide.