Everything you ever wanted to know about cohousing (and community-led development)

YoCo Open Meeting 18th March 2023

“Forever affordable” homes were a very major part of the public vision for York Central. The YoCo community plan for York Central developed ideas around how this might happen, and this open meeting explored further. We started by asking what was special about where participants lived now, and what was missing there, which might improve it?

What we’ve got (left), and what we’d like (right)

From this starting point we checked a few definitions…

Cohousing communities are intentional communities, created and run by their residents. Each household has a self-contained, private home as well as shared community space. Residents come together to manage their community, share activities, and regularly eat together.

Community-Led Housing is where:-

•      Community engagement and consent occurs throughout the development process

•      The community group owns, manages the homes in a manner of their choosing

•      The benefits to the local area and/or specified community are clearly defined and legally protected in perpetuity.

…and we’ll include Community-Led Development which comprises housing of various types and other uses too – social or commercial.

So – why do it? The outline planning consent for York Central has a requirement for 20% “affordable” housing, which the developers will have to somehow provide. So why propose community-led or cohousing?

Community-led development can bring:-

•      A wider range of tenures

•      “Affordability” for different economic groups

•      Potential to make housing “forever affordable”

•      Community and user input to design ensures housing suits specific needs

•      Potential to bring in individual and community investment via…

•      Cross-subsidy with a mixed-income group

•      Community share issue

Social housing in Vienna

If we want to see this in action, let’s look at Vienna. It has fantastic social housing dating back to “Red Vienna” of the early 20th century – and today today there are roughly 220,000 municipal flats and around 200,000 subsidised dwellings which make up the cornerstone of social housing in the city. Roughly 50 percent of Vienna’s population live in one of these two housing types. Vienna is regularly rated the best place to live in the world. And yet they still do loads of community-led housing. Why?

•      It builds strong communities

•      Creates facilities which benefit broader community

•      Gives a mix and inclusivity of provision – many schemes work with disabled people, refugees and other marginalised groups

•      Brings in mix of funding, and often involve design competitions, so can develop pioneering approaches.

Wohnprojekt Wien

So, what are the challenges in the UK?

We heard from Jimm Reed about how have they been overcome (LILAC) and how have they shaped projects (LCH/PPP and the long-term trajectory from community share issue to what they’re doing now). For example, how LILAC was possible in part due to the economic circumstances of the time, and much harder to replicate now – but the Mutual Home Ownership model is still very much usable. You can view the Zoom interview here.

We heard from Sarah Hart about support which the Community-Led Housing Hub can give, and how they work with councils and other potential partners to advocate for community-led development.

The Hub website is at https://www.communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk/ and can be contacted at clh@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk

We also recorded a Zoom interview with James Neward, about the local history of Yorspace and its path towards cohousing on Lowfield Green, which you can view here.

So, what may be possible on York Central?

Well…

•      The outline consent allows for 25% other uses in “predominantly housing” areas

•      The outline consent requires 5% “self-build / custom-build”

•      Given density requirements (likely to be 4-6 storeys) this won’t be self-build plots but could be community-led housing

•      Homes England has a newly-established self-procurement department

•      5% of 2500 homes = around 125 homes

Potential partners:-

•      Social Housing Providers – eg JRHT

•      The council’s Housing Delivery Programme

•      The master developer and any development partners

•      The universities

•      Yorspace

YoCo has started exploring this through workshops over the past couple of years:-

Initial thoughts:-

Mixed use with commercial / social / cultural closest to street level (ground floors / possibly first floors)…

Illustration of layering from David Sim’s wonderful book “Soft City”

Location close to the Foundry buildings and existing Leeman Road community….

Sketch ideas for a mixed-use development near the Foundry buildings

Explore economic and governance structures to allow creative use of funding – make use of inequality to provide communal good…

Create a framework which has a working economy:-

•      Mix of tenures to allow capital cross-subsidy (so including market sale to help finance more affordable homes)

•      Explore ways of ensuring forever affordability – co-ownership in various forms

•      Work with partners with access to grant funding – council (via Housing Delivery Programme), Registered Providers (for social housing)

•      Explore ways of using mixed-use development to create a sustainable economy – live/work units, accommodation in partnership with the universities etc.

•      Use density to reduce impact of land cost – consolidate parking, make streets function for public use, design carefully to make public and private space work hard.

So – we’re putting proposals to start feasibility work on this to the York Central Strategy Board and will report back – if you want to keep up to date, do come along to our Open Meetings.