PROSPECTS #02 — PEOPLE POWERED PLACES
INTERVIEW
Community-led housing: beyond paternalism, towards empowerment We sat down with Lev to hear about his work supporting Londonbased community-led housing projects and his insights into how these models of housing can meet a multitude of needs – from affordability, lifestyle choices, or those of particular demographic groups – by rethinking paternalistic approaches and instead putting empowered residents at the centre of mainstream housing provision.
Lev Kerimol
Ava Lynam (AL) How did you get into this field? What led you to work with community-led housing?
organisation between residents and nonresidents. Those kinds of organisations tend to want to do more projects, because there is an unmet demand within the membership of the organisation. On the other hand, once a cohousing or co-op project have housed themselves, they are typically less motivated to do more projects themselves.
Lev Kerimol (LK) I’ve had a personal interest in this for a while. Whilst studying architecture, my brother suggested I read Colin Ward. I became interested in selfbuild in my diploma work, and then ended up working in the public sector. After a while, I started looking into cohousing, initially as somewhere to live in myself, but then started to advise others. I did some work with Gallions Housing Association and worked part time for Lewisham council helping them with the Rural Urban Synthesis Society (RUSS) project, making the arguments for it, explaining and managing the technical side. While I didn’t end up in a cohousing group myself, by chance, I later moved into Segal Close – one the first Lewisham group self-build projects. When people look around Segal Close and say how unique it is, I think, “well, this could happen a lot more”. Obviously, it might not take the same timber frame form, but it is the idea that people can have more of a say over their housing in a direct sense. This is one step beyond consultation, this is putting the future residents or community in the driving seat, in whatever form that takes. AL How would you define community-led housing? LK There are several more well-known approaches, such as ‘housing co-operatives’, ‘community land trusts’, and ‘co-housing’. ‘Community-led housing’ is a bit of an umbrella term that tries to capture them all. That definition talks about the community being involved in the development process, 19
but they don’t necessarily have to initiate it or do all of the day to day work – groups should be in control of the decisions that matter to them. Secondly, the long-term ownership, and the management or stewardship, is up to the community organisation to decide. Thirdly, any benefits are legally protected in perpetuity. Where its affordable housing, it’s about protecting affordability; where its market-value housing, it might be about protecting benefits to do with the particular social set up or community lifestyle.
This is one step beyond consultation, this is putting the future residents or community in the driving seat, in whatever form that takes.
A lot of people see it as being affordable housing. Particularly in London, that is a big motivation and driver. But for me, the key thing that differentiates it from anything else is the empowerment of future residents and wider communities. Empowerment can mean lots of different things to different people, and people might have lots of different motivations. Some people might really care about design and might want a lot of control over the development process. Some are more interested in the long-term ownership or management, or who gets to live there and how the allocations work. Some are particularly interested in thinking about affordability in different ways. Lots of projects are innovating in different ways based on what the needs of that community are. We find that groups fall into two categories: there are groups that are looking to provide housing primarily for themselves as a community, what we might call a fully mutual arrangement where only residents are part of that organisation; and those that are looking to provide housing for their wider local community, such as community land trusts where you can be a member of the organisation and vote for the board, but not be a resident. In those cases, we usually try to get an equal balance in power in the
Interviewed by Lee Mallett and Ava Lynam Lev is project director at the Community Led Housing London Hub. He previously worked at the Greater London Authority where he was involved in establishing the Small Sites x Small Builders program and contributed to the London Plan, among other projects. He also previously worked with the London Borough of Lewisham on the early stages of the RUSS (Rural Urban Synthesis Society) community land trust project. Lev has a background studying architecture and real estate, and has taught Design and Planning at London Metropolitan University.
Usually, when you are doing engagement, you are only speaking to the existing surrounding residents, but community-led housing brings in prospective residents who might have a completely different motivation for housing. If people are faced with normal people wanting to build housing themselves rather than a developer or a council, I think it changes the conversation. Even if they might not be in housing need themselves, maybe their kids want to live somewhere locally and not have to move, or they have friends or neighbours who want to live locally, and they can understand the motivations. Lee Mallett (LM) Can you describe what your organisation does, and how long it has been going?
If people are faced with normal people wanting to build housing themselves rather than a developer or a council, I think it changes the conversation.
LK About two and a half years. We have a core team of four or five of us now, hosted by a small housing association called CDS Cooperatives. They were initially founded in 1975 as the Cooperative Development Society, and have a history of promoting community-led housing and setting up housing co-ops. Nowadays, they mostly manage and maintain rather than working on new developments. There is a pipeline of approximately 1,500 community-led homes across about 80-100 groups or projects across London. We are actively working on about 40-50 projects.