Realising a Cooperative Right to Build by Giulia Toscani

REALISING A COOPERATIVE RIGHT TO BUILD Ambitions and constraints of a self-built housing cooperative in London. RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2014 26 to 29 of August 2014

Giulia Toscani

Architect MSc City Design and Social Science | London School of Economics

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

1. EXPOSE_SELF-BUILD AND HOUSING COOPERATIVES. THE LONDON CASE

1.1 Together 1.2 An alternative tenure model 1.3 Alternative ‘communities’ 2. EXPOSE_CONSTRAINTS FOR NEW BUILT HOUSING COOPERATIVES IN LONDON

2.1 Business as usual 2.2 Access to land 3. PROPOSE_RIGHT TO BUILD COMMUNITY

3.1 Custom Build Housing 3.2 Right to Build Community 3.3 Design Strategy POLITICISE_CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTERVIEWS

INTRODUCTION

The ultimate aim of literature is to set free, in the delirium, this creation of a health or this invention of a people, that is, a possibility of life (Deleuze 1997:4). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We are from London and we want to stay hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Dee, LCNC member, 2013)

The following paper looks at self-built fully mutual housing cooperatives as alternative models to produce affordable housing in the current London housing crisis and within the current policy framework. For the purpose of this research the project of two connected cooperatives, the London Community Neighbourhood Cooperative (LCNC) and the London Community Housing Cooperative (LCHC), has been analyzed as a case study to see which are the characteristics that could make it a valid model and what the constraints. The initial project of LCNC was to find a plot in the borough of Westminster where to build forty to sixty flats with straw-bale construction technique and a community center for alternative learning (project run for over twenty years in the same council). The specific dimension of self-build added to the project is extremely relevant for this analysis because, as an architect, I use the case study to question how design could foster a process of democratization of housing by changing the paradigm of what design should embody. How can design incarnate a particular set of values and a specific legal structure?

A housing co-operative is a voluntary association of dwellers, who collectively own and control their housing. Tenants pay the mortgage of the coop through monthly rents and collectively decide how to manage their surpluses. It is a secure rental model in a moment of crisis where one in ten Londoners (800.000) is on council housing waiting lists (an increase of nearly 84% in the last 10 years), rents are almost 50% higher than in the rest of the UK and land prices have increased three times more than wages in the past 10 years (The Guardian, 22nd of August 2012). Moreover the plans for ‘affordable’ housing have tied rents to market value instead of to real income: ‘affordable rent is subject to rent controls that require a rent of no more than 80% of the local market rent’ (Communities and Local Government, 2012). London is a city where homeless families in 2012 were 30% more than in 2011 (London Councils, 2013) and a law was introduced in September 2012 to criminalize squatting in residential buildings.

Fig.1: Packington Estate, Islington, The Hyde Group, Pollard Thomas Edwards Architects. Design for Homes indicates this new build as an example of how to answer to the demand for Georgian style terraces (Urban Design London & Design for Homes, 2012).

As housing has become extremely commodified, its production is highly controlled by the market. If commodification then is the underlying motif of the broader picture, ‘limiting the world of commodities’ becomes an important step for a project of radical democratization of housing (Lefebvre quoted in Brenner, 2012). In London, the financial deregulation, made housing a huge source of wealth (Kennett & al., 2013) and the extent of market speculation and high commodification of land had a large impact also on housing production: a recent CBI poll considers housing shortage as the biggest constraint to economic growth, even before transport. The shortfall impacts even more on the social housing market, whose production is far from expected: between 2007 and 2010 new social rented housing delivery reached 47% of what is indicated in the London Plan. This figure corresponds to 24% of real need, considering the expected growth in the number of households of 30-34,000 each year for the next two and a half decades (Ambrose & Jenkins, 2011). As a measure to respond to this situation, the government has introduced new policies that on one side promote self-build housing and on the other devolve power to ‘local communities’, which are now asked to bring forward their ideas about how their city should be developed and shaped:

‘We want to encourage housing that has a clear and sophisticated urban intention, and improves and civilises the streets and public spaces around it. There are certain qualities that characterise the best parts of London and London has many great urban places created by housing. These programmes will enable communities to deliver a bespoke housing product tailored to their needs’ (Build Your Own Home-The London Way, 2012: 4-5). As part of the Localism Act 2011, ‘Build Your Own Home- The London Way’ is a government fund administered by the Greater London Authority (GLA). It includes both the policies of the Community Right to Build and Custom Build Housing, with the specific objective of helping local communities ‘to unleash their aspirations’ (Boris Johnson, ‘Build Your Own Home-The London Way’, 2012). The initial £8m dedicated to both policies have been increased this year to £30m for Custom Build Investment Fund, £17.5m as Community Right to Build fund and £150m fund to encourage local councils to prepare up to 10000 plots. London Community Neighbourhood Cooperative applied to the CTRB policy but their application was considered financially too risky.

Land Registry price changes 2000–2005 (4th quarters) Source: HM Land Registry, property price data, 2006 20%

The research is organized as follows: in the first chapter I analyze LCNC to make the case for self-build cooperatives, expose their main peculiarities and their potential in the process of democratization of housing in London. I then investigate the reasons why at the moment the coop doesn’t fit into the current policy framework and what are the main constraints it is encountering. On one side I propose few recommendations for a more comprehensive policy, namely ‘Right to Build Community’, that could easily integrate self-build housing cooperatives. On the other I investigate how LCNC re-definition of housing, property, ownership, horizontal decision making could be embodied and interpreted by design. I conclude by focusing on the political meaning of a democratization of housing through design.

15% 10% 5% 0% -5% -10% -15% -20% 06/2008

06/2009

06/2010

06/2011

06/2012

06/2013

England and Wales London

Fig.2 (left page): June 2013 Rents in Greater London: Q2 2013 (https://homelet.co.uk, 2013). Fig.3 (top): Average annual change in residential property prices (Land Registry 2013).

1. EXPOSE_HOUSING COOPERATIVES AND SELF-BUILT. THE LONDON CASE

‘Who is not an utopian today?...Utopia is to be considered experimentally by studying its implications and consequences on the ground. These can surprise. What are and what would be the most successful places? How can they be discovered? According to which criteria? What are the times and rhythms of daily life which are inscribed and prescribed in these ‘successful’ spaces favourable to happiness? That is interesting.’ (Lefebvre 1996: 151) 1.1 Together Despite the fact that in London 414 co-ops were counted, this number constitutes 54% of all co-operatives in the UK and this tenure model it makes up only 0,6% of the housing market, compared with 18% in Sweden and 15% in Norway (Bringing Democracy Home, 2009). Clapham and Kintrea (1992) argue that housing co-operatives have always been at the margins of British housing policy and favourable political conditions are at the core of further development of the sector. Remembering that co-operatives can encompass different kind of models, from the ones closer to public housing to the ones closer to home ownership, depending on their objectives, size, type of property and legal structure, I make the case for fully-mutual coops that represent an horizontal model where all members are tenants, and all tenants are members of the co-op. Given the fact that the cooperative owns the building, tenants are not allowed to sell their equities. As explained in the web page of one of the few self-built London housing coop, the Coin Street Community Builders, ‘the leasehold is owned jointly by all co-operative members, individual tenants do not have a ‘right to buy’ their own homes. This means that the housing will remain available at reasonable rents to those in need.’ This consideration highlights the biggest constraint for housing cooperatives: by not being meant to produce an exchange-value (co-operatives in the UK don’t build in order to sell and

Fig.4 : Cooperative sector in the housing market (Bringing democracy home 2009). 20 % 18 % 16 % 14 % 12 % 10 % 8% 6% 4% 2% 0% UK

Germany

Austria

Norway

Sweden

make profit out of it), the production of this type of housing can hardly have a chance to happen, without State support, in the highly commodified London housing market. Collective ownership and democratic management of surpluses could challenge neoliberal production of space. Capitalist urbanization needs constantly to re-invest the surplus it creates through land developments; being co-ops non-profit companies, they cannot sell their assets to the market but transfer them to other co-operatives. Once the loans are paid back, members of the coop democratically decide if to re-invest the surplus in the co-op itself or to lend it to other co-operatives. For example, the Sanford Co-op in New Cross (London) collects weekly rents of 55ÂŁ (bills included) for 134 tenants, making a yearly surplus between 50 and 70 thousands pounds. This money has been used so far for projects such a the bike shed that cost 25,000 ÂŁ, but also gave the co-op the financial accountability to ask for one million pound loan to refurbish the whole estate and make it more energetically sustainable and self-sufficient. The fact that somehow a property is removed from the market on one side, and members, by not directly owning their flats, cannot sell them, gives to this model a transformative potential in the case the sector could finally expand. Nevertheless, despite consumption of housing could actually be considered independent from the market and therefore de-commodified, the process of production is still extremely dependent upon the market and financial institutions.

1.2 An alternative tenure model Author: Why a coop? Leslie: The coop takes the mortgage. You don’t! (Leslie, LCNC member, 2013). Out of the five LCNC members, who all currently live in London, one is a private renter, two are homeowners, while the rest go through housing associations. Why today does a housing co-operative seem like a preferable option to LCNC’s members than, home ownership, private or social renting? A document from Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (Banks and Whitehead, 2010) reveals how the London housing market is not surprisingly the least affordable (measured by rent/income and rent/earnings ratios) of the UK, with owner-occupation being even less affordable than the private rental market. OO costs Private rents HA rents LA rents 400.00 350.00 300.00

£/week

250.00 200.00 150.00 100.00 50.00 0.00

2002/0

2003/04

2004/05

2005/06 2006/07 Financial year

2007/08 2008/09

Fig. 5 : National average rents by tenure: 2002/03 to 2008/09 (Banks & Whitehead 2010) Fig. 6 (right page): LCNC’s The three levels of interaction: (1) the individual tenant-member of the coop; (2) the housing cooperative; (3) the users of the public facilities

Has home-ownership, as argued by Peter Marcuse (2010), become a myth in London? As a result of the financial crisis and the resulting credit crunch, homeownership has decreased dramatically, touching its lowest rate since 1988, while house prices have kept rising: the average house price in London in May 2013 was £509,000 - a rise of 3.3% in just a month, compared to a UK average of £249,000 (The Guardian, 2013). As clearly explained to me by Leslie (2013), being locked in a twenty years mortgage in a time of financial crisis, high rate of unemployment, evictions and foreclosures, erodes the dream of owning your home. The appealing nature of a housing cooperative comes from the security of a rental model that responds to the limits of the current situation of private rental market in London. On the web page of DIGS (2013), an information and support group to Hackney renters, the struggles that renters are facing are summarized in five points: (1)‘HUGE rent increases, (2) rip-off letting agent fees, (3) poor quality housing, (4) housing benefit shortfalls, (5) bad treatment from landlords and letting agents’. With a private rents’ increase of a 3.1% in 2012-2013 and a private rented sector higher than national average, that includes 670,000 households (London Councils, 2013), the issue of democratic control and state regulation over housing seems critical. Co-operatives can play a comparable role to councils and housing associations as social housing providers; the Coin Street Co-op allocates 50 to 100% of its properties to the local council

and the rest to individuals and families in housing need or people coming from other co-operatives. What is the difference between co-operatives and state or private provision of social housing? As John Turner observes, besides the state and market, co-ops would represent the third component constituted by ‘community-based systems which are non-governmental and non-commercial’ (Turner, 1972: 14). Dweller control, horizontal decision-making are the features that differentiate housing cooperatives from other social housing providers. Housing co-operatives embody some of the principles that would promote what Hirst (1994) calls ‘associative democracy’ applied to welfare: in this specific case provision of housing run by voluntary associations of competing self-organized groups, whose decision making process is horizontal and democratic. Hirst’s argument is that such an approach would increase inclusion and choice by enabling individual empowerment. The Coin Street Community Builders web page mentions the fact that ‘residents have a greater stake in their homes and tend to take more time and effort to ensure their properties and gardens are well maintained’. To the democratic decision-making ‘one member one vote’ system, the International

LCNC MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATIVE

(3) NEIGHBOURHOODPUBLIC FACILITIES USERS

(1)TENANT-MEMBER

SHARED SPACE

10% 60%

COMMUNITY CENTRE

30%

60% (2) LCHC HOUSING CO-OP

LCHC public facilities users 10% 30%

60%

LCHC public facilities’ users non-users

10%

non- users LCHC

public facilities users

Fig.7: decision-making at LCNC

60%

Co-operative Alliance indicates cooperation between cooperatives among its principles, promoting those ‘wider forms of multi-stakeholder governance’ envisioned by Hirst as crucial for the development of associationalism (Westall, 2011). It took two years to LCNC to decide what legal structure would have better suited their purposes: the multi stakeholder status is quite new, and as Leslie (2013) explains me: ‘We are the only one that has such a dramatic difference in voting’. The users of the public facilities have the 30% of votes; 60% is represented by the tenants of LCHC, the housing co-op, while the remaining 10% stands for non-users (mainly investors and sponsors). The idea of a multi stakeholder co-op is to make the structure ‘more democratic towards the people that are actually using the facilities’ (Lani, 2013). Considering the double meaning that the word ‘housing’ can have if used as a noun or as a verb: ‘when used as a noun, housing describes a commodity or product. The verb “to house” describes the process or activity of housing’ (Turner, 1972: 151). By providing a different understanding of what housing does in people’ lives in relation to time, use and value, associationalism in housing can challenge ‘standard assumptions about temporalities of development and design on use’ (Tonkiss, 2013).

30%

1.3 Alternative ‘communities’. It is finally crucial to understand why LCNC’s member understand how living in coop represent for them an important issue when it comes to question how space fosters our social life and relations. Four of them are mothers (some of them single parents) with grown up children that feel the need to live in an inter-generational environment. Lani, the youngest member, is a disabled activist that moved to London at 24 years old and had extremely difficult experiences: ‘It took me two months to find a place and then, while staying with a lady, she threw me out..Finding a place to share was difficult because of access reasons and people actitudes. It didn’t work and I ended up living in temporary accommodation until I found a nice flat with a housing association. …I want to create a place where particularly disabled people could live..set up a kind of inclusive housing where you can choose if you want to live on your own or with other people…a place that could be flexible’ (Lani, 2013). Together these five women offer a view of a society in a global city where singles represent the largest category of Londoners (44%).

% Greater London over 65 59,8

Studies about mutual housing show how collaborative housing forms attract a wide spectrum of age groups: single, socially active women, LGBT interested looking for gender-equitable housing, aging population - one third of Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s household comprise of one person living alone, just 30 per cent of those were aged 65 (London Councils, 2013)- and people with disabilities (Co-housing cultures, 2012). Co-housing and cooperatives are recognized for engaging innovatively with major trends in the society and responding to urban change. This aspect is extremely important when coming to architecture and design, as it shows how space can either perpetuate certain cultural stereotypes and conventions or offer new arrangements and possibilities that havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find yet their spatial translation.

54,2 46,8

11,07

40,2

88,93 59,8

ENGLAND

LONDON

54,2 Widowed

46,8 40,2

Divorced

% Greater London over 6

Separated Single

11,07

Married or Same-sex civil partnership ENGLAND

LONDON

Fig. 8 (left): Over 65 % in Greater London (Census 2011) Fig.9 (right): Marital status in London and England (Census 2011)

88,93

% Greater London over 65 13

2. EXPOSE_ CONSTRAINTS FOR NEW BUILT HOUSING COOPERATIVES IN LONDON ‘So, what this is all about is giving people more power and control to improve their lives and their communities. That, in a nutshell, is what it is all about’ (UK Prime Minister David Cameron, 2011). Following Amin (1996), claims about democratic participation cannot forget to discuss the role of the state in the organisation of the economy; the fact that housing cooperatives represent a self-organized ‘third party’ whose ultimate goal is the provision of affordable and democratic housing, isn’t enough to solve ‘issues of embedded inequality’ (Amin, 1996). LCNC applied to Community Right to Build at the beginning of 2013. Despite receiving a positive feedback from the GLA at the beginning, they eventually resulted ineligible for two main reasons: they haven’t identified the land yet and are not financially accountable. The Big Society’s rhetoric of citizens’ empowerment should be supported by a change in the financial terms of competition between the different groups in the housing market. For this reason the paper discusses what kind of projects the ‘London Way’ prospectus is likely going to finance and what constraints LCNC is encountering. 2.1 Business as usual ‘I think it’s fair to liken the ‘Big Society’ idea of David Cameron to economic colonialism as Sassen describes it: the local community, like the colony, is stripped of wealth, then told to make up for that lack by its own efforts.’ (Sennett 2012: 153) Talking about the Localism Bill, Holman and Rydin (2012) notice how, in the case of Neighbourhood Plans, communities are not supported enough to overcome market power imbalances. The suggestion that I received for LCNC from the GLA was to partner a developer or a housing association, confirming what Hollman and Rydin state: ‘communities still must rely on sufficient investment by developers, companies or agencies to be implemented’ (Holman and Rydin, 2012: 16). When it comes to programs of affordable housing production, the development model is always

Currently in the phase of contracting a developer

3 2

EAST LONDON COMMUNITY LAND TRUST (ELCLT), Tower Hamlets

4 2

BRIXTON GREEN, Lambeth Just received CRTB grant.Partner of Lambeth Council. Currently in consultation phase

COIN STREET COMMUNITY BUILDERS, Southwark Started in 1984, built incrementally in 20 years

SANFORD COOP, Lewisham

the developer will deliver 252 units: - 182 (71%) at market value - 47 (19%)at ‘affordable’ rent (Peabody Trust) - 23 (10%) in shared ownership (ELCLT will buy them through a mortgage) 1/3 TENANTS 1/3 TOWER HAMLETS 1/3 ELCLT MEMBERS (local residents) the Lambeth Council will get a mortgage and through a developer will deliver 280 units: - 60% market rent - 40% at ‘affordable’ rent Brixton Green might become the housing co-op that will manage the whole development 1/4 TENANTS 1/4 LAMBETH 1/4 BRIXTON GREEN 1/4 LOCAL BUSINESSES fully-mutual co-ops, tot 220 units: - 100% affordable (rent tied to income)

1 TENANT 1 VOTE

fully-mutual co-ops, tot 14 houses, 6 flats (134 tenants): - 100% affordable (55£/week)

50m

Fig 10.: four different models of affordable housing delivery in London.

1 TENANT 1 VOTE Built in the 1970s

more or less the same, as shown in the Fig. 10 for the cases of the East London Community Land Trust and Brixton Green: to build affordable units, make enough profit to pay the interest of the loan and still have enough gain to cover the risk the developer is taking alone, usually the proportion is 70% of flats at market value and remaining 30% for affordable homes (40% in the Brixton case). What are the implications of such a model? The first issue is about empowerment: what is the level of power that communities have on the decisions made when the developer takes the construction’s risk? Is this empowerment measurable? After having published ‘A Right to Build’ (2012), Alastair Parvin (2013) from Architecture 00:/ received feedback from a wide range of developers interested in possible partnerships with community-led groups. If CRTB was thought as a way to speed projects by bypassing planning permission (Stephen Hill interview, 2013), developers, by partnering community groups, could easily overcome planning risks and transfer them the most difficult areas to sell, covering then their market risk. Finally community groups might cover their Section 106 prescriptions on provision of affordable units (Roger Zogolovitch, 2013). What are the advantages that LCNC would gain by joining a developer? What the risks? Following Jacobs and Manzi, ‘localism has the potential to provide a rationale for a form of politics that might make it easier for elites and powerful groupings to pursue their agenda in disputes that relate to social housing and private development’ (Jacobs & Manzi, 2012: 40). When the objective is the totality of housing at affordable rents very few are the examples that were able to achieve this goal: the case of Coin Street is unique and its incremental development over twenty years introduces a temporal dimension that London demographic needs make unreasonable at that scale (220 units). The reason for that is also due to the fact that despite the Prime Minister David Cameron (2011) is asking citizens to take responsibility, resources that community groups could get to run projects are still inadequate in comparison to the private and public sector ones (Holman and Rydin, 2012).

2.2 Access to land ‘Qatari Diar, emirate’s property arm, puts London’s £3bn Chelsea Barracks project under review amid doubts over plan’s viability’, declares The Guardian (2013) about a £1bn site in the City of Westminster that was supposed to bring 450 luxurious residences and 123 affordable homes in a ‘super-prime’ London borough were the shortfall of affordable homes in the borough is set at 5,621 units per annum, 51 per 1,000 well above the average for the Inner London of a shortage of 32 (2006 City of Westminster-Housing Needs Assessment, 2007). Chelsea Barracks was one of the sites listed as Opportunity Areas by the City of Westminster; LCNC checked accurately all the sites on the document to figure out if any of those sites could have been suitable. As expected, the majority of sites over one acre already got planning permission and it looks very unlikely that LCNC would be able to get the political and economic support for their project. Among the many reasons, two seem very hard to overcome: (1) the extremely high value of land (£959m for 3.5 hectares, Chelsea Barracks site) and (2) the expectation of the council of receiving new affordable housing by developers through Section 106, ‘as the cost of land precludes Housing Associations from competing for development sites’ (Westminster Housing Strategy: 2007–2012, 2007: 20). £700,000

England & Wales London Westminster

£600,000 Average price

£500,000 £400,000 £300,000 £200,000 £100,000 £0 2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

Year

Land Registry price changes 2000–2005 (4th quarters)

Fig. 11 (top):Source: London boundaries, of Westminster HM Land Registry, propertyCity price data, 2006 in red (Author 2013) Fig 12 (bottom): House prices’ increase (2007) (City of Westminster)

Despite the target set by the London Plan of 680 additional homes per year in the next ten years, the supply from RLS lettings decreased between 2002-2005. In 2007/2008 Westminster City council expected only around 100 new social lettings (Westminster Housing Strategy: 2007–2012, 2007). Nevertheless the council, as stated in its Housing Strategy (2007), seems powerless when it comes to regulate its difficult housing crisis. In the borough of Buckingham Palace, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Soho, where the average house price is at £590,661, nineteen times the average incomes (£30,101), flats that are sold for more than £10m, and a 40% rise in prices from the between 2009 and 2012 (data from the estate agents Knight Frank in The Guardian, 2013), sales’ number in the most central sub-area rose by 29% between 2011 and 2012, one third purchased by British citizens and another third from Russia and Middle East (The Guardian, 2013). Despite a projected population’s increase of 8.71% in 20 years (City of Westminster-Housing Needs Assessment 2006, 2007), whose current 10% (11,390 households) is living in unsuitable conditions, the council seems declaring that the only way to deliver social housing is through higher government funds and contributions coming from big developments that would inflate

its housing fund (£78m from Chelsea Barrack). Talking about the 10,000 second homes present within its boundaries, City of Westminster declares that: ‘There is evidence to suggest that some homes are purchased purely as investments, to gain from longer-term capital growth, and are left empty rather than rented out’ (Westminster Housing Strategy: 2007–2012, 2007: 13). After having analysed the current situation of City of Westminster, it results even more evident how the Community Right to Build policy will hardly be able to support local communities all over London, as local councils are the ultimate body that approves a Community Right to Build order. Despite recognizing the intrinsic economic and spatial constraints of building in Westminster, it is still questionable how the GLA doesn’t plan to overcome the limit for groups of not counting on local political support. Moreover, as it is explicitly asked to be part of a Neighbourhood Area, it must be remembered how in City of Westminster already 15 competing NA have been formed (LCNC interview, 2013), and the policy is not clear about the possibility of looking for land in other boroughs.

E l ement A f f o r d a b l e h o u s i n g r e qu i r e m e n t Minus affordable supply from non S106 sites (estd)* E QU A L S P r o j e ct e d b u i l d i n g r a t e † M i n u s s i t e s be l o w t h r e s h o l d ( a s s u m e d) Minus affordable supply from non S106 sites (estd)* E QU A L S T h e r e f or e T a r ge t i s E QU A L S

D w e l l i n g s ( pe r a n n u m ) 5,621 -0 5,621 680 -0 -0 680 5,621/680 827%

Fig.13: Affordable housing target (2007) (City of Westminster); as the table shows no affordable housing were delivered through Section * Information obtained from the106. Council’s 2004/5 HSSA return (average number of dwelli (*Information obtained from the Council’s 2004/5 HSSA between 2004/05 and 2006/07) return † Annual raterate required 1997-2016 as documented in the London Plan Annualbuild build required 1997-2016 from London Plan) Source: City of Westminster Housing Needs Survey 2006 Affordable housing target

* Information obtained from the Council’s 2004/5 HSSA return (average number of dwellings built without section 106 18 between 2004/05 and 2006/07)

† Annual build rate required 1997-2016 as documented in the London Plan

D we l l

3. PROPOSE_RIGHT TO BUILD COMMUNUTY

‘Good planning is supposed to start with a clear statement of the goals of the plan’ (Marcuse, 2013). The Community Right to Build policy, by the end of 2013, had approved only one project and the £3m funds was still unspent. An alternative to CRTB that would facilitate community-led groups with a strong community commitment but not market competitive, would be to create within the ‘Build your own homeThe London way’ prospectus room for a policy that sits in between CRTB and Custom Build Housing. The policy would specifically support mutual and cooperative housing that combines self-build dimension with community intentions. This intervention will set as a goal the promotion of a bottom-up production of affordable housing, where dweller control is central. Following the Big Society rhetoric, I see in the London Way a real opportunity for the government to commit in assisting those housing models that, through self-build, could empower citizens and assure them a secure tenancy. 3.1 Custom Build Housing In order to define how to structure the new policy that would link Community Right to Build to Custom Build Housing, I firstly analyse the rationale of the government for self-build projects. The policy clearly states that self-build’s objective is to promote ‘design and architectural excellence’ to respond to the shortage of housing that is affecting London and its economic growth. Thirty million pounds are available to groups of self-builders in repayable loans; the cost of each unit shouldn’t exceed £300,000 with the loan covering not more than 270,000£. Financial accountability is going to be once more a big constraint for people with low or average incomes: the interest rate for risky investments is set at 11% (Build Your Own Home-The London Way, 2012). Again, as for the CRTB, self-builders are recommended to partner a developer or a housing association. For housing cooperatives like LCNC competing against big players will be

again very difficult. Other sites have been identified. At the moment all of them are in East London. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Beam Park and Barking Riverside, will supply enough land for few hundreds homes (Self Build Portal, 2013). Even if it looks very hard for housing cooperatives and mutual housing models to expand in such a highly commodified market, the disposal of land for custom build removes one of the biggest constraint to make it happen. In addition, in comparison with central areas that have high-density requirements and very unlikely would make space for projects like LCNC to happen, density wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be an issue anymore on custom-build sites. Another goal of the policy is to offer low-income families a cheaper opportunity to build their homes. Anyway it is still vague how these families will be capable to achieve it, considering the difficulties in securing a mortgage and the policy itself favouring low risk developments. Housing co-operatives could offer to low-income families a secure tenancy and provide at the same time a 100 per cent affordable development. 3.2 Right to Build Community I propose that part of the ÂŁ30m for the Custom Build policy would be dedicated to the policy of Right to Build Community, directed to community-led groups of self-builders. The main goal is the production of homes at affordable rent in a coordinated program where future tenants join the cooperative model from the beginning of the process. In terms of land, as providers of affordable housing, housing cooperatives would receive the land through a lease. The benefits that the government would gain are several: being the amount of land in London very scarce and efficiency of its use a crucial issue, the municipality would maintain control on it by owning it. Moreover the value of land will increase in time, the community eventually will benefit from it and the state would easily retain more power on its use (something that resulted very hard to exercise in the Westminster case). Finally the leasehold is a way to resist building speculation. In Amsterdam, this system has been used for a long time, and the municipality keeps providing affordable self-build sites as a way to balance its difficulties in financing directly the production of housing. The outcome of this process is the emergence of numerous self-managed model of housing production (Co-housing cultures, 2012).

QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK: boroughs of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest (The Guardian)

ENFIELD

BARNET

HARROW

HARINGEY REDBRIDGE

WALTHAM FOREST

HAVERING BRENT CAMDEN

ISLINGTON

HACKNEY BARKING & DAGENHAM

NEWHAM HILLINGDON

CITY OF WESTMINSTER

EALING

CITY

KENSINGTON & CHELSEA HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM HOUNSLOW

TOWER HAMLETS

BARKING RIVERSIDE: boroughs of Barking and Dagenham (Maxwan Architects and Urbanists)

SOUTHWARK GREENWICH BEXLEY

LAMBETH WANDSWORTH

LEWISHAM

RICHMOND

MERTON KINGSTON

BROMLEY SUTTON

% of people in waiting list % of people in waiting list

%%on onwaiting waitinglist listboroughs boroughs with with Custom Custom Build sites

Media Media

Enfield Enfield Harrow Harrow Bromley Bromley

Croydon Croydon Hillingdon Hillingdon Sutton Sutton

Merton Merton Wandsworth Wandsworth Bexley Bexley

Ealing Ealing

Greenwich Greenwich

Richmondupon uponThames Thames Richmond Southwark Southwark

Barnet Barnet Havering Havering Westminster Westminster

Hackney Hackney Hammersmith&&Fulham Fulham Hammersmith Kingstonupon uponThames Thames Kingston

% %ononwaiting waitinglistlist

Kensingtonand andChelsea Chelsea Kensington Hounslow Hounslow

BEAM PARK LONDON: boroughs of Barking and Dagenham (GLA)

City of London City of London Newham Newham Tower Hamlets Tower Hamlets Brent Brent Lewisham Lewisham Haringey Haringey Barking and Dagenham Barking and Dagenham Camden Camden Islington Islington Waltham Forest Waltham Forest Lambeth Lambeth Redbridge Redbridge

50 50 45 45 40 40 35 35 30 30 25 25 20 20 15 15 1010 55 00

CROYDON

Fig. 14 (top left): Map of London, boroughs boundaries, Custom build sites red dots (Author 2013) Fig 15. (bottom left): % of people on waiting list per borough (Census 2011) Fig. 16, 17, 18 (top): Custom build sites

No.people people on on waiting waiting list list No. 80.000 80.000

In London this kind of state intervention has been very popular after the Second World War when slums were cleared to make space for social housing estates; even if today this practice is not that common anymore, it is worth mentioning that Newham council just secured a 150 years lease to the housing association that will build in the Vandome Close custom build site (London Borough of Newham, 2012). Last, being professional expertise a big issue for new established community groups, I suggest dedicating £1m specifically to Right to Build Community projects. A £40.000 grant would finance up to 25 developments and provide them the professional expertise that would make the investments safer. Groups would be supported in what concerns setting up the most suitable form of mutual housing in terms of legal structure, size, ownership model; the grant could cover financial advice and community consultation, avoiding long delays due to lack of time and knowledge. 3.3 Design strategy ‘Turner’s Second Law is that the important thing about housing is not what it is but what it does in people’s lives.’ (Ward, 1990:42). When it comes to design, an important reflection is to understand how the dimensions of horizontal decision-making and cooperation could be translated into design and how they could become an asset in terms of social resources that could balance the financial constraint. As Sennett would frame it, how can the physical embody the social (Sennett, 2012)? From an architectural point of view, even if communal housing present some experiments in terms of spatial arrangements, the over-determination of design keeps being a big constraint, especially in a project that relies on constant democratic decision-making and scarce financial resources. Time factor is not seen yet in housing projects as something that needs to be translated into a design strategy. What is then the potential of self-build linked to the idea of collective ownership, ‘multi-scalar community’ and cooperation? What are the consequences for us as individuals and as a group to imagine and create something that escapes the categories of what our social and physical infrastructure offer us (Lefebvre, 1996)?

Fig. 19: Vandome Close ‘Custom build Housing’, showcase site (GLA 2012) Fig. 20 (bottom): Sanford’s terraces in front of kitchen windows (Author 2013)

ROOM 1

ROOM 2

KITCHEN

ROOM 3

ROOM 4

ROOM 7

ROOM 8

ROOM 5

ROOM 6

ROOM 9

ROOM 10

(3) COMMON SPACE: the yellow area represents the common gardens, play areas, vegetable garden, bike shed (Fig. 21-22)

(1) ONE HOUSE: the green area represents the kitchen and the external terrace

(2) TWO HOUSES: the red area represent the common terraces shared by the two houses (Fig.20) 0

Fig. 21: Sanford Coop three levels of social and spatial interaction: (1)the block shared by 10 tenants; (2) the common terrace shared by two blocks; (3) the green area and common space shared by all the co-op’s members.

100m

As an example, the Sanford Coop has been experimenting for over 40 years possible reconfigurations of our concepts of ‘community’ and ‘family’, something that is rarely found in standard housing developments (Fig. 21). The individual unit, the room, is not independent but is part of a spatial and social organisation of the house; the second scale is represented by the space in between the buildings, what Alison (2013) from LCNC explained being her first concern when thinking of being part of a cooperative, because in her view ‘those spaces don’t facilitate social interaction’. Moreover, decisions about the design are taken regularly by the members of the coop: six years ago the coop started a long refurbishment that reduced their carbon emissions of the 60 %, while a project for a bike space was financed and then built directly by local residents. The ‘incremental’ design of the Sanford coop (in this specific case related to communal spaces and not to private ones) adds this new concept of time that housing as a verb implies: the rhythm of how the community takes decisions over time about the space they share, the reformulation of the concept of labour, the value of participation in design decisions. Being LCNC a multi-stakeholder co-op distinguishes LCNC from Sanford in terms of

legal structure that could also influence design: it introduces a relation with the neighbourhood through the community centre and its related activities of lifelong learning, community space, multi-use work spaces, urban agriculture, with the goal of avoiding the whole development to be inwardly focused. The design guidelines I envision have the objective of limiting the financial constraint by translating housing coops’ social capital into a design strategy: • by building the core structure of the project (main structure and services) and half of the units the initial investment could be significantly reduced (Fig.22). This option would mean lowering the mortgage and introducing a time factor that would allow for an incremental growing of the project. • as the units could share some facilities, the area of single flats could be partially reduced. Shared spaces and facilities would cover this ‘loss’. External spaces, whose construction would be extremely cheap, as verandas and green houses could become the expansion of the private unit and shared by a critical number of people. (see Fig.23). This strategy could reduce the investment up to 40% and would permit changes over time. • the multi-scalar dimension of cooperation allows for design experimentation of the spaces that could sit in between the private home and the public space: how many units could share semi-private spaces? What functions are shared? Who manages those? How the public can share semi-public facilities? How are decisions taken? Moreover, considering the fact that this type of housing usually encompasses different kind of ‘families’, I would include this exceptional social trends that London incarnates as a resource rather than a constraint; depending on needs, different kind of spaces could be shared and experimental spatial arrangements could be generated. • by creating economic and physical boundaries that allow for incremental and slow changes, communal spaces can become a sort of flexible and mouldable shape that can be modified over time by the decisions taken by dwellers. Instead of being determined by the design of the private units, understanding the role of semi-private and semi-public spaces could generate new understanding of housing and the importance of spatial transition from private to public space and viceversa.

Considering LCNC’s ambition of participating in the actual construction of their homes, two are the options that I envision: • A self-build housing group where members contribute actively in the construction. This kind of projects could be supported by organisations such as the Community Self Build Agency that for more than thirty years has been assisting groups of people in housing need to build their homes, inside and outside London. The organisation is keen in helping particularly unemployed people or those with limited income, that are asked to get training first (35 hours per week) and carry out the building work 25 hours per week. Normally the rent will be reduced depending on the free labour input. Usually people find a job in construction after the training.

Fig. 22 (left page): Quinta Monroy 2003 Elemental Chile. An example of social housing where the building construction builds the core structure and tenants can keep building as soon as they have enough resources. Fig. 23 (right): Lacaton & Vassal Architects, Social Housing, Mulhouse, 2005: a simple structure and a cheap envelope to define a maximum surface area and volume with surprising spatial qualities.

• A developer-led group, partially self-built. This option would reduce the normal costs of buying a finished home of the 10-20 % and be almost risk free. The developer would build the core structure and shell of the buildings according to what decided by the community group. This model would allow for further expansions depending on time and economic resources of the co-op.

Fig. 24 (top): Something Fantastic Architects, GREENHOUSING PTII,Communal Housing Outside of Antwerp, 2013.

POLITICISE_CONCLUSION

‘Lefebvre’s concept of heterotopia (radically different from that of Foucault) delineates liminal social spaces of possibility where “something different” is not only possible, but foundational for the defining of revolutionary trajectories….We do not have to wait upon the grand revolution to constitute such spaces. That coming together is symbolized by Lefebvre in the quest for centrality.’ (Harvey, 2012: xvii) I analysed the London Community Neighbourhood Cooperative as a case study to navigate and understand the relationships among the profound housing crisis that is affecting London, grassroots initiatives trying to fight it and relative government responses. I showed how the ‘Build Your Own Home – The London Way’ policy’ is not at the moment implementing projects whose ultimate goal is non-profit driven affordable housing, due to the high dependence of housing provision on the market. I highlighted the likely contradictions that ‘community’ groups might encounter when it comes to take decisions over developments of their neighbourhood. LCNC is an experiment of a ‘community’ that builds itself through the process that housing, as a verb, implies. As I explained, the ‘London Way’ can easily make space for cooperative housing experiments that have as their main goal dweller control over housing and the surpluses that it produces. Despite the broader goal of struggles against the housing crisis ask for long tern and deep changes towards a non-profit driven housing sector, my proposal tries to be a strategic compromise that rebalances relations of power within the framework of a specific housing policy, challenging the rhetoric of the Big Society through what I showed being one possibility for real

Fig. 25 (left page): LCNC Strawbale building 2012 (frames taken from LCNC video ‘Pilot Build 2012’)

empowerment in housing. The transformative goals of self-build linked to the multi-scalar cooperative dimension aim at designing a process where the semi-private and the semi-public spaces become the core of democratic negotiations through time. The paper showed the highly political implications of the process of building our homes, challenging the misguiding plans for affordable housing and custom build homes and disclosing the limits of the current planning system (Marcuse 2007). The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson in the forward of ‘The London Way’ envisions the policy as a pilot ‘approach to developing a new London vernacular’ (Johnson, 2012). In the indications given by Design for Homes, the uniformity given by brick facades is meant to counteract the stigmatization that architecture can sometimes produce. The issue of deep inequality in housing should not be targeted then through an exercise in make-up, but instead a new architectural style should arise from a design that constantly interprets and embodies the political implication that accompany the concept of housing used as a verb.

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INTERVIEWS Alastair Parvin. 2013, Architect at 00:/Architecture. Interviewed by the author [written notes, no tape] Westminster Hub, London, 11 July 2013, 11:00.

Mark. 2013. House manager at Sanford Coop. Interviewed by the author [written notes, no tape] Sanford Coop, London, 1 August 2013, 11:00.

Alison, Dee, Lani, Leslie, Sian. 2013. LCNC’s members. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] Islington, London, 26 May 2013, 13:00.

Roger Zogolowitch. 2013. Architect-developer at Solidspace. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] Solidspace office, London, 10 July 2013, 16:00.

Alison, Dee, Lani, Leslie, Sian. 2013. LCNC’s members. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] Royal Festival Hall, London, 1 June 2013, 11:00.

Stephen Hill. 2013. Community Land Trusts and UK housing policy expert. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] London Bridge, London, 3 June 2013, 16:00.

Brad Carroll. 2013. Founder of Brixton Green. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] Brixton, London , 3July 2013, 15:00.

Tom Llloyd Smith. 2013. GLA London Way policy manager. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] London City Hall, 1 July 2013, 10:00.

Dan Jones. 2013. Partner at Civic Architects Ltd. Interviewed by the author [written notes, no tape] telephone interview, 22 July 2012, 11:00. Dave. 2013. East London Community Land Trust Community Organiser. Interviewed by the author [written notes, tape] St. Clement’s Hospital, London, 30 July 2013, 15:00. James. 2013. Sanford Coop’s tenant. Interviewed by the author [written notes, no tape] Sanford Coop, London, 3 August 2013, 13:00. Leslie. 2013. LCNC’s member. Interviewed by the author [written notes, no tape] City of Westminster, London, 3 July 2013, 13:00. Leslie. 2013. LCNC’s member. Interviewed by the author [written notes, no tape] Skype interview, 22 June 2013, 17:00