Events

Forest CLT and CLH London worked together to organise curated roundtables for London-based CLTs.

These were an opportunity for CLTs to learn about each other and how they are working, catch up on projects, and discuss common challenges.

The first session in May discussed governance and membership topics:
• How organisations are organised, eg working groups, policies, AGMs, board,
• Approaches to membership building, alliances, and the role of members
• Why people are working with CLTs, and what was unique about each organisaiton?

The second session in June considered:
• How sites were found and decided upon
• How councils (or other landowners) were convinced
• How tenure mixes and target resident groups were agreed
• How robust decision making and clarity over responsibilities and risks were ensured
• Development partnerships, landlord partnerships, and allocations

Combating loneliness was a government policy priority even before Covid. It seems intuitive that people living in community led housing, with its common spaces and shared activities, might well be less lonely than people in conventional homes – but until recently this had never been tested empirically.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) commissioned the London School of Economics, the University of Bristol and the University of Lancaster, to undertake research on the effectiveness of community-led housing (especially cohousing) in reducing loneliness across all ages. The report ‘Those little connections’: Community-led Housing and Isolation was published in November 2021, giving strong support for the thesis that community led housing is effective in reducing loneliness for those who take part.

 

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Join us at this open forum exploring experiences, challenges and possibilities for change in developing CLH that is also migrant-refugee focused or friendly

After brief introductions from invited speakers, your contributions will inform the next stage of an action-research project with partners in Sweden and Austria entitled MICOLL: Migration and housing: meeting refugees’ housing needs through collaborative housing programmes.

Introductory Speakers:

• Dr Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, Lecturer in Urban Futures, Lancaster University
• Dr Yael Arbell, Research Associate at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University
• Tom Heller, Lisa Heller and Rachel Dunfield, members of a Yorkshire co-housing group

As part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture, we held an online event Housing and the Care Crisis which brought together key thinkers on the subjects of housing and care with four community led housing groups from across London.

During the discussion, we explored the approaches these groups are taking to provide mutual care and support within their communities and considered how these approaches could be used to help re-imagine practices of care away from isolated, profit-driven models towards those that are mutually supportive, collective and sustainable. 

Watch the full event here if you missed it:

Speakers

– Helen Hester, Professor of Gender, Technology and Cultural Politics at the University of West London

– Jim Hudson, Senior Research Associate on the CHIC (Collaborative Housing and Innovation in Care) project.

– Maria Brenton, Adviser to Older Women’s Cohousing & London Older Lesbian Cohousing.

Community housing groups:

– Bonny Downs Cohousing – Newham

– Homes in Mind – Harrow

– Ginger Giraffe – East London

 
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