communityled.homes

We support people making homes together through Cohousing, Community Land Trusts, and Housing Co-operatives

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Senior Project Adviser job

Come and work in a fresh team supporting residents and communities to take control of their own homes, through co-ops, cohousing, and community land trusts.

Salary £47,963 FTE + pension, benefits and potential bonus
Location Flexible, typically at least 1 day/week at our office in Bermondsey, London SE1
Contract 21–35 hours per week (Full time / Part time / Job share considered)
Closing date Monday 15th September 2025 at 9:00 AM

Community Led Homes is a dynamic new team at CDS Co-operatives, a housing association with a long history of creating and supporting housing co-ops. Our mission is to expand opportunities for more people to live in homes they control, together with their neighbours and community, and to support those who seek to, or already are.

We are looking for new team members. You will be instrumental in supporting community-led housing projects and programmes such as Build Belonging and Collective Ownership. You will lead a range of communications and events to spread an understanding of the sector and our offer.

This is a flexible, career-enhancing role, working in a collaborative team making a real impact.
We would like to hear from you if you enjoy a variety of tasks and challenges; are creative, enterprising, and ambitious; and are able to get things done giving attention to detail, without losing sight of the bigger picture.

You will be an all-rounder in housing, property, regeneration, and project management and able to turn your hand to whatever is needed. You will be a natural communicator, working collaboratively with professionals, politicians, community groups, and funders, and can challenge positively.
 

Apply by 15 September on Blue Octopus

Cohousing Exeter

Cohousing Exeter is a newly forming group, looking for people interested in neighbourly living and active aging with some shared spaces, alongside individual homes.

Cohousing Exeter has a developer and a site for around 30 homes.

It is the first project we’re working on, using our Build Belonging methodology, which we’ve been developing and refining for the past couple of years.

Unlike traditional approaches to cohousing which start with a group, we’re starting with an enabling developer and a clear site, and acting as facilitators to convene a group of future residents around the project, and working with them to form a community and shape decisions. Our approach works across the physical, social, and organisational aspects of community led housing to create mutually supportive cultures in any new housing development, addressing isolation, raising well-being and quality of life.

Cohousing Exeter will focus on active aging. If you’re interested in living in Exeter with community baked into the foundations, or know someone who might be, we are seeking interest to attend future talks and meetings.

We are also exploring possibilities with developers in London, and would love to discuss any opportunities at an early stage.

 

latest stories and opinion

Intergenerational communal housing

We are helping to host the launch of some interesting work by Savannah Fishel drawing lessons from intergenerational cohousing communities in the USA and Australia. Her observations reflect our experience in the UK, and help deepen our approach to Build Belonging, where we turn developments into strong communities with a sense of belonging and neighbourly living.

The launch on 16 July includes a brief exhibition of case studies. The report will draw out the conditions that contribute to social cohesion between generations, and the strategies, interventions or designs that are effective in mitigating friction and helping a community to thrive.

 

latest stories and opinion

Urban Design Group

The Summer 2025 edition of the Urban Design Journal focuses on the increasing influence of community-led organisations in delivering new neighbourhoods.

We have a piece on giving people control and belonging, without the challenges encountered in traditional approaches to community led housing. Collective Ownership offers control and security for private renters with increasing affordability over time. Build Belonging is a form of custom built cohousing where we help developers incorporate the social and design principles of CLH into their developments, and forge communities around these projects.

We also reference RUSS and NW3 CLT, and other articles consider projects we’ve supported such as Squeezed London and Surge Co-operative.

On Monday 14 July, our director, Levent Kerimol, will take part in a discussion on Community Led Urbanism to explain how we’re taking forward these approaches to a wider number of people, chaired by Paul Reynolds, UDG Chair and Topic Editor for this latest edition of the Journal.

 

latest stories and opinion

London Assembly backs community led housing

The recent report from the London Assembly Housing Committee shines a light on Housing Co-ops and Community Land Trusts. It’s encouraging to see community-led housing being taken seriously at this level. We appreciate the positive recognition our work has received from the Assembly and the groups we work with.

The full report recommends the Mayor should advocate for and allocate more funding as well as land for CLH projects. It also emphasizes the need to ensure that more Black and minoritised people can bring forward community-led homes.

We welcome the recommendations for funding. Land is essential for groups pursuing development, although we know this a complex, risky, and lengthy path for communities to achieve control over their housing, and even more so for marginalised communities with limited time and resources.

To see real growth in community led housing, we believe new approaches such as Collective Ownership are essential. We are working to establish the Collective Ownership Society as a scalable vehicle for long-term investment focusing on acquisitions to address the instability and disempowerment faced by private renters.

We encourage the Mayor and Assembly, as well as third-sector funders and investors, to get behind Collective Ownership as a way of making the day-to-day control and security offered by community led housing, quicker and easier to access by London’s diverse communities.

 

latest stories and opinion