Common Ground - for Mutual Home Ownership
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CDS Co-operatives and the New Economics Foundation have jointly published a report which recommends the establishment of shared equity co-operatives to solve the housing crisis faced by people on low to moderate incomes who are priced out of the housing market in London and other high cost housing areas.
Common Ground for mutual home ownership
The report, ‘Common Ground – for mutual home ownership’ was published at a launch reception at Church House, Westminster, on Thursday 30th October. The reception was sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The report sets out the findings of a fifteen month research project commissioned by CDS Co-operatives and carried out by a team of researchers from the New Economics Foundation. The research project was jointly funded by CDS Co-operatives and the Housing Corporation. The researchers interviewed key workers, employers and housing providers in London and the South West to analyse their housing needs and aspirations. The research brief was, on the basis of robust research information, to consider whether or not a co-operative and mutual form of housing tenure could make a unique contribution to the housing crisis facing key workers and others in high cost areas.
It concludes that combining a shared equity co-operative, which enables members to have an equity stake in their home, with a community land trust that takes land out of the market and holds it in trust to provide affordable housing for current and future generations, is a robust model that is attractive and urgently needs to be applied to solve the dire lack of low-cost key worker housing.
Speakers at the launch who welcomed the innovative proposals in the report included Ken Bartlett, Chairman of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Land Enquiry Commission who said “This [report] offers the most economical and best value for money way of using public or private investment to meet housing needs. It provides for the needs of successive generations in a way which acknowledges the ownership aspirations of most people in this country, and the need to bridge the gulf between renting and owning”.
CDS Co-operatives is now lobbying for support for the proposals and to develop two pilot projects, one in London and the other in Buckinghamshire, Devon or Gloucestershire.
To download a PDF copy of the report please click here or for the 6 page summary leaflet please click here