Welcome to self-help-housing.org

Self-help-housing.org is the only website dedicated to promoting and supporting self-help housing initiatives.

Before and after renovation by Riverlink, London.

It provides ordinary people, who are perhaps unable to access mainstream housing or who want to tackle local problems, with the tools to take on and make use of the increasing number of empty properties in our cities, towns and villages It’s the first time that this range of information has been brought together in one place where it can be accessed by anyone.

Many of today’s large housing associations and co-ops were started up forty or fifty years ago by local people with just a couple of properties and so it’s not really a new idea; just one that needs reviving.

Click here to download our pdf leaflet about self-help housing and feel free to circulate it to anyone who might be interested.

The site provides everything you need to know:

• how to get organised
• how to get hold of and borrow empty properties from their owners
• where to go for funding
• how to organise any necessary repairs
• how to use volunteers &
• how to turn renovating properties into a training opportunity.
• plus a bank of specimen documents

It also provides many useful contacts to enable you to find out what other people have done and achieved:

• case studies highlighting different types of successful projects
• a directory of projects already involved in self help housing &
• links to other organisations and websites

“This excellent initiative helps groups of local people create new homes for themselves and their community from wasted property. Nothing could be more right for the times we live in.” David Ireland, CEO, Empty Homes Agency