Lib Dem plan for action on empty properties

Liberal Democrat housing spokeswoman, Sarah Teather, has used a speech at her party’s annual conference to call for empty social homes to be brought back into use. She said: “My fear is that the recession will leave us with whole estates of empty properties…we could use these estates for short-life housing to help a young person on low wages get a temporary helping hand.”

Social Change Awards nominations open

This year’s DSC Social Change Awards are now open for nominations. These awards are really useful for raising an organisation’s profile - which never does your funding prospects any harm. What’s more, you can nominate yourselves.

Conservatives back self help solutions

Conservative housing spokesman, Grant Shapps MP, has signaled his support for self help solutions to tackle inner city deprivation. New Start reports his comments in a speech to Royal Institute of British Architects. Mr Shapps said: “We will encourage power to be exercised at the very lowest levels of local government, by which I mean parish, ward, but also street level in order to force faster change directed by the very people it will most affect.”

Self Help in Action - Phoenix Housing Co-operative

For an anticipated cost of just £6,250 per property, Phoenix Housing Co-operative, based in London’s East End, has brought back into use four long term empty properties at social rent levels under a Service Level Agreement likely to last for 5 years.

The properties, long empty due to chronic rising damp resulting from a fractured Damp Proofing Course (DPC) had been declared ‘long term management voids’ because their owners, Poplar Harca Housing Association, judged the expenditure needed to bring them back into use ‘uneconomic’ given that the block has a limited future lifespan.

Beginning work in May 2009, Tower Hamlets-based Phoenix worked with volunteers to bring the ground floor flats back into use for a fraction of the £30,000 per flat previously quoted to the housing association, whilst also providing organised work experience and practical skills guidance for the volunteers.

Co-op Manager, Alison Masterman, explains: “The Phoenix Housing Refurbishment initiative is really very simple and we think very elegant: take a housing co-op populated by people who have experienced homelessness, who are committed to self-help and to creating homes for the next generation of those in need; and combine that with a bit of technical ‘know how’ to bring empty properties back into use at a fraction of the market cost. We can see no reason not to run with this idea, to seek more funding, more support, more partners and in doing so expand opportunities – that is the opportunity for a stable home and the skills from which to thrive.”

Three volunteers have already secured employment: one as a general handyman in a large hotel, another as a self-employed plasterer and another as a bathroom renovation contractor.

Two volunteers describe their experience of working on the projects: “I have become empowered. Learning skills like rendering and plastering has added to my skillset”, says Ray Clarke (pictured). John Walker agrees: “It’s hard to express all the rewards you get from working on this project!! Volunteers who have
given their time usually spend much more than they originally volunteer, which goes to show the
tangible benefits members get educationally, socially and, dare I say it, spiritually.”

When Phoenix began work on the properties on the ground floor of a 1929 brick built mansion block in London E3 they were without kitchens, bathrooms, and heating. Using recycled, donated and non-toxic green materials a new injection DPC system has been completed including re-plastering and decoration. Kitchens, bathrooms and heating have been reinstated. All of the work was fully registered with the Health and Safety Executive and supervised by a qualified Site Manager.

Phoenix Community Housing Co-op was established in 1980 in the East End of London to provide short life accommodation in shared supportive communities to single people on low incomes who were in housing need. It now operates mainly through taking on short-life properties from large housing associations such as the Peabody Trust and Poplar Harca in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, although overtime it has also acquired 17 properties that it now owns. It currently manages 155 short life units, a combination of shared street properties and self-contained estate flats.

Phoenix is currently seeking funding and more properties. It aims to expand on the concept of bringing empty and dilapidated properties back into use through self-help development in exchange for medium/long term (5 – 30 years) housing leases. This may take the form of larger more ambitious schemes, with bids for Temporary Social Housing Grants in partnership with a local housing association and/or developing the building skills and work experience element into more formal opportunities for working with vulnerable people needing housing.

For more information about Phoenix Housing Co-op email Alison Masterman at mail@phoenixhousing.co.uk or visit www.phoenixhousing.co.uk