New case study - St Mark’s Housing Co-operative

St Mark’s Housing Co-operative provides affordable housing for 30 members on low or irregular incomes in West London and parts of East London. They take on temporarily vacant properties from local housing providers, often in a state of disrepair, clean and decorate where necessary, and use them to house members on a short life basis, for a minimum of six months and often for much longer. Full case study here.

Self help housing charity enters new PHASE

The South London charity formerly known as Advocates for the Homeless has relaunched as ‘PHASES’ (People, Housing and Social Enterprise Scheme). Over the past four years it has concentrated on developing construction training projects linked to empty property. Project manager Glenn Heaton said: “The change of name better reflects what we are about and the fact that we now help a wide range of marginalised people.” The charity’s most recent renovation, in Peckham, will feature on the BBC series ‘Britain’s Empty Homes’ in early 2011.

Read more about PHASES.

HCA debate on Empty Property

The Homes and Communities agency is hosting a debate on empty property on their Showcase website. The debate ‘How  do we maximise the use of empty homes?’ runs from 12th July - 30th and aims: “to address key challenges that local authorities face, highlight innovative practice and generate practical solutions to help the sector bring more empty homes back into use”. The Showcase website features a series of films from housing experts - including Canopy Co-ordinator, Steve Hoey - designed to spark debate around the issues involved in bringing empty homes back into use.

Community Campus feaured in New Start

Middlesborough-based self help housing organisation, Community Campus ‘87, are the subject of a feature in the latest edition of leading regeneration magazine, New Start. The organisation was set up in 1987 in response to the housing crisis facing people aged 16 to 24 in northeast England and has since provided housing for more than 5,000 people. In the feature, New Start’s Jill Theobald talks to Community Campus co-founders, Carl Ditchburn and Simon Virth, about over 20 years of successful work and the looming challenges from cuts in public spending. The New Start e-zine also featured a case study of a Community Campus volunteer.

Hackney Council tackles empty homes

London Housing News reports that Hackney Council has been taking action to bring empty properties back into use:

“The council has helped create 221 new homes from empty properties in the borough in the past two years, for renting by those on the council’s housing waiting list, and has also recruited a dedicated officer to work on the issue.

Grant funding worth several thousands of pounds is available through the council for landlords wanting to return empty properties into use for renting, and owners, neighbours, developers and estate agents should make contact to find out more about available options.”

Full story here.

New Case Study - Riverlink Housing Co-operative

Riverlink Housing Co-operative is based around North East London and has done some amazing work in rescuing properties bought-up in advance of road schemes, which would otherwise have been left to rot. Click here to read the full case study.

Community Campus Take Key Skills To India

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Not content with renovating empty properties in Stockton and Middlesborough, a group of people from Community Campus have just returned from a working trip to India, where they oversaw the building of a meeting room for a small rural community.

Carl Ditchburn, Community Campus’s Director, led the party and recounts how: “The India project emerged after we bumped into a development worker at a conference in Liverpool.  Sam Chelladuria worked with the READ centre in Bangalore and we hit upon the idea of taking our keyskills model of construction training to India  to work with local builders and help achieve the READ centre’s aims.  The initial project in 2007  involved building  two classrooms at a school for slum dwellers, while this time we went over to build  a meeting room for a rural community north of Bangalore, again working with local labour as a personal development project.  Meantime, Community Campus is engaged in developing a longer term relationship with the READ centre in order  to sustain the activities it has developed to date.”

More about the Read Centre and Community Campus http://www.commact.com/cgi-bin/noticeboards/attachments/1565/11770/commact+conference+at+Brisbane+present.pdf

TSRC briefing paper on self help housing

The Third Sector Research Centre at Birmingham University, which is funded by the Cabinet Office, is researching various aspects of housing as part of its work.  Following discussions with Self-Help-Housing.Org, one of these areas of research is into the role of self-help housing  as a  driver of innovative community driven housing  initiatives and a Briefing Paper outlines the approach they’re taking.

“It’s good  to see the hard work of self-help housing organisations being recognised in a major piece of research such as this” said Jon Fitzmaurice Director of Self-Help-Housing.Org  “Later this year, TSRC plan to hold a symposium aimed at key policy makers as part of the research, which together with their findings, will be used to make the case for additional resources being made available  to support community driven housing initiatives. “

Canopy Housing Project film

Canopy Housing Project in Leeds have produced an excellent short film featuring volunteers, tenants and staff, in which they talk about the work they do for Canopy and what it means to them. If you want to hear about the value of self-help housing from the people actually involved, then you can view the film on the Canopy Housing website by clicking here.

Latch launch innovation training project

. Latch housing project in Leeds are running an innovative Lottery funded project which provides training for young people in construction skills. The Hands On Project now has its own website:  www.handson.latch.org.uk which describes the way in which the project works and their achievements to date. You can also visit the Latch case study to find out more about the whole organisation.

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