Co-Housing to Form Firm Foundations
MERLIN BETTS
I have to start with a bit of an apology. Earlier this year my article (Between a Bomb, Some Rock and a Hard Place, HIP 220) pondered the much-asked question: what will become of St Leonards Church? But I managed to miss the most important thing about the church, namely – the land surrounding it and the people who want to live there.
Never mind apocalyptic landfalls and grim collapses destroying an increasingly decrepit piece of architecture. The whole while there was a community land trust set to storm the entire site: fix the cliff, build homes for desperate and deserving local residents, set up a community wellbeing hub, workshops, gardens, even a new heritage centre for the Burton tomb! And as community editor of a paper that’s repeatedly written about this heroic community land trust, I managed not to notice. For the exciting and grizzly details of that whole sorry tale, look for Build Your Church upon the Rock.
From Local Church to Community Hub
Anyway, after the whole saga around my last article, I ended up meeting with the amazing leaders of Hastings Older Women’s Co-Housing (HOWCH), the over-50s community land trust bringing fresh life to St Leonards Church and its surrounding land.
The lack of safe, affordable housing in Hastings is well established. It’s a particular problem for vulnerable social groups and there are many such groups in our town. With the government constantly making cuts to social welfare, including measures to make housing more readily available, and landlords generally preferring to line their pockets and look after their own, a community solution would seem the best option.
Developing Together
HOWCH are based on the Older Women’s Co-housing project New Grounds in High Barnett. You can get some excellent info on this project and the recent state of co- and community housing in the UK via Kate Youde’s piece Co-housing for Older Women, on insidehousing.co.uk. It’s from 2017 but still an illuminating run round the houses. I’ll summarise:
Co-housing means designing, building, owning and maintaining housing as a community of residents. Members of the cohousing group discuss their needs and resources with planners, contractors and supporting organisations from the beginning. When the final product is built to their specifications, the co-housing organisation – entirely composed of residents and members seeking to become residents – owns the building. That’s the basic model, anyway.
So far, co-housing projects in the UK have particularly appealed to groups of independent women over 50 who find themselves still renting, and who are not ready to go into a care institution. By co-operating with funders, often housing associations, the co-housing groups can develop properties to suit their needs, which aren’t catered for in the private market.
The starting point for any cohousing project is a place to build. Following inconclusive discussions with the council, HOWCH have settled on the land around St Leonards Church. And they have very good reasons for joining many ambitious people before them in taking the church project on.
Church Divests Land
HOWCH spent much of 2022 negotiating with the Church of England in relation to its Coming Home initiative. Launched in 2021, the initiative proposes that vacated church buildings and land be released to viable community groups (whether via lease, sale or donation), to be used for the common good.
In January 2022 HOWCH submitted a draft presentation and business case for the St Leonards Church and Undercliff site to the Church Committee, formed after an open meeting in October 2021. This was followed up in June 2022. In September they viewed St Leonards Church and the surrounding land, and received the approval of Jeremy Fraser at Housing Justice, a national Christian charity that aims to “alleviate homelessness in all its forms”.
In my previous article I mentioned the risks posed to the church building by the unstable cliff behind it. HOWCH are more interested in the viability of the land around the Church, where poorly-planned attempts at development in the 1960s caused land slippage – damaging back gardens on West Hill Road above and revealing their sewage pipes. Some of you may know the skeletal structure that remains there: a lasting statement of those ill-conceived efforts. It has the dubious distinction of being the oldest abandoned and bankrupt building scheme in the UK.
Having no great interest in the church building itself, HOWCH invited two Trustees of a local well-being project (a serious contender I assure you) to consider the possibility of using it as a Wellbeing and Community Hub.
The current plan is for 30 terraced flats below the Burton St Leonards tomb, with an adjoining co-housing community centre and an accessible green roof. Above, next to the tomb site, would be a heritage centre, hopefully enjoying the participation of the Burton St Leonards Society. Over at the church building, once the land behind it is made safe, the extension would be altered and the interior converted for secular use.
Funding the Project
In late 2022, HOWCH applied for and received the remaining £1,733 in Hastings Borough Council’s (HBC) Community Housing Fund – a small but significant nod of approval. Community Housing budgets desperately need more resources.
This first step was followed by an agreement from the Architectural Heritage Fund to pay up to £13,300 expressly for a preliminary slope stability assessment, geotechnical evaluation and related investigations. The Diocese of Canterbury have agreed in principle to match fund in the region of £8,862 for the initial, exploratory land survey, which will determine the route forward.
Campbell Reith, Consulting Engineers, carried out an assessment of the cliff in 2021 (after a slump) and have expressed an interest in reassessing the terrain. HOWCH is currently applying to the Stalled Sites Fund for approximately £23,000 which would allow further necessary exploratory groundwork. As well as Campbell Reith, they have requested quotes from two other engineering firms. They fully expect the total cost of stabilising the land (which also houses the Burton tomb on West Hill Road) to be above £1 million. Building and renovating would cost still more, but this is no reason to give up on the project.
In my articles mentioned above you can find some discussion of another group’s assessment of the church land. Having met both parties, I can’t help but wonder what good might be achieved if they could work together, but as it happens, the members of the pre-SLCCT seem content to refuse.
Not Alone
HOWCH believes the Undercliff site presents a significant opportunity to achieve a number of HBC’s key housing and planning objectives, providing wider community health, social, economic and environmental benefits. It would also demonstrate the process of ideas moving into action, delivery and impact – directly addressing issues highlighted in the (CofE) Church Commission’s Coming Home report (2021).
The group are particularly concerned about a rise in elder abuse and femicide (Femicide Census 2020), and the need for their group and older women elsewhere to find safe and sustainable accommodation.
HOWCH chair Kate Moran says: “Invisibility, devaluation and derision towards the older woman has increased with the lack of housing, lockdowns and cost of living crisis. All the more need for co-operative and economical solutions to our rapidly aging Boomer cohort.”
You might’ve noticed Hastings Rental Health’s plans for a housing co-operative too (see Jess Luby’s article in this issue), and their similar interest in working with HBC to achieve objectives that benefit the whole town. Community projects have a way of attracting and incorporating support, and drawing funding, in a way that private concerns simply can’t.
Having said that, the private sector has a worrying ability to siphon public funds, especially when you’re talking about companies that are already obscenely wealthy. Look to the community for serious and long-term answers, no-one else will fix our problems for us – no-one else needs to while it profits them.
Meet the Women of HOWCH
HOWCH will host an info stall at the top of Kings Road market every first Saturday of the month and will be happy to discuss any queries you may have, or generally sate your curiosity about co-housing.
They’re also planning an exhibition entitled Different Ways of Living, (venue to be decided) which will document the organisation’s progress while championing zero-carbon building and zero-carbon lifestyles.
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