Flagship community led affordable housing projects for delivering 100% genuinely affordable homes for London have been announced
Flagship community led affordable housing projects have been announced for London which will deliver 100% genuinely affordable homes in London as part of the Mayor’s pledge to boost small builders in the capital and increase supply.
The Mayor’s small sites, small builders programme will be extended with £3.8 million of funds over the next year as the London Community Land Trust, the UK’s first urban community land trust, will deliver the community programmes on two chosen sites comprising of around 70 affordable new homes. It will develop sites at Cable Street in Tower Hamlets and Christchurch Road in Lambeth. The Trust was formed as a result of campaigning by community organising group Citizens UK.
The new homes will be priced according to average local incomes and based on the principle that residents shouldn’t have to pay more than one third of their income on their mortgage, meaning that they will typically be sold at between a third and half of market value.
London’s home building sector is dominated by a small number of large developers that build the vast majority of homes across the capital. The number of small builders, those that deliver fewer than 100 homes, has halved over the last 10 years, and Mayor Sadiq Khan wants to make small plots of publicly owned land more accessible to London’s small and medium sized builders, including community led housing groups, through a simple bidding process with standardised legal contracts.
Ten small Transport for London located across seven different boroughs were launched in February as part of the pilot which drew significant interest, with 134 bids received from 80 organisations ranging from developers and community led housing organisations to registered providers and architect-developers. The number of homes proposed at each site range from two to 90.
The Mayor said that tackling the housing crisis is complex and will take time, and all steps must be taken for that. Making small plots of public land available for housing development is a key part of addressing London’s housing shortage.
Not only will this programme help to provide the new, genuinely affordable homes that Londoners so desperately need, but it will also reinvigorate small and medium-sized homebuilders after years of over reliance on large developers.
Co-director of the London Community Land Trust, Calum Green said Community Land Trusts are a way for Londoners to play a part in delivering the genuinely and permanently affordable homes that the city desperately needs.
He added that these two sites, announced by the Mayor will mean over 200 people will no longer be forced to leave London and can stay in the neighbourhood they call home.
