RuralIdyll

This paper was submitted to the U.K. Network Cohousing Website by the Community Project, Laughton Lodge, Lewes, in October 2001

Contact details:

Rachel Rose newmembers@thecommunityproject.com

The Community Project 23 Laughton Lodge Laughton East Sussex BN8 6BY

Tel: 01323 815724

Co–housing: an irrelevant rural idyll for rich daydreamers?

In stark contrast to a number of countries in Europe and to the US, co-housing in the UK is currently very much a minority housing option. The few projects in existence are primarily located in the countryside, have taken years to establish and have been financed solely by the participants thus excluding anyone without the means to buy a house.

There is a whole array of reasons for this which include issues around planning law and issues stemming from land values in the UK and the way the housing market operates. There are, of course, cultural reasons too – people in the UK have a much stronger expectation than many of their European counterparts that they should own their own home; detached houses have much more status than terraced ones (even if they are detached by only a few metres). All this is reinforced politically, not least through the sales of Council houses and the right to buy.

And yet, the Government itself is now beginning to propound policies which embody key values from co-housing. Neighbourhood Renewal and its predecessor, New Deal for Communities, are fundamentally about building communities of a size which people can identify with in the places where they live. These programmes aspire to have residents in the majority on the management structures and to bring local people into the management of the services they use. Building "social capital" of all kinds is an important element of these programmes. Some housing associations are moving down the same path and there are examples of estates where resident –led management committees have been handed the budget and responsibility for maintenance of their own homes with great success. In many ways, this is co-housing writ large. With local networks, mutual support and collective local responsibility for much of what happens locally at their core, they may be less intensive experiences than co-housing but are nevertheless built on the same values and demand similar skills.

Co-housing projects – in urban, suburban and rural areas – can only contribute to this process. Co-housing creates strong and supportive communities based on the place where people live. It provides people with a sense of belonging, a strong local network of contacts for mutual support, easy opportunities for socialising and the skills and motivation to deal with conflict and contribute to the management of the community. A strong co-housing community will be able to make some of those benefits available to the neighbourhood it is based in and will certainly serve as a demonstration of what "community" can mean. Unlike many other forms of intentional community which demand that members’ primary loyalty will be to the community, co-housing enables and encourages its members to look outward - to work outside, to go to school outside, to be members of the community outside. Indeed, the support of the co-housing community both in practical terms (eg easy access to babysitting) and in "moral" terms (giving people the confidence to get involved in other things) may be vital in encouraging members to take on things in their wider community they had not previously thought possible. A co-housing community within a "neighbourhood" has the potential to be a very positive resource in achieving a stronger local community.

Currently, the odds are stacked against this happening. The barriers to private individuals achieving a mixed tenure development are almost insuperable; there is very little support for groups of any kind and those without a considerable range of professional skills, a tenacious commitment to achieving their ambitions (and some luck) are unlikely to succeed. We, at the Community Project, have been keen to see the concepts behind our own model expanded to include a much wider range of groups and we have done some thinking about how this might be achieved. We are keen to share our ideas with policy makers at local, regional and national level.