World Habitat & Community-led Housing: What’s next?

World Habitat has received funding from the Nationwide Foundation to raise awareness about community-led housing and support alliance building in England with links across Scotland and Wales (and beyond!).

At World Habitat our goal is to support and enable the continued growth of community-led housing. We believe that community-led housing has the potential to be a genuine, scalable alternative to the standard models of housing provision, and that by working together this is more likely to become a reality.   World Habitat is not using any of the grant to pay for our own contribution.  All of our input is provided in-kind.

A variety of activities have been designed with the help of community-led housing experts to try to make as much impact as possible.  Our efforts are now well underway.

Here’s what’s coming up in 2016:

• PR drive to raise awareness about the existence of community-led housing and what it can achieve, trying to reach as broad an audience as possible. Running from January 2016 to May 2017.
• Map of all known community-led housing projects in England and Wales (February).
• Stakeholder Analysis identifying and categorising key contacts across community-led housing for our outreach and communications activity (February).
• Case Studies which highlight the positive ways community-led housing benefits people in communities as well as organisations (February).
• Event: Working collaboratively to support the growth of community-led housing. At this event community-led housing experts who provide front-line support and advice will develop shared messages and work together to design a mechanism to improve how we all support community-led housing. (February)
• Supporting the ‘New Sources of Supply workstream’ of the Housing and Planning All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), ensuring community-led housing and community engagement are threaded through discussions. An all-party parliamentary group (APPG) is a grouping in the UK parliament that is composed of politicians from all political parties.
• Knowledge Exchange events. The first event kicks off in London in March (hosted by London Community Neighbourhood Cooperative in partnership with The Glass-house Community Led Design). Another 5 events are coming up over the next 18 months, hosted by Locality in partnership with DTA Wales and Scotland. These events are aimed at spreading awareness, raising support and generating new connections for community-led housing.  Places are limited but will be open to existing or potential providers or supporters of community-led housing. This could include (but is not limited to) community members, existing community groups, housing associations, local authority or parish council representatives, funders and investors, local landowners and political representatives.

Get Involved
We need everyone to share, share, share! Keep shouting about community-led housing: What’s happening, why it’s happening, and what’s great about it.

• Join the Community-led Housing group on Facebook
• Like the public facing page, Community-led Housing Matters
• Follow and tweet to @CommLedHousing
• Send links to your own communications channels – related newsletters, webpages etc. to  Jennifer.Line@www.world-habitat.org