Marianne Heaslip is a director of Terrace 21, a housing community on the mutual home ownership model that is looking to retrofit five houses in Granby, Liverpool, and keep them permanently affordable. We met her at her day job as an architect at Urbed in Manchester to find out more.
What’s your name?
My name is Marianne Heaslip. I’m one of the directors of Terrace 21 and I’m on two of the four working groups: design and tech and finance. There’s also governance and legals and a communications group. There are five fully allocated members and another group of 10 people who are interested, come along to meetings but haven’t signed not he dotted line yet.
I try not to use the word community too much because in a lot of the work that I do it can be a placebo word or a tick box.
What’s the point of Terrace 21?
To provide housing for our members, which is permanently affordable for future members, and takes environmental sustainability seriously.
When did you decide to get involved?
Spring of 2011, not long moved into the Granby area, I met a guy who set up a co-op that was the predecessor of Terrace 21, when there were still homes around.
I was sick of private renting. I knew this was probably the best route to get a house in an area where I wanted to live that was to an environmental standard that I would be happy with. Granby is special in that way, I knew I really wanted to live there.
How do you fit it in?
With great difficulty! Around all the other things, like Urbed, which are all related, which helps, but basically by working six or seven days a week. Earlier this year I decided that was unsustainable and started a job share. I went down to three days a week.
.@StephenHillFP on the “sea change” towards community-led housing in London thanks to recent successes #HotC2016 pic.twitter.com/tACjzdlGn3
— Far Nearer (@far_nearer) October 21, 2016
What’s been your proudest moment?
It’s difficult to say because we haven’t built the houses yet but we have been involved for a long time in helping to get Granby where it is now. I wouldn’t claim vast amount of credit for that because there are people who have lived it for 20 years, but this summer when the market has been on and you can see progress on Cairns Street and Jermyn street, that’s a nice feeling, when you can see you have some small part in it. It shows what’s possible.
What about the hardest?
Probably, weirdly, it seems like a long time ago, but when Housing Market Renewal was cancelled and an OJEU notice came out and we realised that the council were going to hand everything over to a private developer. It was about 12 months after I had got involved and you just think, “Oh crap, do we have to give everything up now?” It was just as the CLT were getting their heads together on what my be possible and that land. But people in Granby don’t give up easily. They waited for the next opportunity.
What kept you going?
We had unshakeable faith that something that was influenced and led by community desires and wishes would end up being a better thing.
What’s next?
Completing the asset-transfer process [of the houses] from the city council. We keep putting pressure on them. You need an asset to set up your mortgage. It was a big win at the end of August when they said they understood and that we could have a 250-year lease without termination clauses.
We were being probably too polite. Holding back a bit, assuming that there would be a standard form for it, which there doesn’t seem to be, which is crazy when there is Granby and Homebaked nearby who have similar situations.
You get so far with one officer and they might leave or their job might change. Community groups need consistency and it’s not necessarily something that councils can offer. I don’t think they’re evil or massively incompetent, I know they’re in a difficult circumstance, so we have reached the point where we take the lead on things, tell them what we want and they’ll have to shout up if they disagree.
How did you vote in the EU and why?
I voted remain because of lots of reasons. I’m a European. I’m from immigrant stock and some of the rhetoric around it upset me. I thought it was wrong to take away people’s rights to work and travel. Then there’s the economic chaos that could happen. I think those who campaigned for leave lied and campaigned on fear and it doesn’t feel good.
How does the outcome affect what you do?
The project has already taken us five years all told. If something happens which affects house prices, that could affect us. If house prices crash, their might not be the value on the property to carry out the work. If interest rates go up dramatically we might struggle to pay the mortgage. All of those things were there before but it feels like they were in normal bounds, now it feels a bit riskier. I’m hoping it won’t affect us but I don’t know.
What does community mean to you?
I try not to use the word community too much because in a lot of the work that I do with Urbed it can be a placebo word or a tick box. In my work, I try to talk about neighborhoods instead because I think that’s more grounded and it feels more inclusive. “Neighbourhood” includes everyone and everything in a particular area. When you’re doing developments, you may get a single person who claims to represent the community or developers get five people in an area to say, “The community supports this,” when actually they don’t.
What would you say to someone looking at getting involved?
It’s a very worthwhile thing to attempt, but it’s not simple and it takes a lot of time.
We’ve been lucky. Because of our professional connections we’ve been able to get some pro bono support. I know a quantity surveyor who is the guy who has worked not the CLT houses next to ours, he’s been happy to give us some advice. I have a friend who works in development who has been able to help its with our appraisal.
But there’s a lot of work that goes on up front that is harder and more complicated and a bit new, and after that you get to the building part which hopefully will be easier.
We’re doing this a part of a wider consortium and one thing I like about our project is that we know there will be a group of us living next to one another for the foreseeable future. There’s a CLT and housing association properties that make you part of something bigger than your original project. It makes you more outward looking, I think, which is important to lots of us. We know of a lot of housing projects doing really amazing stuff, but they can sometimes seem a little inwards looking.
