Hastings Commons: Jess Steele

Jess Steele is the founder of Jericho Road, a company she started to support her work as an organiser and a leader in Hastings and further afield. In Hastings, her current work focusses on building the Hastings Commons, an ecosystem of connecting buildings that will be community-owned and run in an historically deprived part of the town.

What do you do?
I support community groups around the country to take on challenging projects in difficult but much-loved buildings. I then invest the profits from that in Hastings.

In Hastings, I am trying to protect the soul of the neighbourhood, investing in a set of buildings that shape the neighbourhood and bring them into freehold ownership so we can cap the rents and make sure they can still be used by local people.

What is the point of the project?
It’s about tackling dereliction and gentrification at the same time. So we get improvements to the neighbourhood but protect people who live there from displacement. The point of the work is to allow neighbourhood transformation without losing the diversity and inclusion that the neighbourhood has at the moment.

When was the moment you decided to do this?
It is a decision that is made and remade every day. In 2006 the pier closed and that was the beginning for me of trying to sort out not just the pier, but the whole neighbourhood. In 2008, we set up a trust to buy the pier, because we realised we were going to have to do it ourselves not just wait for someone else to solve it. That DIY approach has lasted all the way through.

The fantastic @Rock_Hse in Hastings illustrates role communities can play in turning disused buildings on the high street into places with new civic purpose underpinned by financial sustainability @JerichoJess

Another gem from @hazelsheffield https://t.co/SJcmlnFr9A

— Vidhya Alakeson (@vidhyaalakeson) October 3, 2019

The ecosystem of buildings around the Trinity Triangle area started in 2014 when we bought Rock House and has developed ever since. We wanted a mixed use building with affordable homes and workspace but in the years since then our understanding of what the community needs has grown.

When we wanted to buy the Observer Building (a former newspaper building that had been empty for over 30 years), we raised a mortgage of £1.2m on Rock House, refinancing the smaller debts on the original building. The key was that we had created value in Rock House and it had a solid rental stream so we could mortgage that property.

It’s now one-third owned by Heart of Hastings Community Land Trust, but we’ve always had the plan that the building will end up in full community ownership. The reason it isn’t initially is that Rock House and the Observer are a massive burden to put on a community land trust from scratch. The partnership helps the development get sorted and once it’s working they get an asset that is actually an asset not a liability.

What’s been your proudest moment so far?
One of my proudest moments was Rock House going into the black. In March 2018 we had an “into the black” party.

Community projects are risky and we weren’t certain that it was going to work financially or be sustainable. You can’t really be certain, but in April 2018 we knew at that point that we had created something that could last, it could sustain itself. It can be used to do the next one. It’s not just about making money, but when you do create money in a mission driven organisation you feel proud because you can do more mission and have more impact.

The other proud moment was the party organised by the participants at the end of the Organisation Workshop (May 24, 2019). It was lovely to be in there – we weren’t at the whim of a developer, it felt real, a proper community building with a long term future.

Both my proudest moments are parties! Well, if you can have a party you have achieved something.

What’s been hardest?
Conflict. The hardest experience of all in Hastings was losing community ownership of the pier, which was heart-breaking, but even worse than that was the divisive, nasty Facebook trolling after that.

It’s also true of Rock House, when the White Rock Trust was falling to bits we ended up in a massive conflict with them and it was frightening. We thought we might lose the building.

There are lots of difficult things – like raising loads of money – but the thing that takes its toll is conflict.

What drives you when it gets hard?
When it gets hard I try to remind myself that the place is more important than petty arguments. I felt that strongly about the pier, sometimes there would be disagreements, but we knew that the pier was more important. It’s the same with the project we are trying to achieve with the ecosystem. We survived conflict and the alliances become stronger because the people that are left share values.

What’s the next step?
We have assembled the jigsaw pieces. We have the key buildings and spaces in community ownership or in mission-driven ownership and on their way to community ownership.

Now we have to focus on restoring those pieces individually and as a collective, from the caves and the alley, the spaces as well as the buildings. It’s a jigsaw of pieces that fit together but have always been treated as separate parts.

A visit to @Rock_Hse Hastings, where people started by colonising an office and now have plans to regenerate a whole former newspaper building and printworks 👷🏻‍♀️🔨 pic.twitter.com/Ag6hR1DPV7

— Far Nearer (@far_nearer) June 12, 2019

Where has funding come from for your project?
Rock House started off with a grant from Homes and Communities Agency (now Homes England). Plus me taking a mortgage on my house and putting that in.

We’ve had a number of other grants including Coastal Communities Fund, Power to Change, loans from Big Issue Invest for the flats, and a mortgage on Rock House to buy the Observer.

We have also invented something called the Investors Collective, where local individuals can invest between £5,000 and £50,000 where 90 per cent of the investment is a loan with 3% interest, and the rest is held as community shares. It’s an innovative and successful approach. This is a loan and shares scheme that means people are buying in for the long term through shares but can put in significant sums as loans.

Now we’re working with Brighton and Hove to help them do a similar kind of thing. It’s called the war chest and it needs to be bigger in Brighton because the land values are higher.

Which funders have been most helpful and why?
Power to Change went way beyond any normal funder. When we were in this conflict with White Rock Trust, a normal funder might have given us a grant to pay legal fees, but Power to Change intervened directly and participated as a shareholder and director.

They did a detailed piece of work to decide who to give the shares to and to make sure it’s been properly done. They rescued the project from a terrible position in the most sensible way even though it was different from what other funders would do. They stepped out of their comfort zone and took the common sense approach rather than saying we can just give them a small grant.

Will Brexit affect what you are doing?
No idea! I find it impossible to think about what might happen. We have had lots of European funding over the last 20 years in Hastings. Our project hasn’t had any yet although there is a grant application in now.

Hastings will lose financially. The polarisation is very dramatic. The day after the referendum the communications director of Power to Change phoned me up asking what impact it might have and I said the most important thing is that it’s shown up this terrible division at community level and we need a lot of work around cohesion and bringing communities back together.

We all know that now, but also nothing has happened, no government support has come at all, and things have got worse and worse. The only thing is because the politicians are so polarised most people are fed up and it’s destroyed whatever trust there was left in politicians.

If there is a UK Shared Prosperity Fund I would expect Hastings to be able to access that and, maybe the lack of trust isn’t entirely a bad thing. It might improve people’s willingness to try DIY approaches, which are less at the whim of politicians, and which are actually good for us. Being engaged in making change is good for individuals as well as society. If it allows us to push further down that route of DIY regeneration I will be delighted.

There are a lot of vested interests in regeneration and they are not always keen on the DIY approach as it threatens their expertise. It’s difficult to know what direction it will go. That’s a longstanding issue about control and agency.

Who has the agency to make changes in their neighbourhoods? Maybe the Brexit question shines a light on that question about who is able to make change.

Who has the agency to make changes in their neighbourhoods? Maybe the Brexit question shines a light on that question about who is able to make change.

What would you say to someone looking to do something similar?
Learn from other people. It’s obvious but so many people don’t. You can learn from things even if they are different. I’ve had the privileged position over the last 15 years to work for and be involved in national networks of community-based projects, from Locality to the Power to Change community business panel, and that has expanded my understanding through what other people are doing.

Build your support network, not just local but a network of community businesses and trusts everywhere. That solidarity is politically useful and emotionally sustaining because there will be a lot of difficult times where you need to feel part of something bigger.

You’re going to need sustained impatience. Impatience is a virtue.

You’re going to need sustained impatience. Impatience is a virtue.

In regeneration, you get told “there’s a master plan” and it will take 10 years, and then it gets put aside for 5 years. We shouldn’t accept that because if my child is five now and it will be sorted in ten years, what are we supposed to do in the meantime. We need to be impatient to get community benefits now as well as longer term. But you have to sustain that impatience because it takes a long time. Once you’re in, you’ll be in it for a long time.

Photo credit: Jonny Thompson