Meeting leaders of urban community land trusts in Birmingham

On Thursday 28 July Far Nearer joined leaders of urban trusts in the Community Land Trusts network at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, a beautiful house in Selly Oak, Birmingham, that used to be owned by chocolate magnate George Cadbury.

In Birmingham with people taking on the housing crisis by creating trusts to co-own land and homes #UrbanCLTs60 pic.twitter.com/y7nERMbdEw

— Far Nearer (@far_nearer) July 28, 2016

They came from all over the country and all walks of life, from the mum fighting to keep her social housing, to the Oxford architecture student trying to create affordable housing.

Trustees heard from Stephen Hill, one of the board members for the CLT network, who spoke passionately about the protests against the lack of affordable housing in Elephant and Castle and their similarity to what happened in New York in the 1970s.

Stephen told the room:

Community land trusts say: ‘The land market doesn’t work in our place and we’re going to change it.’

It’s not about models. It’s about political ideas. These are communities who want the right to decide how to live.

We elect politicians to represent us but communities are themselves. If we want something different, we have to do it ourselves. 

We talked to lots of the people at the meeting to find out how they are tackling the affordable housing crisis using community land trusts. You can find their stories here.

Also published on Medium.