Celia Ashman is the secretary of Lilac Mutual Home Ownership Society (MHOS), an affordable co-housing scheme in Kirkstall, a suburb of Leeds. Lilac is the first operational MHOS in the UK and members are working very hard to figure out how to make the model proposed by the New Economics Foundation in 2003 work with no precedent.
The point of Lilac is to provide secure and affordable housing for current and future members with as low an impact on the environment as possible.
What do you do?
I am the secretary of Lilac and I also sit on the finance task team. I have officially been secretary since September, but I spent a year shadowing the previous one. I’ve been on the finance task team since I joined three years ago. We have limits to the number of task teams you can join for time purposes!
What is the point of the project?
The point of Lilac is to provide secure and affordable housing for current and future members with as low an impact on the environment as possible.
We have 35 adult members and 13 children and we live in 20 properties ranging from one bedroom flats to four bedroom houses. Lilac was conceived of by the members themselves. Over seven years, the original concept was developed by the community and we employed an architect and contracted developers to complete the build. We designed it for ourselves.
We were able to raise a significant amount from member deposits and we had a £500,000 grant, then we got a mortgage from Triodos. Having capital up front helped us to pay for the land and the build.
When was the moment you decided to do this?
For me it was a case of providence. I was already interested in co-ops, I was living in Leeds in another co-op. I never considered Lilac myself because I couldn’t afford to live there – even though it was affordable – because I was a student at the time. But my partner had been involved at the development phase and we decided to live together six months after it was done.
We’re trying to use this model that is supposed to be less volatile than the system, which seems to operate quite bizarrely, certainly in the last 20 years. But the truth is we’re not completely insulated from the fluctuations in the housing market. We have a big mortgage to service so interest rates and big movements in the housing market affect us.
How do you fit it in?
I’m quite fortunate that my day job is a mix of freelance work and part-time in a worker’s co-operative, both of which are very flexible, so I can fit it all around Lilac work. Quite a lot of Lilac work is in the evenings, but for example if we are needed in the day time, such as to meet our solicitors, I can quite easily work around that.
What’s been your proudest moment so far?
As a community it must have been building it, but I can’t take any credit for it unfortunately! I’m in awe of my fellow members who got Lilac to that point.
My proudest moment was getting invited to become the secretary because I’d been a member for a year and a half, I’m the youngest adult member and it felt like a huge compliment to be trusted to take on this responsible role for this project.
We’re trying to use this model that is supposed to be less volatile than the system, which seems to operate quite bizarrely, certainly in the last 20 years. But the truth is we’re not completely insulated from the fluctuations in the housing marker. We have a big mortgage to service so interest rates and big movements in the housing market affect us.
What’s been hardest?
Through the development phase no doubt there were many hard moments, but I can’t talk about these, but one of our members Paul wrote a book detailing those called Low Impact Living: A Field Guide.
In an ongoing sense, it’s not so much a moment but what is hard is the general ongoing workload that we are realising is involved. It’s been three years and the honeymoon period is over and there’s a lot of work to do.
Particularly with our legal and financial model, although the development phase for the build is complete, we’re still in the develop phase for the model, mainly in terms of how to enact a theoretical model in real life.
For example, we’ve had lots of membership changes in the first three years, including six new people joining and four moving out. Each time that happens the whole house transfer process is internal. We have to find a new member to fill that spot. That’s quite time consuming. There’s no simple one page of instructions, it’s all time consuming. Each time it’s the first time that exact thing is happening.
Being a mutual home ownership society rather than a standard rental co-op makes the process for replacing a member more complicated. When a member leaves a rental co-op you can just give a certain amount of notice, but when someone leaves Lilac it’s like leaving a house and they get paid the equity they put in, so we have to find that money. An incoming person probably won’t have savings that match what we need to pay out.
The model can cope with that, and so far it has proven very flexible, but every scenario is different and it can take time behind the scenes to make sure everything adds up correctly.
What drives you when it gets hard?
Realising that we’re not just a standard co-op and what we’re doing is experimental keeps me going. For a while I was finding it annoying but then I thought, it’s the first time that these things are happening and it’s normal that these things take longer time.
Lilac is very motivated by the fact that we are trialling this new way of doing things. We know the housing market is broken and we need solution so we’re trying something different and we’ll see if it works, and that’s quite exciting really.
What’s the next step?
Keep on, really!
There’s always lots going on at Lilac, whether it’s building new compost shelters, redesigning the website or planning a winter festive meal, people are usually busy with something! We’re currently planning a community day next year, to look at how we’re working internally. We’re also conducting some evaluation of our 2016 learning programme so we can improve what we offer and work more effectively with other groups interested in the mutual home ownership society model.
How did you vote in the EU referendum and why?
I voted remain.
The main reason was because I felt uncomfortable with how the referendum had been framed, it felt deeply undemocratic to me that both campaigns had been politically motivated rather than based in fact or what’s in people’s best interests.
I thought there were valid arguments on both sides, but that the referendum seemed to simpfly a complicated issue into a binary ‘in’ or ‘out’ vote. I was concerned that the result would be interpreted in whichever way suited those in a position of power, rather than really listening to what people were saying.
I voted remain because I thought it was safer to keep the status quo until we can have a better discussion about what leaving the EU might look like.
Will the outcome affect what you do?
Potentially, with the falling value of the pound and the impact on the wider housing market.
We’re trying to use this model that is supposed to be less volatile than the system, which seems to operate quite bizarrely, certainly in the last 20 years. But the truth is we’re not completely insulated from the fluctuations in the housing marker. We have a big mortgage to service so interest rates and big movements in the housing market affect us.
What does community mean to you?
Community means coming together, be that to share things or have discussions to work out how we want to live our lives and how we can make the world a better place.
‘Community’ operates on so many different levels – we can be part of a community at school, online, in our neighbourhood – but ultimately it’s about what people do together. I don’t think community necessarily means agreeing on everything, but it’s about having constructive conversations and really listening other people’s point of view so you can reach some kind of shared understanding.
That’s why I was disappointed with EU referendum because it didn’t feel like we were coming together, it felt like we were falling apart.
What would you say to someone looking to do something similar?
Go for it!
It’s rewarding on so many levels. For example, living in Lilac has allowed me to pursue interesting livelihood options, which I never would have considered without the security of being here. This has given me more time to spend at Lilac and on learning new things. It has so many more benefits than can be quantified in a monetary way.
Be aware that there is a lot of work and it’s challenging but the opportunities for personal growth, changing the whole direction of your life not just your housing, there is the potential for that. And we would be delighted to support you so get in touch!
