Are Community Land Trusts a Way Out of the System?

By Hazel Sheffield, Red Pepper

This autumn, builders will start work on Oakfield Road in Anfield. Many houses in this part of Liverpool have remained empty since the government’s failed ‘housing market renewal’ policy shipped people out, then stalled in 2008. Seven years ago, a group of residents formed a community land trust to bring nine terraces on Oakfield Road into community ownership. Now, instead of being demolished, they have been reimagined as cosy, energy-efficient homes, with space for local businesses, winter gardens, a market and a cafe.

We Used to Just Call These “Houses”

By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns

We have a way in the modern world of rediscovering things that humans have always done but branding them as something trendy and a little alien. So it goes with the explosion of interest in "tiny houses" as an answer to what ails cities struggling to house and attract people. The ironic thing about tiny houses is that they're nothing new; it's just that, in surprisingly recent memory, our culture had a different name for them. We called them "houses."

Future Homes: The Rapid Rise, Fall, and Return of UK Social Housing

By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance

The pioneering Dutch “Energiesprong” model – Dutch for “energy leap” – involves a major, whole-house retrofit to achieve a near net-zero energy home, typically including the fitting of an external “wall envelope” for insulation, as well as rooftop solar panels.

How a Cooperative Approach to Property Management can Build Collective Power

By Saki Bailey, Shareable

The Community Land Trust (CLT) is an established and successful model for the creation of democratically governed permanently affordable housing, and most urgently in the face of the crisis, a tool to prevent the displacement of historic communities. T

Building the Future

By Staff, Red Pepper, Red Pepper

Around the world, new municipal movements are transforming the way we provide – and think about – housing. From campaigning against evictions to innovative forms of public housing to requisitioning empty properties and engaging many more people in decisions about how and where we live, municipal projects are responding to the global housing crisis, locally.

How the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is Pioneering a Model for Equitable Housing

By Saki Bailey, Shareable

The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is an impressive burgeoning commons legal institution that's aimed at the decommodification of housing.

How the Ultra-Rich Can Help Fix the Affordable Housing Crisis

By Chuck Collins, YES! magazine

Municipalities should move quickly to enact high-end real estate transfer taxes, requirements for the disclosure of beneficial ownership, and regulations aimed at the disruptive impact absentee owner-investors are having on our cities.

Commons-Based Legal Institutions for Affordable Housing

By Saki Bailey, Shareable

These three commons legal institutions exemplifies, in different ways, a central feature of the commons as described in the previous piece: namely, decommodifying access to a common good by taking homes permanently off of the speculative market

Remembering Grenfell: Who Are Our Cities For?

By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org

This is not the previous generation’s gentrification.  The housing crisis in many of our urban areas is not the result of normal real estate market forces. Local gentrification cycles have been “supercharged” by the fact that many cities are now a global destination to park investment capital.

Tiny Houses Alone Can’t Solve the Housing Crisis. But Here’s What Can

By Chris Winters, YES! magazine

In choosing to live in community—sharing not just a house, but their lives with each other—they’ve defined a new American Dream. They hope others will follow their model, if not by making the same choice, then by being willing to look beyond traditional boundaries.

Permanently Affordable Housing: Challenges and Potential Paths Forward

By Julie Gilgoff, Sustainable Economies Law Center

While billion dollar development companies eat up affordable housing units throughout the Bay Area, dedicated teams of organizers, nonprofit service providers, community development corporations, and others fight a relentless battle along side and on behalf of those at threat of displacement

In the ‘Fearless City’, Barcelona Residents Take Charge

By Amanda Tattersall, The Conversation

Almost every global city has a similar dynamic – a battle between the finance capital that seeks to make money from the city and the needs of the residents who seek to make the city their home. Rarely do we see residents successfully push back against the power of finance capital. But for those wanting to know how this can be done, look to Barcelona.