Redefining dwelling: a case for altering housing aspirations

By Morgan Angharad

Britain is a self-described nation of homeowners, with 65% of households in England owning their own home in 2019/20.[1] It is this tenure that dominates public discourse, followed by the private rental sector and social housing. But there is an alternative housing tenure outside of this public-private dichotomy: collaborative housing (sometimes referred to in Anglo-American contexts as ‘community-led housing’). This umbrella term brings together those housing provisions that emphasise collective self-organisation and collaboration. It is of increasing interest within housing policy, both as a necessity in the wake of the housing crisis and an opportunity to provide a solution.

The percentage of those able to join the ranks of homeowners has been in steady decline since its peak at 71% in 2003 as the housing market has become increasingly inaccessible. This is largely due to a combination of increased house prices and banks tightening what they will loan in mortgage credit following the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. [2] Meanwhile, the amount of social housing has reduced. This most dramatically occurred after the Thatcher Government’s ‘Right to Buy’ scheme which provided an opportunity for council house tenants to buy their homes at a reduced rate. [3] The private rental sector has therefore increased with a wider net of would-be home buyers and social housing tenants; it is thus ‘increasingly taking the strain of the housing crisis’. [4]

Considering other forms of housing tenure such as collaborative housing is one solution to this crisis. There are many forms this could take. ‘Co-housing’, for example, is one subset model under the umbrella term of collaborative housing and refers to projects that are characteristically co-designed by those who intend on living together; occupants manage the ongoing maintenance themselves and have common facilities alongside private dwellings. The building of community is particularly important, with members often coming together one to four times a week to cook and dine. The roots of this model are attributed to the influence of the Danish bofællesskab (roughly meaning ‘living community’), which was established in the 1960s as a rejection of the ‘isolated nuclear family’. [5] Co-housing emerged in Britain in the 1990s and by 2021 there were 60 schemes at various stages of development across the United Kingdom. A further example is ‘eco-communities’, characterised by environmentally sustainable household practices such as self-provisioning and sharing of labour, facilities, appliances, and provisions; and of retrofitting housing with low-carbon and environmentally sustainable facilities. [6] LILAC (Low Impact Living Affordable Community), a project in Leeds, is such an example, focused on tackling the climate emergency, social isolation, and developing permanent affordability. [7] All models transcend the ‘landlord-tenant/freehold-leasehold binary’, instead providing ‘autonomy over the activity of dwelling’. [8] 

Collaborative housing is by no means a new phenomenon, with the earliest housing co-operatives which sought to organise ‘a sustainable, long-term form of collective dweller-controlled tenure’ dating back to the early nineteenth century.[9] It emerged in Government policy in the 1960s as The Co-operative Party, which has been in alliance with the Labour Party since 1917, and was successful in lobbying for part of the Government’s housing strategy to be based on the Scandinavian model of housing co-operatives. This became known as ‘co-ownership’, and under the Housing Act of 1961, £25 million was secured for a pilot that included establishing co-ownership societies in England and Wales. [10] The import of this did not take off however, only accounting for 0.2% of Britain’s housing stock at its height in the 1970s. [11] This was in part due to the fact that it was not made clear what co-ownership was meant to be, and in its design was devoid of key features which set the tenure apart. In other words, it was seen as a ‘stepping stone to full owner-occupation’ rather than a legitimate end in itself. [12] 

There has been increasing interest in collaborative housing during recent decades, especially following the Great Financial Crisis. [13] Perhaps the increased interest in recent years can also be explained by a motivation for connection with others. Some forms explicitly promote this, with ‘co-housing’ as described above being an example that emphasizes community. The opportunity for connection has not been lost on Government policymakers, who in 2019 commissioned the London School of Economics to see if participation in community-led housing could be shown to reduce loneliness.[14] In short, it could – emotional loneliness was countered by shared space, doing things together, and a feeling of belonging.[15] Reconfiguring the shape and form of the places within which we dwell can be an opportunity to find such community and to tackle       increased levels of loneliness across society.

Despite greater interest from policymakers, academics, and emerging communities in collaborative housing, the dominating focus remains on home ownership (and its decline), which continues to be an aspiration for many. Preece et. al. suggest that ‘the enduring impact of socialisation into normative housing aspirations is difficult to abandon’ as people ‘continue to be influenced through intergenerational ‘steering’, meaning that people continue to seek, or even expect, to become homeowners like previous generations despite the changed market. [16] Government and young people themselves have shaped a narrative that there is a ‘plight of ‘Generation Rent’’ who need Government intervention to attain this ‘tenure of choice’. [17] So, mainstream housing policy remains fixated on increasing home ownership levels and building houses as the answer to the housing crisis. For example, the Labour Party recently branded itself ‘the party of home ownership’, seeking to increase home ownership rates back to 70%. [18] 

While such an ideology of home ownership can appear to be an innate characteristic of Britain, the narrative that this housing tenure is at the top of the hierarchy, and its increase the answer to the housing crisis, is being challenged. An increasing number of projects show that collaborative housing is a possible solution to increase secure and affordable housing, while simultaneously promoting autonomy and a sense of belonging. With the broader myriad of socioeconomic crises we face today, perhaps the future well-being of society starts at home.

[1] House of Commons library, ‘Extending home ownership: Government initiatives’, 30 March 2021, <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03668/> [accessed 12 June 2023].

[2] Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane, Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, (London: Zed, 2017).

[3] Ibid.

[4] R. Powell, ‘Housing Benefit Reform and the Private Rented Sector in the UK: On the Deleterious Effects of Short-term, Ideological “Knowledge”’, Housing, Theory and Society, 32(3) (2015), 320-45.

[5] Henrik Gutzon Larsen, ‘Three phases of Danish cohousing: tenure and the development of an alternative housing form’, Housing Studies, 34:8 (2019), 1349-71, p. 1353.

[6] Anita Nelson and Paul Chatterton, ‘Dwelling beyond growth’, in Post-Growth Planning: Cities Beyond the Market Economy, ed. By Federico Savini, António Ferreira and Kim von Schönfeld (London: Routledge, 2022), 49-62.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Matthew Thompson, ‘Between Boundaries: From Commoning and Guerrilla Gardening to Community Land Trust Development in Liverpool’, Antipode, 47:4 (2015), 1021-42, p. 1025.

[9] J. Birchall, ‘The hidden history of co-operative housing in Britain’, Department of Government Working Papers, No. 17, (1991), 1-23, p. 3.

[10] David Clapham and Keith Kintrea, ‘Importing Housing Policy: Housing Co-operatives in Britain & Scandinavia’, Housing Studies, 2.3 (1987), 157-69, p. 159.

[11] Ibid, p. 158.

[12] Ibid, p. 161.

[13] David Mullins and Tom Moore, ‘Self- organised and civil society participation in housing provision’, International Journal of Housing Policy, 18.1 (2018), 1-14.

[14] Kath Scanlon, ‘'Those little connections’: Community-led housing and loneliness’, LSE Blogs, 1 March 2022, <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lselondon/those-little-connections-community-led-housing-and-loneliness/> [accessed 12 June 2023].

[15] Ibid.

[16] Jenny Preece et. al., ‘Understanding changing housing aspirations: a review of the evidence’, Housing Studies, 35:1 (2020), 87-106, p. 95.

[17] Kim McKee, et. al., ‘‘Generation Rent’ and the Fallacy of Choice’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41.2 (2017), 318-33, p. 324; p. 318.

[18] Joey Gardiner, ‘Labour pledges to become ‘party of home ownership’’, Housing Today, 28 September 2022, < https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/news/labour-pledges-to-become-party-of-home-ownership/5119609.article> [accessed 12 June 2023].

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