Tonight I'm going in to Manchester to attend a talk I've helped set up by Chris Coates, the founder of Lancaster Cohousing and editor/contributor to Diggers and Dreamers. His talk is called "The Past Present and Future of Tiny Houses" and I'm really looking forward to it.
It's not something I've mentioned yet on this blog, so a little catching up. In February Sarah and I became the admins for a Facebook group called "Manchester pocket community (tiny house eco living)" - a group we didn't start but which the original founder/admin didn't have time to continue herself. Sometimes these things just happen. From the group description:
The cost of living in the UK has sky rocketed over the last few decades and for many the dream of owning their own home is simply that, a dream. There is a housing crisis, an energy crisis, a community crisis. So many of us are caught in a rent trap and can not escape. Across the world however people are taking the situation in to their own hands, self building projects and tiny homes are popping up all over the place, allowing people to live in their own property, enjoy a high quality of life whilst also doing good for their environment. In the UK however planning restrictions have really slowed the development of these fantastic projects.
What we are proposing is a pocket community, a small housing estate with 'tiny houses' (ranging front 1 person dwellings to 4 person dwellings) similar to a residential caravan park or log cabin holiday home yet all year round. The homes could be powered by solar and wind, the land could come with communal gardens, allotment, car park, play area, tennis courts... a football pitch? There could be a community base on site for use of groups, office space even a small shop... all the houses will have the creature comforts such as a dish washer, bath, awesome Wi-Fi but will just use the space more effectively.
House prices could range from £10-50,000, a percentage of the price of most family houses today and would offer a life style beyond what many of us could hope to achieve in this current climate.
Of course there is a long journey of planning, fundraising and hopefully one day building, but all of the greatest journeys start with a single step
The Facebook group has 358 members as of today, from which a "core" group of about ten has started to form to work out how we might make this dream real. (A lot of people seem to join Facebook groups just to "lurk" and click "like" on things, which is fine, but also a bit frustrating when the point of the group is to genuinely do something). It's actually really exciting stuff, if a little abstract at the moment. Everyone wants to find a better way to live, but we're not exactly sure how. (By "better", we mean more communally, sustainably, beautifully - how this might work in practice is something that will, I hope, emerge). We've had seven meetings so far; connections are being made, friendships formed, ideas shared.
One practical possibility is setting up a "Community Land Trust" (CLT), where a group buys a plot of land, which they then decide how to use for the benefit of the community. The entirety of the "housing market", I must admit, is a total mystery to me - I've only ever rented, and have only the vaguest idea of what words like "mortgage", "interest rates", "equity release" and so on and on actually mean - and I do sometimes wonder if that's at least semi-intentional. Keep the mundane esoteric. This suits those in power. Or maybe I'm just an idiot. Anyway, CLTs seem pretty great. Down in Bristol, the Tiny House Community is making a lot of progress towards a similar dream. Next Wednesday there'll be an online chat with their founder member, which I hope to be able to record and share. Likewise for this evening's talk.
What of tiny houses? Well, again, this is one possibility, but not the only one. If you're going to a build a community (and I do stress community, as opposed to commune) in this day and age, tiny houses seem like a good way to go. Get some land, and build genuinely affordable homes on it. "Affordable" meaning something normal people can actually afford. A CLT has to be not-for-private-profit; meaning any profit a community happened to make has to be channelled back into the community itself. This, as far as I'm concerned, is good, and I don't know why it doesn't happen more often. Well, I do of course. Money.
This is just a frantic post to bring you up to speed. I'll have a lot more to say on this soon.
Related posts
The Past, Present and Future of Tiny Houses
More of this sort of thing
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