I joined Progress because like me it’s both radical and progressive – radical when it matters and progressive when it counts. I was trying to put this into action this month when I attended the United Nations World Urban Form in Naples. The aim of the Forum was to bring together good practice from throughout the world. As such I discussed the idea and practice of participatory budgeting with delegates from South America; slum housing with those from Africa and Brazil and green policies with those from China and Europe.
As the former mayor of Letchworth Garden City I was invited there to discuss community land trusts. These are where the people jointly hold the ownership of their land, neighbourhood or town. So instead of any profits going to prop up absent landlords, the people are their own landlords and the dividends are reinvested back into their own communities.
On the panel with me were activists representing Montreal and Burlington, USA and Prof Yves Cabannes from UCL. Chairing the meeting, the Building and Social Housing Foundation’s Silvia Yafai explained that ‘high land values are a major factor preventing access to affordable housing worldwide and community land trusts are increasingly recognized as a means of overcoming this problem by capturing land values for local community benefit and providing a mechanism to prevent land speculation and guaranteeing long-term affordability’.
Dimitri Roussopoulos from Montreal explained how in 1968 a group of them had come together to oppose plans by developers to take six city blocks and demolish them to turn them into exclusive homes for the rich. They saw off the predators and then set about improving the neighbourhood themselves. By 1982 they had created the largest cooperative housing project in North America and later an act of parliament secured their future. Today they are providing homes through co-ops for more than 2000 people on medium to low incomes. The land values of the estate are huge as they are close to the centre of the city but are held by the people themselves and for those on lower incomes.
Burlington has had a similar history fighting to establish itself to provide cheaper homes. It was founded in 1984 and manages some 1,500 apartments and 500 other properties all community owned. It started with funds of $200,000 but is now worth $40m and now has a portfolio of 465 individual properties, 1500 rental apartments in 6 cooperatives as well as commercial spaces, offices, and small retail shops. It continues to grow and has also required some legislation to secure it from predators.
Letchworth precedes them all as it was founded as a community land trust in 1903. A company owned the town and residents were shareholders. Today that company still exists though in slightly different form; though it has lost much of its housing stock (as people bought out their leases) much of the commercial, industry and agricultural land remain in its hands. It continues to reinvest profits into the community. It now has assets of £110m, annual profits of £7m and annually spends £4.5m in the town – all for a population of only 33,000.
But Letchworth has had a perilous journey. Postwar, as it gentrified, there were attempts to stop the building of more social housing; in the 1960s someone tried to buy up all the householders shares so parliament had to ‘nationalise’ the town to save it. In the 1990s the Tories privatised it but put their own man in charge. In 2009, during my tenure as mayor, the company took me to the High Court for daring to question how they were run and how the money was spent. They expounded to the judge the notion that they were a simple property company ‘like Grosvenor Estates in London’, where as our argument paraphrased the fact that they were a community land trust and that people had a right to question what they did and how they acted. Justice prevailed and the judge backed us in a land mark ruling. The company is now under new enlightened management.
It is clear that CLTs are radical, progressive, effective and born from struggle. They are proving successful and popular in the US as they have been virtually immune to the sub-prime housing crisis. Hundreds of new ones are being created. In July London saw its first one.
Social ownership, not by the state but by the people is back on the agenda. It is both radical and progressive and that’s why I support and fight for it.
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Philip Ross is a candidate in the members’ section in the Progress strategy board elections 2012. You can find out more about all the candidates at the dedicated Progress strategy board election microsite