Community-led housing models differ in governance breadth and member participation demands
Evidence
Community land trusts (CLT) in the UK focus on offering affordable housing to local people, mainly in rural areas where local people are priced out of their towns and villages (Bunce 2016). In this model, the trust holds the land for the benefit of the community in perpetuity, thereby securing the interests of local people and not private profit. These neighbourhoods are led by the community but often not through direct participation of tenants but through a wider board of local stakeholders. This makes CLTs highly inclusive and accessible for people without experience in community organising. Cohousing communities involve many aspects of members’ life in their vision: sharing space and time (Jarvis, 2011), increasing social contact, direct participation and expectation that members take responsibilities for managing the project, and often also environmental sustainability (Wang, Pan and Hadjri, 2020). Cohousing’s vision regarding its relation to capital varies within the sector: some communities make an effort to be affordable and prevent real estate speculation (Chatterton, 2015), while other communities are part of the open market. These have significant implications for membership, which is often alternative and middle-class (Arbell, 2021b). — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning, 24
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes CLTs, cohousing, and housing cooperatives along axes of vision, membership, and direct participation.
- corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 24
- XREF: connects to: Communes’ costly member requirements predict group survival patterns