At Stroud Housing Commons, we’re looking for a tenant for our first house – and you can add yourself to the waiting list for future commons houses.
What is Stroud Housing Commons?
A housing commons is a partnership with different classes of member – including tenants, investors, stewards (members who are paid to manage the scheme and maintain the properties) and ‘custodians’, who make sure that commons principles are adhered to. It’s a way of providing good-quality, affordable housing with secure tenancies. Houses in a housing commons are owned by the community in perpetuity, not by individuals or businesses (even co-operative businesses) or the state / local authority.
Stroud is the first place in the country to use commons principles plus a new funding model to bring housing into community ownership without mortgages or debt to the banking system.
More information on housing commons.
What’s the house like?
It’s a three-bedroom terraced house in one of the most popular roads in Stroud, walking distance from the High Street and train station, 2-minutes walk from a great pub, with great views from the top floor and beautiful countryside walks from the end of the street.
What are the benefits for tenants?
As there’s no profit for landlords involved, rents (and deposits) are affordable. Tenants become full members of the commons, and can participate in decision-making. This means security of tenure (no notices to quit in 2 months). Tenancies can be passed on to kids.
Future houses
From next year, Stroud Housing Commons will be producing portfolios for investors, to bring in money to buy more properties. But housing commons groups will remain small and human scale. Rather than continuing to grow, each housing commons group will generate more local groups, so that each neighbourhood can have its own housing commons.
5 Comments
How fantastic!!
Keep up the good work! And thank you for all you have done. This affects every one of us.
Hi
I live in a 2 bed ecohouse at Bridport Cohousing’s Hazelmead. I’m 71 years old with no children and have benefitted from the inflationary housing market over my lifetime. I bought a flat in Manchester in the 1980’s for £11,000 when housing associations were selling off their properties and sold my last home for £250,000.
My way of looking at things is that the equity I now hold in my house doesn’t belong to me – I was a lucky boomer – the reason I got lucky was to enable me to pass on that good fortune to someone else coming up behind me. I have made a will to gift my home when I die to the cohousing community, for rent to a local family in need of good housing. I believe that only by changing our mindsets about how we currently live our lives will we be able to shift away from the current corporate system. Envisioning new ways of how we do things and expect things to be will tip us into a better world for all.
Wishing everyone a happy 2025. x
Lin – you too.
When we’ve got a few houses in Stroud Housing Commons we’re working on a plan to allow people to put their house into the commons, but stay in it for the rest of their life, and a) receive vouchers to sell on – a bit like equity release, b) have maintenance and repairs taken over by the commons, and c) have younger commoners make sure you’re ok – pop round to visit, get shopping, look after garden etc.
This is so interesting to me, like Lin, someone without kids nor siblings and no-one to pass my home onto. I’m not yet decided on what to do – it’s a big decision! – but after reading David Bollier’s book about the Commons, I feel inspired to do something different with my equity. I live in Totnes and I’d love to know about Commons fans there who could emulate the Stroud project.
Katie – yes, we’re talking to people in several towns about emulating. I’m pretty sure you’d get a good gang in a place like Totnes.