We're back!

Another pause but HRH are back!!

Hello! It’s been a while since, well, March. April was a tricky month as we realised that the site we were going to be developing wasn’t going to work for everyone, so sadly two of our co-op members (respectfully) parted. May was a bit of a haze of ‘what the hell do we do now?’s. Not much work was done, so we paused the paid housing co-op co-ordinator role.

During this period, we met some new people who had been wanting to join a housing co-op and were also interested in the challenging size of the site, and so the make-up of the co-op looks a little different now, but no less lovely!

While our initial vision involved much more space and surrounding land to grow food, it’s been almost exactly 3 years since the Walk for Homes campaign for Gensing Manor, and 4 years since we founded the co-op. We need to start somewhere, and we’ve been fortunate enough that someone with more privilege than us has answered our call for help, and offered a workable way of obtaining our first co-operative housing. We’re starting small because we have to, but also at a smaller more manageable scale. As we skill up, we will scale up. This is just the first phase!

We’ve also made contact with the new deputy head of housing for East Sussex Andy Shepphard, who has assured us that HBC will be pro-actively ‘enabling’ housing co-ops to set up, as mentioned in the Hastings Housing Strategy. We’re not entirely sure what ‘enabling’ means in concrete terms, and would have preferred some allocated budget for co-operative housing. But we have been offered a meeting to talk through the process for planning, and are awaiting a response for dates.

We are currently working with co-op advisor Blase from Confederation of Co-operative Housing. Blase worked with Sharon Rhodes and Maslow Co-op to help them get their community space and housing set up. He’s helping us figure out how we go about funding in order to be able to buy not only the land on Queens Road, but also the flat and shop.

There are several reasons for buying everything rather than just the land. We would be able to provide more housing in the pre-existing house, having a commercial aspect to the co-op would help us generate a bit of revenue and make the rents more affordable, and we would be able to use more land at the back without restriction, making the new homes a bit bigger so there’s wheelchair accessibility for our members in need.

Finally, you may have seen another great community project Library of Things will be moving into the shop next door to us at 82 Queens Road! They’ve recently been crowdfunding and have smashed their stretch target. If you missed the crowdfunder, you can always contact them directly to donate. They have invested a lot themselves into getting hold of the space, so it’s amazing they have had so much backing and good will to help them with additional costs.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/community-eco-hub

Along with the planned community garden in front of Morrisons, and talk of trialing a one way street and more tree cover, Queens Road is going to start looking very different indeed. Exciting times!

Reading and listening that keeps us tuned into the mission and out of the noise:

Plunder of the Commons by Guy Standing

Radical Abundance by Kai Heron, Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell

The Emerald Podcast