Families club together to build their own affordable accommodation

Families unable to afford somewhere to live are clubbing together to build their own affordable accommodation in a new trend as communities are forced to find their own ways of solving the British housing crisis...

Residents across the country are forming community land trusts (CLTs), membership groups which buy up or lease plots of land and manage them on behalf of local people. They borrow from councils, government or banks to build new homes for sale to locals, with prices set at rates linked to real local wages rather than their prospective value on the open market.

There are 170 such schemes across the UK, expected to build 3,000 new homes by 2020. The homes they build are not only open to members, but could also be offered to those they deem worthy of being allocated an affordable home. Catherine Harrington, director of the National CLT Network, said more people were interested in community trusts after being priced out of their community.

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