FMDV
The FMDV has been keeping busy. They have been working on consolidating a report of six financial case studies ahead of the SHICC transnational event in London. FMDV has also been moving towards the completion of their financial guide, which will shed light on a few innovative and inspiring instruments having potential to favor the development of CLTs in North-West Europe. The guide should be published by Autumn 2019.
Simultaneously, the FMDV has been supporting the advocacy work of the other project partners. The mapping exercise enabled to shed light on shared financial barriers at the EU scale. From this work resulted in a synthesis table that fed the drafting of an EU Manifesto. This Manifesto will seek to crystallize the positions of CLTs across Europe and advocate for an increase support to CLTs towards the European Elections.
Finally, the FMDV is engaged on several events to be held in the coming months. In partnership with Urbamonde, the FMDV will contribute to the International Social Housing Festival (June 4-8) in Lyon and will speak at the panel: “(Re)inventing the culture of finance for collaborative housing and city-making”.
The FMDV, has been solicited by Eutropian and ICLEI Europe -within the framework of the Open Heritage program (Horizon 2020) - to contribute to the 7th Informed City Forum, which will take place in Warsaw (October 15-16). This event will focus on safeguarding and regenerating heritage spaces.
London CLT
London CLT hold ‘choose the architect’ events as a well to get the community meaningfully involved in the development process. As with their Lambeth site, the community and London CLT held a successful event for their Shadwell site. In March Levit Bernstein was nominated to be the cite architect, being chosen as the people's favourite out of four competing firms.
St Clements community continues to campaign for their community space. In March they gathered to celebrate their community, to say thanks to their partners and to hold them to their promise to release grant funding to purchase and repurpose the John Denham building.
The event was entitled ‘oranges and lemons’ after the English nursery rhyme which refers to the bells of several churches in and around London including – you guessed it – St Clements. The mayor of Tower Hamlets – John Gibbs along with councillors Val Whitehead and Dan Tomlinson were present and the campaigners asked for confirmation of the commitment to support St Clements community space.
Community Land Trust Brussels
CLTB and Cosmopolis (the urban research centre of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) have been commissioned a feasibility study looking into setting up a CLT in the Flemish town of Leuven. The official kick-off of the study took place on 7 March. See more info here in Dutch.
CLTB’s Joaquin de Santos presented the CLT model at a conference on housing organised by the Barcelona city council on 19 to 21 March. You can find here a summary and here the video of his presentation (in Spanish). The CALICO (Care and Living in Community) project, an innovative co- housing project initiated by CLTB and co-led by the Brussels-Capital Region and CLTB financed by the EU’s Urban Innovative Actions programme with gender and intergenerational care perspectives, was officially launched on 27 March.
Press coverage:
German TV channel ZDF has produced a documentary on alternatives to the housing crisis. A large part of the documentary is dedicated to CLTB. You can watch the documentary here in German and here in French. Belgian French-speaking paper La Libre has written a lengthy article on the exchange of houses between two couples that took place last December. CLTB’s Geert De Pauw was interviewed by local radio station Bruzz during
the week it dedicated to the sharing economy. Listen to Geert here (in Dutch). The CLT feasibility study in Leuven has attracted substantial media coverage, such as here and here (in Dutch).
National CLT Network
The National CLT Network has been busy working towards the SHICC transnational conference being held in London City Hall this May. Alongside this they, with help from the project partners have produced an advocacy toolkit and a manifesto ahead of the EU elections.
They have also launched Community Led Homes. Community Led Homes is a confederation of Co-operative Housing, Locality and UK Cohousing that has created this project to support the mission to making community led housing a mainstream housing option. Communtiy Led Homes provides advice and funding and gather resources on the sector into one place for the first time.
The project has also set up an online group so people involved in community led housing can provide peer to peer support to each other. Click here to find out more about the group.