REAL HOPE FOR LOCALS IN HOUSING NEED

Cornwall Community Land Trust has ambitions to help hundreds more families in housing need as 8 new homes for locals forever are unveiled at St Teath.  The plan is to significantly scale-up the work of the CLT in the coming years.  With over 30,000 Cornish families on the housing register alone and many thousands more who are also in need but have yet to register there is no room for complacency.

Cornwall Community Land Trust says that local communities and the resourcefulness of local people are best placed to help solve Cornwall’s desperate housing problem.

On the 23rd August we unveiled 8 new good quality, genuinely affordable homes for local families in St Teath.

Cornwall CLT’s Development Manager, Helen Downing, who managed the development and oversaw the project, said “Everything came together well. It is an added bonus to have the benefit of working with a local village company of people who are committed to helping their community. It’s reassuring that all of the homes were reserved so quickly and by families with such very strong ties with the village.”

This latest St Teath project has brought the number of homes for locals which we have developed in the St Teath Parish as a whole – including Delabole – to 63 over the last 5 years.  We hope to replicate this success in many other communities.

Cornwall CLT Director, Andrew George, said, “What this and other CLT schemes show is that local communities can deliver real solutions.  Not only has this met a local housing need for families who would eventually face pressure to move to a town up to 14 miles away – away from their families, jobs and schooling to seek affordable homes – but that it was built by local builders from the village, those who worked on the project were local people, some members of the families who have now moved into the new homes.”

Properties sold to local families in St Teath have been sold at less than 60% of the market value.  Under a planning requirement and covenant, when these properties are re-sold they can only be sold to local families with an unmet housing need at a price no more than the percentage value at which the property was originally purchased – thus ensuring that these homes will meet a local need for affordable housing in perpetuity.