Rental in Perpetuity
How Rental in Perpetuity and a Land Trust approach to ownership can rebalance the Housing Market.
Key to understanding the role that Community Led Housing and a Community Land Trust / Public Land Trust approach to ownership can play in fixing the housing market is the principle of rental in perpetuity.
The model of property owning democracy that has been at the heart of UK Housing policy for forty years is broken on a wheel of its own making. Increasingly the Housing ladder is out of reach of millions and a valuable pipeline to wealth creation and fair and equitable development of our economy at a local and regional level no longer functions for millions of people in the UK.
With 1.2 million people on local housing lists, 40 local authorities building no social rent or affordable rent homes, 21,600 social homes either sold or demolished and only 7,500 built between 2021 and 2022 and with rents soaring by up to 10% a year building up public housing stocks is key to fixing the housing market.
This could be achieved by a Public Land Trust approach to ownership of Housing by Local Authorities alongside an enabling approach to Community Land Trusts and building an eco system around that idea is key to success.
We envisage a partnership approach to the formation of Public Land Trusts that would involve , Local authorities, the NHS , PCC, Voluntary services , Local communities, 3rd sector and other key local stakeholders that will have the power to retain, rebuild and develop public housing stocks rebalancing the rental market. Community wealth building and the empowering of local communities, will drive forward local economies creating a health and wellbeing approach to community development. This rebuilding of wealth will also in time feed the aspirations and pipeline of home ownership and further rebalance the private Housing market.
It’s very easy in a complex world to misunderstand or misrepresent how systems work.
we have been wrestling for some time with the issue of what drives the economy forward particularly in relation to our current political divides which narrowly focus on the battle between tax and spend and where intervention could reignite the economy.
In a complex modern economy the relationship between taxes and the provision of public services and how that relates to migration, a sense of culture, nation and community has become a constant asymmetric battleground . To understand how the economy truly works and where intervention is needed we have to go back to the beginning.
When the first early nomadic hunters settled, they needed land, they became farmers
and built homes and a life that had to be sustainable over generations, in time they created surplus, this surplus created trade, trade created wealth which in turn created more complex communities, villages, towns and. cities and ultimately the interdependent network of nations, relationships and trading blocs that make up the modern world.
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So to understand how we re energise our economy in a sustainable, just and fair manner the starting point has to be the empowering of local communities. This involves a range of enabling processes focused on a health and wellbeing agenda and a long term investment horizon that through creation of sustainable, resilient communities drives forward the economy, creating the tax base that provides the services that empowers local communities in a virtuous circle of investment and re investment.
The issue of taxation and the constant battles between the idea of public and private is creating a doom loop of failure that can only be broken by investment in those local communities and regions. Empowering local communities, reinforcing a sense of ownership in the public realm is key to restarting the engine that will drive resilience and sustainability and ultimately lead us back to a more stable, happy society. A stable, happy and more just society is a more productive society in every way and feeds both public and private realm in equal measure .
Providing affordable housing and energy is part of that process of rebalancing the economy. It is the intervention that will help drive that health and wellbeing agenda, it provides resilience, sustainability, diversity and inclusion and encourages creativity, innovation and enterprise and will help to rebuild wealth in local economies and address climate change . Community Land Trusts and Public Land Trusts are where we can start to rebuild our fractured society.