Frustrated as a student about how s h * t e housing provision in our city can be? Feeling fed up with extortionate, unaffordable rent? Angry about the climate crisis, loneliness and mental health epidemic but without a clear direction for how to solve everything in an intersectional way? Do you want to be part of the change in London's housing crisis?
Calling all creatives through to squares, for a project to introduce an ambition and radical new vision for genuinely affordable housing. Read on for the homefolk model below and how you can help!
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1/3 homefolk summary
“Homefolk Housing UK CIC” is a social enterprise, and a team. We are medical students, human rights lawyers and radical architects who are passionate about solving the housing crisis, many of us based in Whitechapel and Mile End through our proximity to Queen Mary, UoL. Our diverse experiences outside of housing means we understand how housing intersects with many other issues of today. That’s why our new legal and conceptual model for housing has been consciously designed to nurture community, health and the planet, ensuring our model delivers equally on quality AND quantity.
Our innovative solution to the housing crisis is the ‘homefolk model’ for community owned tinyhome villages. Our model takes advantage of marginal spaces in the changing cityscape to add density to existing urban areas, with potential for tens of thousands of new homes.
2/3 our name & our offer
Simply put, to each resident we aim to sell genuinely affordable housing. Radically affordable. Like a £50k mortgage instead of £500k... and, do so in a remarkably scalable way.
For a prospective resident, this will look like: (1) an individual tiny home; (2) co-ownership of communal units on wheels - to include a kitchen, a bathroom/toilet and community/common room; (3) (co-)tenure of site for the tinyhouse village. Imagine buying a flatshare with mixed private and shared spaces - you pay for both private space (your bedroom) and shared living spaces.
We aren’t just another housing ‘developer’ working to squeeze every last penny out of a fundamental human right (housing!). We chose the name ‘homefolk’ as a combination of two factors that best underpin what we’re doing: providing homes, not just houses, in a way that benefits people and the planet ahead of profit. We can’t do home without folk, our community - be that the tight-knit homefolk working community, the community of residents in the village or the wider communities where housing is sited
3/3 why east london & who
Low traffic neighbourhoods, car free cities movement, Sadiq Khan’s expansion of London’s ULEZ - cities are changing rapidly! Newly available, publicly-owned paved areas in London can be put to use to solve the problems of today.
The East End of London is the ideal area for our first homefolk community. As a centuries old hub for new arrivals to the capital, likewise we see how homefolk can bring our new skills and facets to London. Additionally, nowhere else in the Capital has felt gentrification quite like the East End, with community pushed out in place of profit and soulless corporate 'development'. What better place to showcase a big idea in housing, in such a dense urban environment? We aim to show that if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.
Resident communities benefit from our model through reduced housing costs. Emphasis on benefit to young people, a.k.a. ‘Generation Rent’ is important during the early stages of introducing our model. Generation Rent face intersecting challenges concerning physical & mental health & the climate crisis and can substantially benefit from our new model.
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Interested in volunteering? We have three working groups: homefolk architectural & design, homefolk communities & communication and homefolk legal team. Volunteering is mixed online remote and in-situ depending on availability. See our website or instagram (https://www.instagram.com/homefolk_uk/) for more information but if there's one take-away - if you want to help end the housing crisis, you'll find a place with us. Please email in applications to join our team to 'admin@homefolk.org.uk' with subject line 'Apply'.