Mapping for sustainable, affordable housing with Homefolk
Join Homefolk CIC and Student Social Enterprise for 1 day hackathon focussed on coding and mapping land use for sustainable, affordable homes. This event brings together students with an interest in tech, urban planning, sustainability and social impact to build practical tools and ideas that advance Homefolk’s housing model.
📍 Location:TBC
⏰ Timings: 10am-5pm on February 21st.
🌯 Catering: Plant-based lunch and snacks provided.
About Homefolk
“Homefolk Housing UK CIC” is a youth-led social enterprise seeking to tackle the housing crisis through the ‘homefolk model’ for community owned tinyhome villages. Their 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.
About the Hackathon
What you can expect:
- Collaborative coding sessions — Work with fellow students to create tools that help visualise and analyse land use and housing potential.
- Mapping challenges — Use mapping techniques and data to highlight opportunities for sustainable housing in urban spaces.
- Real-world impact — Your work will feed directly into Homefolk’s efforts to innovate in affordable and community-driven housing solutions.
- Teamwork & learning — No matter your background, you’ll work with others, learn new skills, and build practical outputs for change.
Who’s it for?
This hackathon is open to all UCL students — from beginners to experienced coders and mappers. You don’t need to be a tech expert, just curious and ready to collaborate!
Why join?
- Work on a real-world challenge — Contribute to live projects addressing London’s housing crisis, with outputs that can directly support Homefolk’s ongoing work on sustainable, affordable housing.
- Build practical, in-demand skills — Gain hands-on experience in coding, mapping, data analysis and collaborative problem-solving, all highly valued by employers across tech, sustainability and urban policy.
- Learn from a social enterprise — Work alongside Homefolk, a youth-led community interest company, and understand how social enterprises turn ideas into tangible social impact.
- Collaborate across disciplines — Meet students from different courses and backgrounds, and learn how tech, geography, design and policy intersect in real housing solutions.
- Make a difference in a day — Whether you’re new to hackathons or an experienced coder, your contribution will help push forward innovative responses to one of the UK’s most urgent social issues.
For any questions, please contact [email protected]
About Student Social Enterprise
Your one-stop shop to all things social enterprise. We exist to create a culture of social entrepreneurship at UCL and support student social ventures. You can read more about us here.
This event is part of the 28 Days of Sustainability 2026 programme - click here for the full programme.
Venue will be selected to ensure step-free access.