DIY regeneration? Turning empty houses into homes
through homesteading
Lee Crookes and Win Greenhalgh, University of Sheffield,
In collaboration with Empty Homes
1
Contents
Acknowledgements
Executive summary
5
Chapter 1: Introduction
9
The case for homesteading
9
Background and policy context
About the
research
11
Structure of the report
14
Chapter 2: Existing evidence on homesteading and the changing policy context
13
17
Introduction
What is homesteading? Definitions, issues and
controversies
17
A brief history of urban homesteading
23
Chapter 3: Case studies: recent and contemporary models of homesteading in England
17
30
Homesteading in the 1990s: Manchester
31
Homesteading in the 1990s: Sheffield
35
Riverside Housing, Liverpool
39
Stoke-on-Trent City Council
43
Liverpool City Council
47
Chapter 4: Discussion and recommendations
54
What is homesteading?
54
The benefits of homesteading
55
The challenges of homesteading
Success factors, policy implications and
recommendations
57
Conclusion
64
60
2
Acknowledgements
This research project was made possible with a University of Sheffield Collaborative
Research and Development Award (Ref. X/007243). We are particularly grateful to David
Ireland and David Stott at Empty Homes, our collaborating partner, for their expertise,
advice, encouragement and participation in the research. Jon Fitzmaurice of self-help
housing.org, John Earnshaw of Lansdown Housing Consultancy and Sylvia Wilson of Homes
Under Threat have also been very helpful sources of support and guidance. The knowledge
and understanding of the empty homes sector demonstrated by these five individuals is
quite remarkable, as is their collective commitment to tackling the challenge presented by
empty homes.
We would also like to thank those officers from Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Liverpool City
Council, Sheffield City Council, Riverside Housing and B4Box, who kindly agreed to
participate in the research, responded to our queries and gave up their time to be
interviewed.
Thanks are also due to Jo Porter of JC Porter Secretarial Services, West Kirby, for the
accuracy and speed of her work in producing the transcripts of our interviews.
Disclaimer:
The findings and recommendations in this report are those of the authors and
do not necessarily represent the views of the University of the Sheffield or our
collaborating partner, Empty Homes. Any mistakes or inaccuracies are our
own.
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4
Executive Summary
The most recent data suggests that in late 2012, there were around 710,000 empty houses
in England (Homes and Communities Agency, 2012), of which 259,000 were defined as longterm empty properties. At a time of acute housing need, these empty houses constitute a
significant wasted resource. They also contribute to processes of neighbourhood decline,
imposing social costs on communities and incurring significant financial burdens on local
authorities and social landlords.
The current government is committed to “exploring a range of measures to bring empty
homes into use” (HM Government, 2010) seeing the renovation of empty dwellings as an
effective way of increasing housing supply and reducing neighbourhood blight.
Homesteading, an approach that involves making empty property available to people at a
discounted cost conditional on the incoming home-owner renovating the property, is
currently being rediscovered at both national and local level as a sustainable, commonsense means of bringing empty properties back into use. Relying heavily on householders’
labour or ‘sweat equity’, it is also an approach that fits the current government’s policy
emphasis on localism and self-help. As Andrew Stunnell, former Parliamentary UnderSecretary, stated in his speech to the 2011 Liberal Democrat conference: “Homesteading
provides a triple benefit, it gives families a foot on the housing ladder, brings empty homes
back into use, and it helps to regenerate whole communities”.
George Clarke, the
Government’s independent Empty Homes advisor, also highlights the importance of
homesteading as part of a wider series of measures in his 12-point Manifesto for Change.
There has also been significant pressure from residents in the former Housing Market
Renewal areas to get local authorities to intervene in their neighbourhoods and redouble
their efforts to bring empty homes back into use.
Homesteading might be understood as a particular subset of the family of initiatives that are
collectively known as self-help housing. If self-help housing is “relatively small-scale, poorly
defined and under-researched” (Mullins, 2010:4), then homesteading is even less common,
less well-defined and barely understood. Therein lies the motivation for the research
5
reported in this document.
Specifically, the report presents key findings from a limited,
exploratory study undertaken by researchers at the University of Sheffield in collaboration
with the campaigning charity, Empty Homes. Drawing on case-studies from northern
England and the West Midlands, the research set out to:

understand the scope and potential of homesteading as an alternative means of
bringing empty homes back into use; and

identify the factors that were aiding or impeding the growth of homesteading.
The research had three main elements: a literature review of the existing evidence on
homesteading; five case studies of late-1990s and contemporary homesteading schemes
that involved interviews with relevant stakeholders; and further interviews with a small
number of empty homes practitioners. Two of the case studies related to discontinued
schemes that were developed in the late-1990s but we also looked at a successful scheme
that had first been established in 2008 and was being rolled out to other areas. We also
interviewed officers who had been responsible for developing two new schemes that were
at the point of advertising their first properties to the public.
On a positive note, the research found that homesteading:






was intuitively simple and readily understood by officials, the media and the wider
public;
was being undertaken by a small but growing number of enthusiastic authorities,
social landlords and practitioners;
was the subject of massive local demand;
provided social landlords with an affordable and high-profile means of bringing
empty properties back into use to meet local housing needs;
provided opportunities for relatively low-income households to become homeowners and escape precarious housing in the private-rented sector; and
provided a signal to communities that local authorities were committed to stabilising
and regenerating areas that had fallen into decline.
Less encouragingly, we found that:


there was some confusion around the definition and purpose of homesteading;
procurement, an aversion to risk and staffing capacity issues were acting as barriers
to the wider uptake of the approach; and
6

health and safety concerns and mortgage lending restrictions meant that officers’
initial enthusiasm for DIY renovation was being replaced by a preference for
contracted refurbishment.
Despite these issues, however, those we spoke to felt that the potential benefits of
homesteading significantly outweighed the possible disadvantages. Looking across the case
studies, our analysis identified a number of common characteristics that contributed to the
success of the respective schemes. These included:





political commitment to bringing empty homes back into use and the championing of
homesteading by energetic and enthusiastic local government officers;
a pool of publicly-owned empty properties that had been acquired as a result of
Housing Market Renewal;
a learning approach that included a willingness to innovate, take risks, develop
creative approaches and learn from mistakes;
careful selection of properties suitable for homesteading in terms of their structural
condition and location; and
availability of grant funding.
The level of demand for properties advertised via new homesteading schemes suggests that
there is a huge latent demand for this type of initiative. Many of the properties being made
available through such schemes are two-bedroomed, Victorian terraced properties and,
consistent with the findings reported by Allen (2008), the demand for these homes
challenges earlier research that suggests such properties are obsolete and unsuitable for
modern living. Flowing from these observations and our broader findings, we have
developed a set of broad recommendations in support of a major expansion in the scale of
homesteading, both in the former HMR areas and across the country. Policy-makers and
other relevant stakeholders should consider the following:
1. Further encouragement of homesteading via a national policy framework backed by
continuing funding from the Government’s Empty Homes grant programme with
explicit targets for homesteading in each local authority area;
2. Publication of national guidance on homesteading for elected members, local
authority officers, mortgage-lenders and prospective homesteaders, incorporating
case studies and best practice advice;
3. Designation of homesteading ‘champions’ at national and local level;
7
4. Development and expansion of Empty Homes’ national Empty Homes Loans Fund to
additionally offer loans to prospective homesteaders;
5. Development of bespoke mortgage products and bridging loans that are tailored to
the needs of homesteaders
6. The completion of further research to:
a. Understand the motivations, backgrounds and experiences of actual and
potential homesteaders
b. Document the implementation of current homesteading schemes and
evaluate their effectiveness
c. Understand the geography of homesteading, its potential for stabilising
communities and the possible risks of gentrification
d. Explore the scope for linking homesteading to Community Land Trust
initiatives
e. Assess the extent to which the abolition of the Spare Room subsidy is
contributing to increased levels of vacancies.
Building on the recent success of the Building & Social Housing Foundation and self-helphousing.org in raising the profile of self-help housing generally, we would recommend the
adoption of a similar approach to campaigning and advocacy around homesteading to build
networks, foster knowledge transfer, engage with government and generally promote the
approach as part of a balanced strategy for bringing empty homes back into use.
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Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 The case for homesteading
Urban homesteading is the twentieth century version of a strategy used to settle the
American frontier. To attract settlers to wilderness areas, the government gave away land to
anyone who would improve and live on it. Just as it was necessary to offer incentives for
these pioneers, some cities are now using a similar approach to improve and resettle
declining urban neighbourhoods. The concept of urban homesteading is fairly simple. It
involves transferring publicly-owned, abandoned property to individuals or families in
exchange for commitments to repair, occupy and maintain the property. (Blackburn et al,
1981: 1)
Homesteading is a sustainable and affordable way of bringing empty houses back into use.
It involves new owners – homesteaders – being offered a property at a nominal or
discounted price on the condition that they refurbish the property to a habitable standard
and then live in the property for a minimum specified period, usually five years.
Homesteaders may also be offered a loan or grant towards the cost of refurbishment. The
free labour or ‘sweat equity’ that homesteaders contribute often leads to homesteading
being classified as a form of self-help housing. This requires some slight clarification.
Homesteading certainly sits within the broader family of initiatives that are described as
self-help housing, but many self-help schemes are focused on bringing empty homes
brought back into use to provide accommodation for rent rather than opportunities for
owner-occupation (see, for example: Mullins, 2010; BSHF, 2011. This is a crucial difference
but one that is frequently glossed over in some of the policy documents that we have seen.
From the outset, it is important to state that this research works from the assumption that
bringing empty homes back into use through homesteading (and other means) is preferable
to demolition, especially in an era where affordable housing is in short supply1.
This
position recognises the immense strains that are placed upon households and communities
not just as a consequence of the presence of empty homes but also, paradoxically, as a
1
Figures provided by Empty Homes suggest that around 18% of the new homes created in 2011/12 were
actually long-term empty dwellings that had been brought back into use.
9
result of regeneration schemes that seek to tackle the issue through large-scale demolition.
We accept that empty homes do create significant issues in terms of blight and we recognise
that they can become a focus for fly-tipping, vandalism, anti-social behaviour and arson.
However, this does not mean that communities with a comparatively high proportion of
empty properties should inevitably be subject to erasure for this produces self-defeating
schemes which seek to ‘save’ communities by razing them (de Fillipis, 2007). If we are to
advance the case for homesteading and engage with the challenges that it raises, then we
feel that it is first necessary to set out some of the arguments against demolition. These are
outlined below.
In the first instance, any demolition constitutes a reduction in the stock of affordable
housing. This is particularly problematic in the context of an unprecedented shortage of
such housing. As Hartman et al argue:
It is also fundamentally wrong to allow removal of housing units from the lowmoderate income stock, for any purpose, without requiring at least a one-for-one
replacement. Demolition…of vacant private or publicly owned lower-rent housing
should be just as vigorously opposed as when those units are occupied. (1982: 5)
Secondly, demolition has harmful consequences for individuals, households and
communities. Ever since the ground-breaking work of Young and Willmott (1957), Gans
(1962) and Fried (1963), urban researchers have witnessed and documented the grievous
personal and social impacts of housing clearance and relocation and there is now a
significant body of research that evidences the trauma of home loss and displacement
associated with such schemes.
Thirdly, as Power (2008) has argued, there are strong environmental arguments that favour
the renovation and retro-fitting of the existing stock over demolition. Power contends that
refurbishment has major social, economic and environmental benefits compared with
demolition, including: “a reduction in the transport costs, reduced landfill disposal, greater
reuse of materials, reuse of infill sites and existing infrastructure, reduced new building on
flood plains, local economic development, retention of community infrastructure,
neighbourhood renewal and management” (2008: 4457).
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Finally, there is also the crucial bottom-line argument. The costs of refurbishing and reusing
an existing property are generally significantly lower than the costs of site assembly,
demolition and new-build. These refurbishment costs are further reduced by ‘sweat equity’
inputs from homesteaders. Local authorities also receive New Homes Bonus payments for
long-term empty properties that are brought back into use.
In the current housing market, one would expect that homesteading schemes would be
particularly attractive to young, first-time buyers who are on below-average incomes, have
limited savings and are generally finding it difficult to buy their first home. For local
authorities and social landlords, homesteading can lead to improvements in several areas,
including stock management, neighbourhood management and tenure diversification.
Existing local residents also benefit from a reduction in blight and greater certainty about
their area’s future. As the Homes and Communities Agency notes:
Bringing an empty home back into use is almost always a change for the better. Most
significantly it provides a home. But neighbours and the community also see local
improvements; they gain a new neighbour, and often lose an eyesore. When several
homes are returned to use within a small community the benefits can be wider,
helping to improve the local environment and boost the local housing market (HCA,
undated)
1.2 Background and policy context
Despite the apparent advantages of homesteading, however, and a supportive policy
context, there are currently very few homesteading schemes in England. There is also very
little research on the topic. The current lack of schemes and the paucity of research are
particularly surprising because homesteading is a long-established approach to tackling the
problem of empty homes. It was first used in US cities in the 1970s and was subsequently
introduced to the UK in the late 1970s/early 1980s via schemes in London and Glasgow.
Subsequently, in the late 1990s, a number of northern cities, notably Manchester, Sheffield
and Newcastle, developed their own homesteading initiatives in response to the growing
numbers of empty homes, in both the social and private housing sectors. One of the most
famous schemes, set up in North Benwell in 1998, saw Newcastle city council sell a small
number of empty homes to homesteaders for just 50p each. In Sheffield and Manchester,
11
the schemes examined below in Chapter 3, were quietly discontinued whilst the Newcastle
scheme, though broadly successful, was never extended beyond the Benwell
neighbourhood. With the introduction of Housing Market Renewal (HMR) in 2002, the
policy environment changed and homesteading and other small-scale, ‘grass-roots’
refurbishment schemes fell out of favour as they were ‘crowded-out’ and overshadowed by
large-scale ‘transformational’ projects that frequently involved extensive housing
demolition. From 2010, however, there has been a significant shift in policy, with the
Coalition government demonstrating a greater willingness to bringing empty homes back
into use. Key aspects of this commitment included the cessation of HMR and an Empty
Homes grant fund that places a strong emphasis on community-led, self-help approaches
(CLG, 2011). The new approach, operating amid austerity and the collapse of older, costlier,
top-down models of urban regeneration, has opened up opportunities for creative thinking
around empty homes. Consequently, homesteading is experiencing something of a modest
resurgence as a key strand of local authorities’ and social landlords’ broader strategies for
bringing empty homes back into use.
As we later discuss, homesteading is not unproblematic: it raises several practical, political
and philosophical questions. Many observers, for example, might interpret homesteading
as a classic form of gentrification and the research is alert to this potential critique, paying
particular attention to the criteria by which the homes made available through
homesteading are allocated, as well as highlighting the need for further research on the
socio-economic profiles of those who become homesteaders.
Notwithstanding these
concerns, however, we should be heartened by the manner in which homesteading helps us
to quite literally see beyond the void by reimagining empty houses as potential assets that
can, with some work, be turned into affordable homes.
Where HMR tended to adopt a
‘deficit’ model of urban regeneration that viewed empty homes and the surrounding
communities as liabilities, homesteading represents a step towards an alternative - ‘assetbased’ - perspective that recognises the value of existing homes, communities and residents
(Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993).
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1.3 About the research
Against this background, the purpose of this document is to report on an exploratory,
qualitative research project that sought to examine past and present homesteading
initiatives via a series of case studies that involved interviews and a review of the relevant
academic and policy literature.
The principal aims of the research were to:





review the origins and development of homesteading since the early 1970s
provide empirical evidence on contemporary homesteading schemes
consider the place of homesteading within the broader context of self-help housing
identify the factors that were/are aiding or impeding the growth of homesteading
provide evidence to inform the development of policy and practice on homesteading
Our research questions focused on the following themes:
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
definitions of homesteading
refurbishment and self-help
demand, eligibility criteria and the allocation of properties
the factors that foster or inhibit homesteading
issues in developing and managing homesteading schemes
Our research was conducted on a part-time basis between February and May, 2013. It
comprised three main elements:
1. A literature review of the existing evidence that sought to understand the history of
homesteading, the scale and extent of past initiatives and possible reasons why they
either succeeded or failed. This phase of the research examined relevant academic
literature and national and local policy documents on housing, empty homes and
homesteading, including material from the US, the Netherlands and the UK
2. Five case studies of late-1990s and contemporary homesteading schemes. This
involved a review of relevant documentation and interviews with officers who were
closely involved in the development and administration of past and current
initiatives. Specifically, interviews were conducted with:
a. officers from Sheffield and Manchester who were involved in setting-up
homesteading schemes in the late-1990s.2,3
2
Both schemes were subsequently discontinued.
3
We also contacted officers at Newcastle City Council in relation to the Benwell scheme but we were informed
that the officers involved in the scheme had recently retired and were therefore not available for interview
13
b. officers managing Riverside Housing’s ‘Own Place’ scheme in Liverpool that
was established in 2008
c. officers from Stoke and Liverpool councils involved in the development of
their current ‘Homes for a £1 schemes’.
3. Semi-structured interviews with a small number of key practitioners working in the
empty homes sector.
Homesteading initiatives remain quite rare in this country and we were only able to
interview a relatively small group of practitioners and stakeholders. In total, we conducted
a total of nine interviews with eleven respondents.
In the context of these and other
practical limitations, it should be noted that our research was essentially exploratory and
our findings are, at best, indicative. We do not claim to be able to provide a definitive,
comprehensive assessment of the contemporary state of homesteading in England: our
ambitions were much more modest. Rather, our hope is that this report can begin to assist
in clarifying the nature of homesteading, highlight some key issues and offer some practical
and timely recommendations that will help to guide further discussion and promote such
initiatives to a wider audience.
1.4 Structure of the report
The remainder of the report is divided into three main sections:
Chapter 2 provides a review of the existing literature on homesteading. It begins by
examining its origins in US cities in the 1970s and the introduction of similar initiatives to
the UK and the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter also presents a working
definition of homesteading, in an attempt to dispel some of the confusion around the term.
Chapter 3 presents material from the five case studies, bringing together interview data and
documentary evidence. The discussion focuses on the different models of homesteading
that we encountered and we try to draw out some of the key similarities and differences
between the different approaches in order to highlight possible success factors.
14
Chapter 4 summarises the key findings from the study and advances a number of key
recommendations that include suggestions for areas where future research might be
beneficial.
15
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Chapter 2: Existing evidence on homesteading
2.1 Introduction
Drawing on existing literature and insights from interviews with practitioners, this chapter
begins with a discussion of the principles that define homesteading, focusing particularly on
the self-help and ownership aspects that distinguish it from other approaches. We note
that it is possible to identify an idealised, ‘pure’, model of homesteading but suggest that, in
practice, this may not always be attainable. The chapter then examines the development of
homesteading from the early 1970s onwards. This includes consideration of the US Urban
Homesteading Demonstration Project that was established in 1974, the Greater London
Council scheme that was introduced in 1977 and other schemes that were initiated in
Newcastle and Spangen (Rotterdam).
2.2 What is homesteading? Definitions, issues and controversies
The concept of homesteading has actually been around, in various forms, since the 17th
century. In law and ethics, the homesteading principle can be understood as a reworking of
the Lockean labour theory of property (Locke, 1690) whereby one gains ownership of an unowned natural resource by an act of appropriation. In Lockean terms, ownership is attained
by the “mixing of labour” with the land. It was this principle that underpinned the US
Federal Homestead Act of 1862. Keen to see the new frontier territories populated by
settlers, the US government gave away large tranches of recently acquired ‘public land’ –
that is, the former homelands of Native Americans - to anyone who would improve and live
on it. Specifically, the Homestead Act allowed citizens over the age of twenty-one to claim
65 hectares of land if they undertook to build a home, cultivate the land and farm it for at
least five years. Though the programme was beset by widespread abuse and fraud, with
much of the acreage going to speculators and large business interests, homesteading was
generally successful in providing numerous families with land, bringing ‘unproductive’ land
into use and generally helping to settle the frontier (Hughes and Bleakly, 1975).
Whilst 1970s urban homesteading was responding to a very different set of conditions, the
underlying principles are broadly similar.
Urban homesteading “involves transferring
publicly-owned, abandoned property to individuals or families in exchange for commitments
to repair, occupy and maintain the property.
The potential benefits are great:
17
“homesteaders become homeowners, housing stock is improved; neighbourhoods are
restored; and urban communities are revitalised” (HUD, 1978: 1). The approach is outlined
by Hughes and Bleakly as follows:
The homesteader "purchases" his parcel by the agreement to reside in the unit and
improve it over a certain period of time. For this he receives title to the property free,
or for a nominal charge. The central thesis underlying the program is that homeownership fosters a higher degree of parcel maintenance and specific attachment. The
objective is to make previously unattractive units available to qualified owners for
little or no initial cost, with the result that the parcels which have been economically
nonviable can come back on the market simply for the cost of rehabilitation. (1975, 34)
For Newberg (1992), this description captures the three key elements of urban
homesteading theory.
Firstly, homesteading emphasises the rehabilitation of existing
housing over demolition and new build. This emphasis, Newberg argues, is based on “the
recognition that neighbourhoods, even in relatively advanced stages of deterioration,
represent substantial social investment” (1992: 744). The second element relates to the doit-yourself – self-help - principle of ‘sweat equity’, through which the homesteader
contributes to the renovation of the property through the investment of his or her labour.
When housing managers are deciding whether to refurbish empty dwellings or demolish
them and build anew, the introduction of ‘sweat equity’ into the costings can help to steer
decisions towards retention of the existing stock. As Newberg observes “The contribution
of sweat equity reduces, in theory, the costs of producing what is, in effect, a new housing
unit by employing non-professional labour in parts of the rehabilitation process in place of
professional building contractors” (1992: 744). The third element of homesteading is the
value that it places on home-ownership.
This is based on the assumption that the
homesteader’s ‘investment’ in labouring to bring the home back into use also produces a
corresponding sense of investment - a ‘stake’ - in the neighbourhood that, in turn, generates
a strengthened commitment to the area and, perhaps, feelings of responsibility. As one of
our respondents commented:
If you just get someone who moves in for six months, they haven’t got the
commitment to the area that the people who live in the area have and they don’t
treat the area the same. They’re unlikely to go out and say, hey, you know, these
bins are all over the road, they’re unlikely to say that, if they’re not going to be there
long term. (DS)
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The three key elements of housing refurbishment, ‘sweat equity’ and home-ownership
continue to be relevant today. They have figured prominently throughout our empirical
investigations and we would argue that they collectively constitute the ‘ideal’ or ‘pure’
model of homesteading against which all other relevant schemes can be analysed and
interpreted.
In our interviews, several respondents drew on perceptions of homesteading that had some
resonance with the ‘ideal’ model outlined above, with the role of self-help being particularly
central:
I think it’s to do with people putting in sweat equity into a house and benefiting in
some way either ownership-wise or reduced rent-wise from that. So it’s about
renovating property but the person who does the work lives in it and benefits in
some way from the work that they have done.(DI)
These ideas can be equated with purist approaches to homesteading and we can begin to
distinguish these from others that might be described as ‘partial’ approaches. Drawing on
recent examples from England, this respondent invokes the idea of ‘pure’ and ‘partial’
homesteading:
I think the Benwell scheme was what you might call pure homesteading. The
properties were sold for £1 with the responsibility for renovation falling on the
homesteader. Other schemes adopt some of the principles of homesteading but are
what you might call partial; the property is sold for a discount or only a share of the
property is sold. Both approaches are equally valid but work in different situations.
(DI)
In words that articulate the Lockean labour theory of property noted earlier, the respondent
continues, drawing on the idea of rights being attached to property because of the
investment of ‘sweat equity’:
But we’ve got abandoned land and abandoned properties and it’s using that same
kind of principle of, well, if you put something into, nobody else wants it, you put
something into it, then you should gain from it, you should have some rights over it
by doing that, and I think it uses that… (DI)
The emphasis within these accounts of ‘pure’ homesteading remains on the value of
emotional, psychological and physical input through ‘sweat equity’, which serves to foster
an emotional attachment to an area. This is something that is qualitatively different from
19
the regeneration inputs provided by developers and/or social landlords.
Homes and
communities are more than bricks and mortar:
It ends up being quite personal to people and I think that matters. In a traditional
purchase and repair arrangement where a housing association or a developer
renovates houses and makes them available to people, the relationship between the
occupant and the house is just like any other rental situation. That’s great in most
situations, but where you are trying to rebuild a community it isn’t always enough.
Homesteading causes people to put more of their time, sweat and money into the
house and that can lead to a more in-depth emotional attachment to the house and
the area. (DI)
Sweat equity makes homesteading a cost-effective approach for housing providers and local
authorities who are seeking to regenerate areas that include a significant proportion of
empty properties. Evidence from the US (Goetz et al, 1997) and Merseyside (Riverside
Housing, 2007) has shown how particular approaches to homesteading can generate
significant financial benefits for the stock-holding body, increased local tax revenues and a
range of impressive, if less readily quantifiable, neighbourhood benefits. As Goetz et al
report, rehabilitating empty housing through a homesteading approach:
…has very real public sector benefits, benefits that increase when compared with
demolition or reoccupation…Over the long term, this impact can amount to a sizable
stream of revenue that a city foregoes because of the choice to demolish or do
nothing about the vacant property (1997: 32)
In developing evidence for the introduction of the scheme in Merseyside, Riverside Housing
undertook a financial modelling exercise with respect to a number of neighbourhoods
across Liverpool and the rest of Merseyside where the organisation had significant stockholdings. The results of this financial modelling found that, subject to certain assumptions,
homesteading-style approaches would yield a sizeable net financial advantage over a ‘do
nothing’ approach that simply retained the empty units as part of the landlord’s stock
(Riverside Housing, 2007).
The broader field of self-help housing also involves sweat equity and DIY renovation but
homesteading is different insofar as the homesteader is granted title of the property rather
than a tenancy.
Owner-occupation is one of the principal defining characteristics of
homesteading:
20
…I think if we wanted to define it, I would feel that it probably ought to be around
ownership of some kind... I think ownership is the thing which distinguishes it from
other similar approaches. (DI)
We might therefore usefully distinguish between self-help housing for rent and self-help
housing for ownership, that is, homesteading.
Given this home-ownership dimension, policy-makers particularly value the opportunities
for tenure diversification that homesteading offers. But, we should also remember that
social housing providers have priorities in relation to addressing issues of housing need.
This is where homesteading begins to encounter some difficult questions of equity that are
not easily reconciled. Reflecting on the US homesteading programme, Newberg suggests
that, “a serious problem with urban homesteading…has been the failure to distinguish
adequately between the goal of providing housing for the poor and the goal of reversing the
process of housing and abandonment and neighbourhood deterioration” (1992: 736).
In particular, it becomes difficult to determine clear eligibility criteria if there are basic
disagreements as to whether homesteading should prioritise the ‘stabilisation’ of
communities through increased levels of owner-occupation or focus on responding to local
housing needs. In theory, homesteading should be able to address both aims but, in
practice, this may be somewhat unrealistic:
When you start spending some money on it, then it starts to become problematic,
particularly if you’re putting some public money in it. It then becomes very
problematic because once there’s some form of subsidy in there, people ask why are
these people getting it and not somebody else? So, therefore, it probably has to be
needs-based. But if you’re doing that you’re almost selecting out the people who it
would be most suitable for. (DI)
Not all would-be homesteaders have similar skills, abilities, finance and other resources:
some homesteaders will require more support than others. Should the housing authority
prioritise those in greatest need or those who need least support to become a successful
homesteader? From a narrow, cost perspective, homesteading is most attractive to housing
authorities when the self-help, sweat equity contribution is maximised and the formal
housing input is correspondingly minimised. The focus on self-help therefore begins to
presuppose a particular type of homesteader:
21
…what makes a good homesteader is somebody who has got the motivation and
drive to do it and maybe a bit of aspiration – a desire to improve themselves, I think
those are the right attributes for a successful homesteader to have. Problems can
arise if the organisers of a homesteading scheme select homesteaders on the basis
of their needs. It is entirely understandable that organisers would seek to do this,
but, as a result, homesteaders are not selected on the basis of their ability to
complete the task. This means the organisers will need to provide much more
support and assistance and as a result the scheme will be more difficult and more
expensive. (DI)
At the same time as making reductive assumptions about the abilities of those in housing
need, the invocation of the ‘aspirational’ homesteader may also select out local people with
existing connections to ‘these areas’ who are in need of affordable housing. There is, in
short, a risk that homesteading could potentially create the conditions for gentrification and
the displacement of existing residents:
In light of the literature on neighbourhood revitalization and displacement, it is
possible to envision a scenario in which more affluent homesteaders settle in a
declining neighborhood, the neighbourhood is restored and property values
increase, and some low-income residents cannot afford to remain (Newburg, 1992:
756, emphasis added).
Whilst the early US urban homesteading schemes were intended to privilege the selection
of low income households for homesteading, evidence from a 1980 case study of the
Minneapolis’ homesteading programme suggests that it was essentially moderate and
middle-income households that were receiving houses under the programme, rather than
the intended low-income households (Nieri and Farkas, 1980).
Residents who were
interviewed complained that “too few families living in homestead neighbourhoods are
being given homestead houses” and there was evidence that low-income households were
being displaced “as richer people bid for rehabilitated houses” (op cit. 116-117). In contrast,
however, a national review of the US Urban Homesteading Demonstration Programme
found very little evidence of displacement in homestead neighbourhoods (Blackburn et al,
1981).
Some observers might regard homesteading as a classic form of gentrification but careful
management of the application process can help to ensure that homesteading does not lead
to the displacement of existing residents. As part of this, decision-makers should be alert to
the risks of gentrification and seek to develop eligibility criteria that minimise such risks by
22
placing an appropriate cap on applicants’ income levels, prioritising those with local
connections and restricting opportunities for speculative investment through restrictive
covenants and sole and minimum residence conditions.
To summarise this opening section, homesteading involves the following three key
elements:

an emphasis on the refurbishment of empty homes;

sweat equity; and

owner-occupation.
It is owner-occupation that distinguishes homesteading from other forms of self-help
housing. This is a vital point but one that is often overlooked. In confusing homesteading
with self-help housing for rent we also confuse their respective aims.
With greater
definitional clarity, however, we can begin to disentangle the respective goals of providing
housing for those in need and using homesteading as a means of stabilising neighbourhoods
that are suffering the problems of high turnover, transience and abandonment that are
associated with high levels of private-rented housing.
The study undertaken has limitations in terms of the scope covered and we recognise that
there is a need to undertake further research to understand the characteristics, motivations
and experiences of would-be homesteaders. That said, the insight we have gained into
several empirical perspectives and secondary documentary accounts, as reported below,
appears to suggest that the idea of ‘pure’ homesteading is removed from the reality of some
contemporary schemes in England. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however, as policymakers and officers must strive to adapt the approach to specific local contexts that each
present a particular set of housing circumstances and socio-economic conditions.
Nevertheless, this ‘ideal’ informs the spirit of the recent resurgence of interest in
homesteading in England, underpinning the importance of houses as homes with the
potential to foster attachment to sustainable places.
23
2.3 A brief history of urban homesteading
As we have already seen, urban homesteading is not new. It is actually a long-established
approach to dealing with empty homes that was first developed in the US in the early 1970s.
Beginning with the US experience and subsequently drawing on two examples from the UK
and one from the Netherlands, this section uses secondary accounts to explore the
development of homesteading from the 1970s to early 2000’s.
2.3.1 Urban Homesteading in the US
By the early 1970s, many of the central, core neighbourhoods in US cities were experiencing
population decline, blight and abandonment. Urban homesteading programmes were a
response to these challenges, offering city-owned, tax-forfeited vacant properties to
eligible, would-be homeowners. The success of these local schemes in several east coast
cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and Wilmington served as a catalyst for action and the
Federal Government quickly introduced the Urban Homesteading Demonstration
Programme in 1973.
As Goetz et al remark: “The program was very popular among
legislators and the national press, particularly because of the imagery of hard-working
homeowners taming a new frontier much like earlier generations conquered the West by
developing land in exchange for title” (1997: 6).
Under the Federal demonstration programme, cities were required to convey properties
“without substantial consideration” (Blackburn et al, 1981:2) and award title to property
subject to the homesteader completing the necessary repairs to a minimum standard and
taking occupancy of the property for a minimum of three years. The underlying idea was
that homesteading would help to preserve and stabilise marginal areas rather than revive
seriously blighted ones.
Sixty-one cities submitted applications from which 23 were selected by October 1975 and a
further 16 were added to the demonstration program by 1977. In 1977 the program moved
24
from demonstration to operational. By 1980, 83 cities had signed up to Homesteading
programs.
The program was centrally driven by the Department for Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) but locally implemented, meaning that cities could respond in different ways
according to their needs and resources. HUD did not specify a maximum or minimum
income for potential homesteaders but it expected that cities would identify households
with housing need and a capacity to repair, whilst devising selection criteria that would be
equitable and inclusive. Before occupancy, the property had to be brought to a minimum
standard after which homesteaders could take up to 18 months to complete the project to
locally specified standards. Homesteaders were required to live in the property for at least
three years. In choosing properties for homesteading, cities needed to demonstrate that
the properties had contributed to decline. As part of a broader, holistic approach to
stabilising neighbourhoods, cities were also expected to develop complementary
community development initiatives that would support and enhance homesteaders’
physical rehabilitation work.
Alongside the design and implementation of the Homesteading Programme, HUD
commissioned a comprehensive longitudinal evaluation in 23 of the original Demonstration
Cities (Blackburn et al, 1981).
The evaluation focused on assessing the success of
homesteading as a strategy to rehabilitate the housing stock in urban neighbourhoods and
on measuring the impact of homesteading on target neighbourhoods (Blackburn et al,
1981:4).
HUD’s broad criteria led to considerable variation in local administrative
arrangements: some arrangements were very controlled whilst others gave homesteaders
more freedom. These included extremes in which some cities did not allow self-help whilst
other cities relied upon it. Despite these variations there was no apparent difference in the
standard of work apart from the longer time associated with self-help rehabilitation.
Overall, the HUD evaluation concluded that, on balance, homesteading created a number of
net benefits: “[homesteading] can restore useful economic life to a property, help stabilise
the surrounding area and, in effect, create value” (Blackburn et al, 1981: 7). Moreover, even
though urban homestead properties accounted for less than 2% of dwellings in the
demonstration neighbourhoods, HUD’s evidence suggested that the programme had slowed
25
disinvestment in these neighbourhoods and initiated a significant increase in local levels of
home-ownership.
Other assessments of the programme, however, were less positive. Chandler (1988), for
example, contended that the programme: failed to include those most in greatest housing
need; only considered properties in the selected, target neighbourhoods and was further
restricted to federally-owned properties. These limitations and, crucially, an upturn in
property prices that inflated the costs of acquisition led to the eventual repeal of the
Federal homesteading legislation in 1991. Nevertheless, organisations such as the New
York-based Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) have continued to champion
homesteading as an effective approach to dealing with empty houses in particular local
contexts.
2.3.2 Homesteading in London: the Greater London Council (GLC) scheme
Taking inspiration from the US experience, the late-1970s saw the introduction of a
homesteading scheme across London under the direction of the GLC’s Conservative leader,
Horace Cutler. The programme aimed to:
…restore residential property which is in a poor condition both to its full use and to
an acceptable standard. Under the GLC scheme, properties were sold to first time
buyers who were without the resources to buy an already improved property, but
who were enthusiastic about restoring a run-down house and were willing to do
much of the necessary work themselves. In return, homesteaders were given up to 3
years during which mortgage payments were deferred (GLC 1980).
Reporting that the level of demand consistently outstripped the number of available
properties, a GLC review of the scheme indicated that 1,500 households had become
homesteaders by 1982. The attraction to homesteading was described in terms of access to
low cost homeownership primarily, with a significant minority expressing an interest in DIY
refurbishment as a motivating factor. Although it is not entirely clear who the scheme
sought to attract, a quick analysis of the survey data suggests that the scheme was broadly
successful, attracting young, first time buyers who were mostly existing residents of London
and keen to take on a significant proportion of the building rehabilitation.
26
The properties that the GLC made available under the scheme came from a number of
sources. Some were released from its own stock and some were empty properties that it
had purchased on the open market. Alternatively, some homesteaders located their own
property and were assisted by the GLC in purchasing it from a private owner.
Most
homesteaders received mortgages from the GLC for the cost of the property whilst using
grants and personal savings to pay for the cost of refurbishment. Approximately 12 per cent
of homesteaders undertook all the work themselves.
In general, the main problems encountered by homesteaders centred on finding the time
and the money to refurbish, living in the property whilst doing the work and the amount of
hard work it took to complete. The understanding that is drawn from the survey is
consistent with the apparent success of the scheme which according to its authors was the
first of its kind in the UK, subsequently leading to its adoption “in other parts of the county
with the full support of the government” (GLC 1980:1). However, we have been unable to
find much evidence in relation to any other UK-based scheme from that era. As an antidote
to this dearth of evidence, the current research urges those involved in homesteading to
document and record evidence of their work.
2.3.3 Benwell, Newcastle4
In 1998, Newcastle City Council sold six houses to homesteaders for £1 each in the deprived
North Benwell district, an area experiencing a declining population and severe housingrelated issues. The houses belonging to the council had been empty for years. The houses
were sold to local families on the housing register who renovated them with the help of a
small grant. Ten years on, three of the houses are still owned by original homesteaders the
others having been sold to new families. The road now has no empty properties: it has, in
short, become an ordinary residential street.
After years of rising crime and property neglect, North Benwell was declared a Renewal
Area. As part of the renewal works a homesteading scheme was commenced. Five pairs of
contiguous, derelict, Tyneside flats were selected for the project. The scheme converted
these properties from flats back into 3-story, family homes. In doing so it also changed an
entire neighbourhood. Ownership was granted for the symbolic price of £1. Over 180
4
Our description of the Benwell scheme is taken directly from the Empty Homes website,
http://www.emptyhomes.com/what-you-can-do-2/resources/homesteading/
27
individuals registered an interest in the scheme, and selection was made via a set of clear
criteria, most notably financial need/ability, family size, and a strong commitment to the
area. Owners had to contribute £12,000 towards improvements, and further funds came
from Housing Investment Programme grants and local government regeneration funding.
Owners agreed to remain in their homes for at least 3 years – any shorter period would
incur a financial penalty. If a property was eventually sold onto another owner occupier, one
third of the increase in value would be returned to the Council; if the sale was to a landlord,
then full grant repayment would have to be made.
The results have been overwhelmingly positive. The five new home owning families took a
long-term view towards their new neighbourhood, and their proactive presence has directly
contributed to the on-going regeneration of North Benwell. Crime has dropped and vacancy
rates are at normal levels. North Benwell offers a clear and classic example of how targeted
homesteading schemes can plant the seed for broader regeneration efforts.
2.3.5 Spangen, Rotterdam
In 2004, Steunpunt Wonen (Centre for Housing Research) and Hulshof Architects came
together, to find a way to redevelop Wallisblok, a four-storey building comprising 96 small
apartments in the Spangen neighbourhood of Rotterdam.
The building had become
increasingly dilapidated and was a focus of considerable concern for the municipality and
the surrounding neighbourhood, which was also experiencing decline. Architecturally, the
building had some interesting features that the municipality were concerned to preserve
but, by the early 2000’s, the building was in a dangerous state of disrepair and an initial
survey concluded that the cost of repair would equal the estimated value after
redevelopment. Nevertheless, the new partnership came up with the idea to develop the
building based on a legal arrangement known as Collective Private Assignment (CPA).The
municipality continued to buy the remaining units of the building in order to dispose of it
through the CPA.
28
Bringing together 40 private buyers, the partnership developed a collective management
process to redevelop the building. Establishing certain conditions of engagement, the main
condition was agreement to a process of collective planning and group work on different
aspects of the development that were basic to all units. Buyers were also required to start
construction within one year and live in the property for at least a year. Each household
met twice with the architects to develop a plan for their own unit after which they were
free, within building regulations, to finish the renovation themselves or use the community
builder who was responsible for the general refurbishment of the building as a whole.
The collective planning process involved learning about building in general and architectural
and construction possibilities. Ultimately, the process produced 40 very different, affordable
units finished to a very high standard surrounding a common landscaped courtyard and play
area.
The success of the Wallisblok redevelopment encouraged several other new
developments in the neighbourhood. As the architect, Ineke Hulshof commented:
“The result is unique offering an affordable product that was achieved by people
working together. The effort to make more with less also resulted in a new feeling of
togetherness: existing constructions offer more opportunities to imagine spaces and
make them yourself…To realize a plan like this the co-operation of many institutions
or participants is necessary. Apart from the inhabitants and owners…it is important
that there is somebody in charge within local government to accompany the
process…The result is a happy community and a strong improvement of a former
problem area. The rate for safety in Spangen went up from four to seven on a scale
of ten, which is very good” (Hulshof, 2008: 15-16)
This powerful example of homesteading is impressive both in its ambition and result. It is
quite different from many of the other examples which typically involve local government in
one-on-one relationships with individual homesteaders.
This brief overview of the recent history of homesteading gives an indication of the breadth
and diversity of approaches, as well as highlighting what can be achieved in the context of
different neighbourhood and housing market conditions and varied institutional and
political contexts. The different examples also demonstrate that homesteading can work at
different scales, ranging from individual dwellings, multi-family complexes and entire streets
through to neighbourhoods and city-wide projects. One should note, however, that the
individualist ethos that underpins homesteading belies the fact that it frequently requires
substantial political, financial, practical and administrative support in order to be successful.
29
Homesteading, in short, has had a long, reasonably successful history and, given adequate
support and commitment from national and local levels of government, it could be made to
work again and on a larger scale.
30
Chapter 3 Case studies: recent and contemporary models of
homesteading in England
3.1 Introduction
This chapter helps to further shift our analysis from ‘ideal’, theoretical notions of
homesteading to the reality of homesteading as it is currently practised. The case-studies
that are presented are based primarily on our analysis of the transcripts of semi-structured
interviews with officers from local authorities and registered providers of social housing
who are (or were) involved directly in the development and implementation of
homesteading schemes. We have also examined relevant documentation, where this was
available.
The first two case-studies examine the homesteading schemes that were
established in Manchester and Sheffield in the late 1990s. The third case-study focuses on
Riverside Housing’s ‘Own Place’ scheme that was first introduced in Liverpool in 2008 and
which is now being rolled out to other Riverside-owned stock in Hull. The final case –studies
examine the latest initiatives being developed by Stoke and Liverpool, where officers at
both city councils were engaged in the process of launching their respective ‘Homes for a
£1’ schemes.
3.2 Homesteading in the 1990’s: Manchester
Empirically, homesteading schemes are very much a product of the particular policy context
in which they are devised, developed and delivered. In the mid-1990s, the policy context for
empty homes was overly rigid and prescriptive, as this housing officer, who was directly
involved in the Manchester scheme, recalls:
Now I’ll tell you why homesteading in the 90s is not homesteading in 2000 and …
well, from 2004, because of a change of national legislation. In the 1990s we used to
use a 1996 Grant and Reallocation Act which covered all what local authorities could
do…In that particular piece of legislation, local authorities weren’t able to deliver any
loan or any type of package like that; they could only deliver a grant and the grant
had to be to a homeowner and the homeowner had to own a private property and
then had to stay in the property for a certain amount of time. (DS)
31
Furthermore, unlike today, the situation in the mid-90s was compounded by the fact that
Manchester (and other councils) did not actually own any empty properties. Presently,
councils in the former HMR areas are already in possession of a number of empty properties
as a result of acquisitions made during the lifetime of that programme. In terms of present
costs, this makes the decision about homesteading much easier. This was not the case in
the mid-1990s:
We didn’t have any of these properties ourselves: they were all in the private sector.
We didn’t have any facility to be able to give anyone a loan and the building societies
wouldn’t lend any money on these properties because they were unfurnished, they
were run down and they needed work doing on them (DS).
Working within the constraints of policy and local housing market conditions, officers
working in Manchester had to devise and develop a particular approach to homesteading.
This required considerable creativity and the involvement of private sector partners:
So what happened with this 90s scheme is that we had a private developer on board
with us, who tendered to be the private developer, because…the council didn’t own
any of these properties, and we didn’t want to. So the scheme in the 90s was
broadly about this. We had a developer, we had a house that was empty, that was
worth next to nothing, we had a grant regime which could be given but only to a
person who owned the house, and the person who owned that property didn’t want
to know, whether it be a landlord, whether they’d disappeared, whatever. So we
looked at the problem and said, right, if we get the private developer to buy the
property from the people who own it, for £10,000 let’s say, less in some cases, they
were that run down, but let’s say £10,000. We’ll get this private developer, this
private property company, to buy this property from this owner as a private deal
because that’s how they make the deal, we will then get him to sit on that property,
we will pick someone off our list who has come forward to want to live in that area,
we will let them do a peppercorn contract to own the property even though the
property company’s paid £10,000 for it, we will do a peppercorn for £1 to own it,
which means we can give them a grant. And if we can give them a grant, we can
improve the property. Then we’ll bring in the Halifax or the Abbey, in this case we
started to use the Abbey (DS).
Manchester’s approach represented a pragmatic response to the conditions and constraints
that it faced at a particular point in time. As the respondent recounts:
…it’s a scheme that just worked, a scheme that worked with a property which was
blighted, which we didn’t want to do a compulsory purchase order on and we
hadn’t got the funds to buy, because this is pre HMR, so we didn’t have those
kinds of monies...But the property has to be kind of low value to make this stack
32
up, so it has to be run down, but it has to be in an area that’s relatively halfdecent, where people will want to live (DS).
Evidently, the Manchester scheme targeted neighbourhoods that were having some
difficulties but not those areas that were experiencing the greatest challenges. Significantly,
self-help did not really figure as part of this approach.
Other important aspects of the scheme that were mentioned by the officer included
publicity, eligibility criteria and considerations on the sustainability of the areas in which the
properties were located. As a result of widespread publicity in the local press, the council
received around 300 expressions of interest in relation to the 30 properties in the scheme.
The success of the approach was dependent upon the would-be homesteaders being able to
secure a mortgage. Consequently, two essential criteria were that applicants should be in
employment and have a good credit record:
One of them must be in employment because they won’t get a mortgage, so it’s no
good to people who don’t work, unfortunately. So one of the couple, if not both of
them, would need to be in work and would need to be mortgageable (DS)
On past experience, officers knew that it would be very difficult to achieve sustainable
results in streets and neighbourhoods where the proportion of empty properties was
approaching levels of 60-70%. Consequently, they focused the scheme on areas where the
empty houses were more dispersed:
We identified these as having low and no demand but not in areas that we were
considering demolition. We’re saying these were your ‘one-offs’, so two houses here,
three there, and that’s why you say, they’re not in one area, they’re all over the show
and that’s why we were picking them because we’re saying if you don’t, the cancer
will set in, people will start to move out and you’ll lose the street: no one wants to live
next door to an empty house (DS)
33
Table 1: Key characteristics of the Manchester scheme
Key Characteristics
Homesteading in the 90’s: Manchester
No. of properties brought 30
back into use
Market factors
Origin of Ownership
Empty properties
Local housing market was depressed-‘low value/no demand’
empty properties dispersed across N. Manchester, high
demand for affordable housing-300 registered interests
of Privately owned dispersed empty properties
Institutional context for
disposal and refurbishment





Degree of self-help
LA could only give grants to homeowners, LA didn’t
have the resources or inclination to own or refurbish
Partnership between LA and developer to buy houses
(included contract for refurbishment)
Peppercorn contract with prospective homesteaders
so that LA could give grant for refurbishment
When refurbished to mortgageable standard, banks
facilitate loan to cover cost of refurbishment
Explicit mixed tenure rationale
Zero to low
Criteria to incentivise sole Resident in Manchester, credit-worthy, minimum length of
ownership
and
restrict stay
onward sale
Working in partnership with the developer, the Manchester scheme successfully brought 30
empty properties back into use. It came to an end due to a number of factors. The
respondent placed particular emphasis on the damage that was done to the relationship
with the developer as a result of the refusal of two prospective homesteaders to move in to
two refurbished properties, despite being legally bound to do so under the peppercorn
agreement. With no incoming mortgage-holder, the developer was unable to recoup its
refurbishment costs on the two properties and was therefore forced to rent them out. The
34
election of New Labour in 1997 also brought about a number of significant changes in policy
and funding and the introduction of new legislation removed the restrictions under the
1996 Act, allowing the council to start offering loans. The biggest change, however, was the
emerging consensus around the need for a much bigger, large-scale policy intervention to
address the growing problem of empty homes. Paradoxically, the injection of significant
levels of funding via HMR, seemed to dampen the enthusiasm for homesteading and other,
more creative approaches to bringing empty homes back into use. With the rhetoric of
transformational change backed by unprecedented levels of funding, demolition quickly
became the preferred option for dealing with empty private sector dwellings.
3.3 Homesteading in the 90’s: Sheffield
Just thirty miles away, Sheffield’s mid-1990s homesteading scheme was developing in a very
different way from that in Manchester. Where Manchester’s scheme was focused on empty
properties in areas of private housing, the properties in the Sheffield scheme were empty
council houses. The empty properties were sold to homesteaders at a 50% discount, with
the maximum discount set at £12,500. Sheffield homesteaders were also expected to do all
their own refurbishment work and live in the property as their sole home for a period of at
least three years. For the officer formerly involved in developing the scheme, the approach
was breath-takingly simple:
Homesteading was simple. It sought to maintain sustainable public sector estates in
by removing the negative impact that one-off problematic empty properties were
having on an otherwise good estate. In an ideal situation they’d be refurbished and
occupied but the authority didn’t have the finances to refurbish them themselves
but. So if they can’t do it themselves, it made financial sense to sell them at discount
and put conditions on that were attached to a schedule of works. Then you had a
standard to work to, you had to do this, you had to do that, timescales to finish the
work etc. You also had to stay in the property for a number of years as an owneroccupier, you couldn’t rent it out. So now you’ve definitely got a sustainable estate
because you’ve taken away the negative aspect of it, i.e. the empty property that’s
all boarded up and neglected. It’s now someone’s home that’s put some roots down
and because they’re owner occupiers, they’re probably not wanting to move every
three or four years. Who wants to do that? No, they’re going to put some roots
down. The community benefits and the local businesses benefit. So, from a pure
perspective, that’s what I believe homesteading to be (ND).
35
Sheffield’s scheme was also seen as a means of introducing a more mixed pattern of tenure
into some of the city’s council estates. The respondent felt that this would help to create a
more sustainable community:
The reasons are very clear, a sustainable estate is one that has got a good balance
between private rented and owner occupied. You don’t want an imbalance and you
don’t necessarily want an imbalance of socially rented over owner occupation. For a
sustainable district, you want people who are going to put some roots down, which
is what you’re seeing in Liverpool. The idea is that people come in, put their roots
down, and in examples like in New York or in Holland - where these kind of schemes
have been undertaken - they’re putting roots down and they stay there, so they
don’t just like wait for the three years to come up and then scarper or move or, if
they sell, they’ve got to sell to another owner-occupier. This should mean a better
balance between rented and owner occupied, which gives a better sustainability to
that area. That’s the background behind it. (ND)
Table 2 (see below) offers a brief summary of the Sheffield’s scheme key characteristics.
Again, the Sheffield scheme came to an end as a result of several factors. The overarching
policy context was subject to the same national changes as those experienced by
Manchester, due to the election of New Labour and the implementation of HMR. However,
according to our respondent, Sheffield has never had a high level of empty properties and
HMR did not have the same impact in Sheffield as it did in some other northern cities. The
respondent also drew attention to the appreciation in property prices from the early 2000s,
which served to alter the calculations surrounding the 50% discount:
Well, OK, maybe the biggest nail in its coffin was the fact that house prices started to
rise, because these were properties that were, had a market value of about £25,000,
so effectively you’re losing £12,500, that’s a £12,500 discount if you like. Well those
kind of figures you can reasonably manage …but then when the property market
starts soaring and you’re giving 50% discount on something that’s worth £60,000
rather than £25,000… it’s likely now we might as well refurbish it (laughs) rather
than you know lose that kind of …
What is hinted at here is the key relationship between the cost of refurbishment and the
market value of the property. The relative stability of the refurbishment cost means that an
appreciation in the value of the property makes it increasingly unviable to offer a fixed
discount. Hence, with the appreciation of property prices it would be financially
36
Table 2: Key characteristics of the Sheffield scheme
Key Characteristics
Homesteading in the 90’s: Sheffield
No. of properties brought back 6
into use
Market Factors
Low demand/run down housing market environment
Origin of ownership
Council owned stock
Institutional
context
for
disposal and refurbishment




Degree of self-help
LA did not have inclination or resources to
refurbish- local political support to offer discount
LA offered 50% discount directly to homesteader
Self-help refurbishment through investment of
homesteaders own resources
Explicit mixed tenure rationale
100%
Criteria to incentivise sole Prescriptive schedule of works within time-frame, must be
ownership and restrict onward sole owner and remain in property for three years.
sale
advantageous for the local authority to refurbish the property and recoup the cost through
sale on the open market. The respondent’s comments highlight how the success and
viability of homesteading is closely related to local market conditions.
Originating in the 1990s, these two examples from Manchester and Sheffield begin to
reinforce what we know from the brief historical sketch presented in the previous chapter,
i.e. that homesteading can be undertaken in diverse institutional settings. The two cases
exhibit some interesting similarities and differences. At base, both schemes offered a
37
relatively affordable home-ownership product and both schemes focused on dispersed, ‘bad
teeth’ empty houses rather than areas with a high concentration of empty properties. Both
schemes also had the more or less explicit intention of fostering ‘mixed tenure’ areas, which
both respondents equated with more ‘sustainable’ communities.
Self-help is, in theory, a defining characteristic of homesteading but these two schemes
exhibited very different degrees of self-help.
In Manchester, the use of contracted
refurbishment meant that self-help played only a marginal role; in Sheffield, by contrast, the
expectation was that the homesteader would carry out all the necessary work to bring the
property back into use. These differences are significant because the analysis goes on to
reinforce this further with self-help refurbishment playing an important but limited role in
more recent homesteading schemes.
Other dimensions of 1990’s-style homesteading point to the need for institutional flexibility
and responsiveness to local conditions and resources. In the Manchester scheme, despite
the fact that the council did not own empty properties, it was able, through partnership
working, to facilitate the sale of privately owned properties to prospective homesteaders.
In Sheffield, council owned property was sold directly to homesteaders. In both cases, the
incentives offered were quite different and, because of this, they attracted different
homesteaders with access to different levels of resources. In Manchester, a peppercorn
contract and refurbishment grant enabled homesteaders with limited savings to obtain
mortgage loans at below market value after contracted refurbishment was complete.
Without the council’s intervention, the state of the property and a lack of savings would
have precluded these homesteaders from securing a mortgage. In contrast, the Sheffield
scheme offered a very high discount directly to homesteaders who were then expected to
use their own savings and resources to refurbish the empty properties. In this case, the
homesteaders would have needed access to considerable personal and financial resources
in order to take up the opportunity. These important observations show how homesteading
can target very different types of homesteaders and, in effect. function for different
purposes.
38
3.4 Riverside’s ‘Own Place’ Scheme, Liverpool
Riverside is a registered provider of social housing with significant stock holdings in
Merseyside. From the late 1990s onwards, Riverside was faced with the challenges of
managing an increasing number of empty properties, particularly in inner areas of Liverpool:
…there was a problem emerging in terms of high turnover of properties and re-lets
on a very regular basis. The costs for us to re-let properties was high: people were
transient and, as a result of that, building- up high arrears and then doing a
moonlight flit. (RL)
A 2007 Riverside strategy document reported that this build-up of empty properties was
“having a significant impact on our ability to offer decent neighbourhood services in some
areas and was beginning to affect our reputation” (Riverside, 2007: 1)
With around 1,250 empty properties in the HMR area, Riverside therefore welcomed the
introduction of the HMR programme in 2002, regarding it as a significant intervention that
would help it to reduce the number of empty properties on its books. By 2006, however,
HMR was being stretched thin by the increased costs of acquisition that resulted from
general house price inflation. With HMR interventions focused increasingly on the areas
where market problems were worst, Riverside found itself confronting low and falling
demand for their properties in neighbourhoods that were adjacent to the HMR area but
where there were no foreseeable plans for intervention. Our respondent summarised the
challenges as follows:
…what could we do with this redundant stock and how can we bring it back into use
for an alternative tenure and how could we make that attractive in an area where
values were relatively low and buyers were struggling to get mortgages…How could
we develop a home ownership product in areas where there was already some
historical home ownership but very little new provision because these were areas
people didn’t really want to invest in? (RL)
Faced with the challenge of a stalling HMR programme and, from 2007, a global ‘credit
crunch’, recession and house price falls, Riverside was forced to think creatively to develop
some effective ways forward:
39
…we had a situation where we had to come up with solutions and one of the
solutions was that we would look to develop a product which we could take to the
market, which would be easy to understand and which dealt with that poor
performance stock…
Riverside responded in a range of ways, one of which was the introduction of its own
homesteading scheme known as Own Place, developed in partnership with a local estate
agent. According to the Own Place publicity material, the scheme aims to:

Change the tenure mix of neighbourhoods where there is an over-supply of rented
accommodation

Provide affordable housing solutions for low-income households aspiring towards
home ownership

Promote community cohesion and stability by incentivising economically active
households to settle in the neighbourhoods affected and invest in their homes

Attract additional investment into neighbourhoods to tackle stock condition

Dispose of surplus Riverside social housing stock into sustainable home ownership
(Riverside, 2011)
The Own Place model works as part of Riverside’s approach to ‘active asset management’.
This means that Riverside seek to use a range of housing solutions that make the best use of
its assets with the ultimate aim of making a return for the organisation as a whole. Our
respondent suggested that the organisation had to consider things ‘in the round’:
Does that approach of spending the money on the social rent, spending the money
on the Own Place with a return, selling the property with a return, actually make it
all wash its face in the round rather than just having a knee jerk reaction to saying,
we have to bring a property back into use for social rent? The evolving phrase is
active asset management. So when you’re owning properties in the neighbourhood,
you’re looking at them in a different perspective than just the way you would have
traditionally and that’s what housing associations increasingly are being expected to
do because there’s less and less grant out there and there’s an expectation that we
make things work for ourselves more and we become more commercial as well.
The main features of Own Place, which are summarised in Table 3 (see below), are as
follows5. In essence, the scheme involves Riverside doing the essential structural repairs
and improvement works to bring the empty property up to a mortgageable standard. It
5
The information here is taken from Own a Place with Own Place (Riverside, 2011)
40
then offers the property for sale with a 25% discount on the market value. The properties
are sold in various conditions of repair, leading to varying inputs of sweat equity:
…some only require minor aesthetic works whilst others need more comprehensive
structural works and are likely to appeal to competent DIYers and those who have
access to skilled labour via friends and family.
In all cases, we will not fully
redecorate the property – part of the deal is buyers have to put something in
themselves in return for the discount (Riverside, 2011, np)
Given Riverside’s emphasis on developing mixed-tenure neighbourhoods, buyers enter into
a leasehold agreement where they must live in the properties themselves as owneroccupiers, agree to stay for five years and only sell to other home-owners (not landlords).
Whilst Riverside retains a 25% legal charge on the property for five years, owners are free to
leave before the end of this period though, if they choose to do so, they must repay a
proportion of the discount on a tapered basis, similar to Right to Buy. In setting the fiveyear residence period, it was Riverside’s hope that this would encourage “people to put
down roots and become part of the local community” (Riverside, 2011: np). This has been
borne out in practice, as our respondent reported:
We haven’t had anybody sell the property within the five years and have to pay us
back any grant: people have actually stayed. So it’s done what it set out to do,
people have stayed there for five years, it’s become sustainable. Once you’ve been
somewhere for five years, your kids are going to the local school, you’re working
locally and you’re set up … (RL)
Prospective Own Place homesteaders are very often local people with existing connections
to the area, although the formal criteria do not require this:
In terms of the applicant, the criteria is that they should be a first time buyer or in
need of a property following a relationship breakdown for example. They have to
have sufficient money to pay for their fees, so they have to have some savings, they
can’t go into it with absolutely having nothing behind you. So there’s that. There
then should be one of several criteria, and that could be an existing housing
association tenant for example, a tenant of a private landlord, or for, and/or for first
time buyer, so it could be a person living with mum and dad. And that’s it,
essentially. (RL)
Own Place delivers a sustainable and low-cost home ownership solution for local first-time
buyers whose limited savings have prevented them from accessing mortgage funding. The
people who become Own Place homesteaders are:
41
…people who are predominantly private renting or living with their mum and dad,
people who are first time buyers, people who can’t normally afford to get a mortgage
because of the level of savings or deposit which is required, and you know, that’s a
typical Own Place buyer. And they’re usually people who are paying quite high levels
of rent in the private sector, for usually substandard accommodation. And this, for
them, allows them to get onto the first rung of the ladder. (RL)
Providing a proxy ‘deposit’ or ‘risk cushion’, the 25% discount reduces the loan-to-value
ratio to 75% and thereby reduces the potential borrower’s perceived risk to the lender,
increasing the likelihood of the mortgage being granted:
…because Own Place actually provides a 25% grant/discount off the asking price,
building societies are far less strict in relation to the need to have a deposit. So as a
result of that people can get themselves a mortgage quite easily on an Own Place
property. (RL)
Own Place has been very successful, with around 250 properties refurbished and sold,
predominantly to individuals with strong local and/or family connections. It has also helped
to begin to stabilise neighbourhoods that were formerly characterised by high levels of
turnover. In recognition of its achievements, Own Place has been a finalist in the national
Regeneration and Renewal Awards and was a winner in the Making Best Use of Stock
category at the 2011 UK Housing Awards. With strong demand for each of the properties
released via the scheme, Riverside is looking to extend Own Place to Carlisle and Hull. The
success of the scheme is attributed to its simplicity:
Own Place has the potential to reach a wider audience. The model could be
reproduced by any housing association or stock-owning local authority. There are a
plethora of home ownership products available throughout the country, each with
their own complexities. Many are confusing. We believe the success of Own Place
and its ability to be easily replicated is down to its simplicity (Riverside, 2011: np)
42
Table 3: Riverside Housing’s Own Place Scheme, Liverpool
Key Characteristics
Riverside Own Place Scheme, Liverpool
No. of properties brought c. 250
back into use
Market Factors
Origin of ownership
Institutional context for
disposal and refurbishment
‘redundant stock’, ‘low value’, ‘buyers struggling to get
mortgages’
Riverside – registered provider of social housing







Degree of self-help
National policy support and funding for bringing
empty properties back into use
Local political support
Local market and Riverside properties impacted by
stalling of HMR
Partnership between key market players-Riverside
housing association and local estate agents
25% discount
Refurbished by Riverside to mortgageable standard
Explicit mixed tenure rationale
Variable
Criteria to incentivise sole 25% discount if homeowner stays in the property for 5 years,
ownership and restrict credit worthy and savings, first time buyer or in housing need,
onward sale
existing housing association tenant or private rental tenant.
3.5 Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Homesteading scheme
In August 2012, Stoke-on-Trent City Council approved plans for a homesteading scheme that
would bring 35 empty properties back into use. The Stoke scheme, aims to promote
affordable home ownership in an area that has experienced long-term and continuing
decline as a result of de-industrialisation, a predominance of private--rented properties and
the cessation of the previous government’s HMR programme. In particular, as a result of
the withdrawal of HMR, the City Council has been left holding a significant number of empty
properties, 35 of which will be offered for discounted sale in the current scheme.
43
The following account is recalled by a housing officer involved in the management of the
Stoke scheme. The respondent attributed the decline of the area to a number of causes.
Unfortunately, the house prices were very low in that area in 2001 and 2002.
Properties got snapped up and people who could get better - who could raise their
aspirations - moved out of town. This left a lot of empty stock in that area. Those
properties, because they were a low price, got snapped up by private landlords and a
lot of them either didn’t realise the problems that they would encounter, or the
hands-on labour and management that they would need to put into it and perhaps
felt it was too much so they boarded them up. So you started seeing evidence of
that, the communities started breaking down, people started leaving the area and
we got to a point where there were high vacancy rates, lots of social problems, a lot
of economic problems, deprivation, high crime, high levels of anti-social behaviour,
and, generally, a poor reputation (S1).
The predominance of private-rented housing, both occupied and empty, was viewed as a
particular source of concern: “people in the area are basically telling us that private
landlords are not addressing the anti-social behaviour of their tenants or the upkeep of the
properties” (S1).
Despite these issues, however, the respondent also voiced a more positive assessment of
the area, highlighting the existence of an active residents’ association and its efforts to bring
the remaining community together: “There is actually a good community spirit in that area,
a wonderful community spirit” (S1). It was this apparent resilience, coupled with early
discussions with the Empty Homes charity that influenced Stoke’s decision to refurbish
rather than demolish the properties that it had acquired.
Stoke has sought to challenge the predominance of the private-rented sector in the area by
seeking to reintroduce an element of owner-occupation through its homesteading scheme
which has seen the 35 empty properties offered for at a nominal price of £1 with provision
for a refurbishment loan of up to £30,000. To be eligible, would-be homesteaders must
have6:

lived in the city for at least three years;

been in continuous employment for the last two years; and

an annual gross income of between £18,000 and £25,000.
6
It should be noted that since the research was conducted, the Eligibility Criteria for the scheme have twice
been revised to reflect city wide consultation responses and to encourage further suitable applications
44
Whilst the existing community’s spirit is acknowledged and reflected in the Council’s
intention to prioritise existing community members in the selection criteria, there is also an
aspiration to bring ‘new blood’ into the area: “It’s all about sustainability, choosing people
who can afford it, who are committed and can buy into the area”.
The Council’s original intention had been to incorporate a high level of self-help so it was
interesting to hear that the scheme was moving away from a ‘pure’ form of homesteading
that assumed high levels of self-help refurbishment. A number of factors had inhibited this
ambition. In practice, these inhibiting factors included: constraints on time because of the
need for council approval of all aspects of the process; concerns about time taken to agree
different specifications for each property; and, ultimately, a concern about homesteaders’
ability to do the work themselves. Despite these challenges, however, there was strong
political support for the innovative approach of the Council’s Empty Homes team and this
was acknowledged by the respondent as an important driver for the work:
Overall, as a Council we have a commitment to helping people live their lives, to live
in a safe, decent environment as a basic human right.
This political commitment to dealing with the city’s empty homes was reflected in the
relatively high level of resources committed to the team. Where other authorities had been
cutting resources in this area, Stoke had recruited additional staff.
It was clear from our interview that the officers at Stoke had invested considerable time and
energy in developing a robust, workable scheme. The eligibility criteria had been carefully
considered and revised in the light of ongoing consultation and officers had paid close
attention to resolving the potential equalities issues and implications. Getting the scheme
to the point of advertising the properties had required the sustained commitment of
officers from Stoke’s Empty Homes team, along with ongoing advice, support and
encouragement from the Empty Homes charity. The enthusiasm and perseverance of an
officer at Director-level, who had championed the scheme with elected members and
steered the project through committee, had also proved invaluable. Recently, the pressure
on the team has been compounded by the massive interest in the scheme, with over 600
people registering their interest. As elsewhere, these high levels of demand for affordable
45
homeownership are an indisputable insight from the research, highlighting the potential for
a major expansion in the scale and number of homesteading schemes.
Table 4: Key characteristics of the Stoke scheme
Key Characteristics
Stoke Homesteading Scheme
No. of properties brought back 35 (planned)
into use
Market Factors
Low prices, large private-rented sector, no demand on
the open market from people who wanted to buy homes
to live in
Origin of ownership
Stock acquired by council during lifetime of the HMR
programme.
Institutional
context
for
 Central government support for empty property
disposal and refurbishment
work
 Withdrawal of HMR
 Local political support
 Council’s inheritance of empty properties
 30K refurbishment loan
 Local Authority contracted refurbishment
 Explicit mixed tenure rationale
Degree of self-help
Initial intention was that this would be high but it may
become much lower as a result of ongoing reviews during
the implementation of the policy.
Criteria to incentivise sole Local people, continuous employment for past two years,
ownership and restrict onward salary between 18K-25k, no private investors, penalty on
sale
discount if homesteader leaves property early
46
3.6 Liverpool City Council Homesteading Scheme
In February 2013, Liverpool City Council (LCC) Cabinet approved a pilot homesteading
scheme as one of a package of measures for bringing long term vacant properties back into
use. LCC’s initial pilot scheme involves offering 20 empty council-owned properties for sale
for the price of £1. This offer is conditional upon applicants meeting a range of criteria. In
particular, applicants are expected to be first-time buyers in full-time employment with a
connection to the city (they must live or work there). In addition, families are prioritised
over single people or couples without children. Those allocated a property under the
scheme must renovate the property up to Decent Homes standard and live there for at least
5 years.
After years of successive interventions in local housing markets and questions about the
role of central and local government and the respective role of demolition and
refurbishment, the stakes are high. The life and eventual death of HMR in Liverpool proved
very controversial and local government support for homesteading and other measures to
bring empty properties back into use comes at a time when local communities in Liverpool
continue to raise concerns about widespread demolition and new build projects.
In
particular, resonating with these concerns, a Community Land Trust has been developed by
local people who aim to refurbish empty properties in the Granby Street area, one of the
localities formerly impacted by HMR and the current homesteading plans.
The senior officer that we interviewed regarded the withdrawal of HMR as a matter of
considerable concern since it amounted to a loss of significant resources and the removal of
an important policy driver for neighbourhoods:
When the current government was elected and the plug was effectively pulled we
were not even half way through a long term programme of housing renewal. Not
only did it leave a massive hole in terms of our strategic approach to how we were
going to deal with some of these neighbourhoods, it also left a big gap financially…
47
The scale of the problems that Liverpool faces is also acknowledged and reflected in the
significant sums of Empty Homes funding that it has received from the new government:
We got the biggest allocation nationally - about £16.5 million to bring empty homes
back into use. So there’s half a dozen or so projects in particular locations to tackle
empty homes in those areas.
The demise of HMR and the city’s continuing housing issues currently provide the driver for
innovative solutions to the problem of empty properties in which a range of options are
being adopted. The following account is given by a respondent who has responsibility for
the implementation of the LCC Homesteading plan.
The respondent describes his
understanding of homesteading, bringing to the fore the key components of empty
properties, sweat equity and homeownership,
Well, I think my understanding of it is, in simple terms, it’s making available empty
properties, probably in poor condition…to provide opportunities for people to
actually bring the property up to habitable standards and then live in that property .
So we’re viewing it as an opportunity for home ownership. But also to give people a
stake in - and an involvement in - getting there in a different way than the traditional
saving up for a deposit, going to see if the bank will lend you some money and
buying the house on the open market (LCC).
Here we can see LCC’s early commitment to ‘pure’ homesteading. Because of this it is
possible to contrast this approach with the Stoke scheme which started with a similar
commitment to ‘pure’ homesteading from which it stepped back due to prohibitive
institutional factors. Similar factors are identified below by LCC as the challenges that they
face in implementing their homesteading scheme. The following extended quote also offers
some insight in to the unfolding nature of the policy/practice process involved in
implementing an innovative policy of this nature:
…But I think the challenges are probably twofold really. We will need to exercise
some control over the work that’s done on properties because the last thing we
would want to do is hand these properties over for a pound and then people get into
real difficulties. Given the amount of interest there’s been, that would have
negative reputational consequences for the council…I would say it’s an evolving
process. We are getting the properties surveyed, producing a schedule of works and
providing some broad costings so that people are fully aware of what they are taking
on. Then when we’ve identified the customer, we say you can have that property,
but as part of the agreement you’ve got to commit to completing the schedule of
works and we think it’s going to cost you £35 to £40K. But we will carry out a certain
48
amount of supervision of that through the process and maybe offer help as well…I
think what I’m basically saying is we don’t want to throw people out there and then
they find that they’re struggling because that’s not in their interest and it’s not in
ours. But it’s that sort of question of how much control we sort of build into the
process.
I suppose the other issue is around the financial side of it and we are hopeful that we
will be able to identify people who have got the resources to do the work but in
terms of developing loan products … I think one of the difficulties is, is that when we
hand over the properties, our plan is that we hand it over on a building license, so
they’ll have access to that property for twelve months but can’t actually live in it
until they’ve completed the works. So technically we still own the property and it
would only be after the completion of the works that the homes would be signed
over.
And I think the difficulty with that is in terms of someone trying to then get finance
from a lender, they’ve not got the property as security and I think there’s going to be
difficulties around lenders being prepared to lend in that situation. The sort of thing
we’ve looked at as an alternative might be something like a bridging loan and we
have had some conversations with lenders and while they’ve not dismissed it there is
no loan product readily available for this purpose. It would be relatively short term
so I assume the interest rates are going to be higher. So we’ve looked at whether we
could offer the bridging loan…but we need to do further work on the feasibility of
this…(LCC)
In summary, the level of control over the refurbishment process, access to finance and the
management of risk are understood as the main challenges in practice. This extended quote
affords some insights into the policy process and we can also see that these dimensions of
homesteading are related and have implications in terms of the resources required by
housing providers and prospective homesteaders.
In this case, LCC is not in a position to use public funds and the orientation to self-help,
homesteading accommodates this. However, this introduces process management obstacles
and access to finance issues for the prospective homesteader who must also have access to
significant resources at the outset to be considered eligible for the scheme. In contrast, the
Stoke scheme starts from a similar institutional position and with similar intent but steps
back from ‘pure’ homesteading, drawing on public funds to offer a discount and take control
of the refurbishment process. Whilst the Stoke scheme is aimed at low income households,
the Liverpool scheme’s intention to call upon sweat equity/self-help targets those with
significant resources at the outset. The respondent conveyed a number of rationales,
49
indicative of an unfolding policy process, as part of their early commitment to a self –help
homesteading approach:
So I think what we see with the homes for £1 is that it will complement other
housing renewal activity that’s going on. So for example, we are working with
Riverside on 20 conversions through their Own Place scheme in the same area that
we would offer four homes for £1 and I think the idea is that it will deliver a holistic
regeneration solution with opportunities for different kinds of clients.
Here, the respondent emphasises the importance of a range of options to deliver ‘holistic
regeneration’ and ‘opportunities’ that target different clients.
Holistic approaches to
regeneration that involving homesteading and complementary activities are seen to
produce value for money and prevent a drain on public funds.
And I think certainly in demonstrating value for money we can say, that as a direct
result of the Government money we’ve brought X properties back into use but also
we’ve undertaken these complementary activities that have not drawn on that
public funding.
Addressing the question of benefit, the respondent ultimately invokes one of the exclusive
criteria that prospective homesteaders must live or work in Liverpool,
We are mindful of the fact that if we’re saying it’s going to cost £35 to £40K to
refurbish one of these properties, if somebody’s got that kind of money immediately
available they could cover a deposit and buy a house through a more conventional
route. But people could have some capital but are in low paid employment and so
wouldn’t attract a mortgage for £100K plus. So there are all sorts of combinations.
And maybe as well, it’s about choice isn’t it. Just excluding people because they
could go and buy a house on the open market etc isn’t necessarily right, because
they may say, well, actually you know, we were born and bred in Granby and that’s
where our families are and we’d like to live there and stay in that neighbourhood,
we’ve already got a stake in it, we’ve got family and friends live there. So there’s
that kind of element to it as well.
These issues, in turn, are related to the recurrence of questions about equity or who
benefits. The issue of who benefits is also allied with the underlying mixed tenure rationale
that we find in all the examples of homesteading that we have examined. This is because
the motivations for mixed tenure often involve assumptions about the types of people who
rent or buy, with negative and positive connotations ascribed respectively. This mixed
50
tenure rationale is implicit within the respondent’s appeal to community cohesion as a
means to stabilise the area in question:
But I think also there are some community cohesion issues in that, similarly to Stoke,
there will be a requirement that you don’t sub-let the property and that you remain
in the property for five years. Because I think one of the issues we’ve noticed in
some of these neighbourhoods is that there’s an ever-growing private rented sector.
Almost by definition they tend to be shorter term tenure, so there’s this kind of
turnover of people, properties being occupied but then being empty again. And we
see this as a measure for bringing greater stability to those neighbourhoods as well.
At the same time, addressing the question of benefit directly, the respondent justifies a
‘consumer-oriented’ approach that seeks to target different groups of people with different
levels of resources:
Well what we’re trying to do is to develop a range of options. If you look at the Own
Place scheme, that will suit some people as a lower cost option and that may suit
them for financial and other reasons, rather than rolling their sleeves up and they’re
actually managing the refurbishment of the individual property. So I’m not sure if I
know the answer to that one, I think again, probably after the pilot, we’ll have to
make an assessment of that, in terms of value for money, opportunities, the kind of
impact it has on local communities and the types of people who have the range of
circumstances that this kind of model is attractive to.
Seeking to limit the level of public subsidy, the Liverpool scheme essentially prioritises those
who have access to resources to refurbish the empty property. This can also be understood
as a means of leveraging private investment to complement other Council and housing
provider interventions. Whilst the current approach is set up in this way, however, the
respondent did not rule out the possibility of providing loans in future if the success of the
scheme leads to an expansion of the programme.
Our respondent emphasised the City Council’s commitment to reducing the number of
empty properties and bringing them back into use. Homesteading could potentially form an
important element of the Council’s broader empty homes strategy though, at this early
stage, it remains to be seen whether or not the homesteading plan can contribute
significantly to housing solutions in the city. Undoubtedly, however, as in Stoke, the
initiative has attracted considerable popular and media interest, with the launch of the
51
scheme resulting in over four thousand enquiries. This is a very important point. Many of
the approaches to dealing with empty homes involve complex financial and administrative
knowledge and procedures.
These considerations are not entirely absent from
homesteading but, in comparison to other approaches, the principle of homesteading
remains intuitively simple and attractive in a way that captures the public imagination.
Table 5: Key characteristics of the Liverpool City Council Scheme
Key Characteristics
Liverpool City Council Homesteading Scheme
Market Factors
High levels of HMR and Empty Homes funding allocation
indicates what the respondent calls ‘acute housing
stress’.
No of properties offered for 20 (planned)
sale
Origin of ownership
Council
Institutional
context
for
disposal and refurbishment

National and local political support for empty
homes work
 Major impact of withdrawal of HMR
 Inheritance of housing stock
 Self-help refurbishment
 Mixed tenure rationale
Degree of self help
Currently 100% but with an expectation that LCC would
exercise some control and supervision of an agreed
schedule of works
Mechanisms and criteria to Access to resources to self-help refurbish, local people
incentivise sole ownership and prioritised, first time buyers, fulltime employment,
restrict onward sale
families with children, live in the property for at least five
years
3.7 Summary: “it’s not rocket science!”
From the case studies it is possible to identify some general characteristics that underpin
approaches to homesteading as currently practised in a small number of English cities. As
shown above, some characteristics anchor the idea whilst others facilitate flexibility and,
therefore, the possibility of tailoring homesteading schemes to local needs and conditions.
52
On the one hand, factors that anchor the idea include: locally depressed housing markets;
empty homes (though not in significant concentrations); refurbishment; owner-occupation;
mechanisms to incentivise and restrict the behaviour of homesteaders; and a mixed tenure
rationale. On the other hand, factors that offer flexibility include: origin of ownership of
empty properties; institutional contexts such as policies/procedures/relationships; staffing
resources; homesteading ‘champions’; incentives and mechanisms to target homesteaders
and modify behaviour to the aims of the scheme; and options for self-help or contracted
refurbishment.
The characteristics listed above can quickly be derived from an analysis of the interviews but
what the interviews fail to tell us are the reasons why homesteading is considered as an
option: the promulgation of the schemes often seems to be down to the awareness,
enthusiasm and commitment of particular actors.
Officers will commonly say things like
‘we didn’t have the resources to refurbish’ but then the rationales they use demonstrate the
cost effectiveness of homesteading, particularly where there is a large contribution of selfhelp.7 In short, given the many advantages of homesteading, the key question that emerges
from this research is why is the technique so under-used?
There may be parallels here with the debates that were taking place around three or four
years ago in relation to self-help housing for rent. Echoing Mullins (2010) and the BSHF
report on self-help housing, the crucial insight of this research might be that the dearth of
homesteading schemes is the result of a lack of awareness around homesteading, confusion
over its definition and aims and a risk-averse institutional context that rewards
conservatism. With some notable exceptions, our conversations with officers suggested
that austerity measures and spending cuts were invariably creating fear and paralysis
amongst officers rather than encouraging the development of creative solutions.
Empty
homes policy needs to develop a much sharper and stronger focus on homesteading
because it is relatively simple, it can be adapted to different local conditions and, crucially, it
captures the public imagination, potentially acting as a catalyst for increased interest in
empty homes policy and practice.
7
This suggests that there is perhaps a need to begin to explore the possibilities for factoring sweat equity
contributions into conventional Neighbourhood Renewal Assessments.
53
Chapter 4
Discussion and recommendations
4.1 Introduction
Time and again we see that homesteading works. Given this, it is not clear why it does not
happen more often. This appears to suggest that certain conditions create the environments
that are conducive to homesteading that particular actors take advantage of. One of these
factors is the policy actors themselves who, in the absence of a robust policy framework,
take on a proactive role to engage key political actors and other partners to undertake
homesteading. This suggests that the absence of a policy framework militates against the
clear potential of homesteading, leaving it instead to the contingent actions of creative and
energetic policy actors. Clearly, on this basis, the continued success of homesteading
requires the articulation of the broader factors that provide the conditions for its success
within a robust and supportive policy framework.
This research seeks to make a contribution to this endeavour by clarifying the contemporary
nature of homesteading in two English cities. Based on the secondary sources we have
reviewed and our empirical research, the following discussion offers a revised definition of
homesteading followed by the examination of the benefits and challenges that
homesteading presents. Finally, we consider the policy implications that arise and suggest
the need for further research including the evaluation of current homesteading initiatives.
4.2 What is homesteading?
Dimensions of homesteading that anchor the idea and introduce flexibility inform a revised
definition based on contemporary UK practice. We note, however, that because of the
dearth of existing research and the limited scope of this research that the current definition
can only be indicative.
Homesteading occurs in ‘depressed’ housing market conditions, expressing a relationship
between the sale and refurbishment of empty properties to foster sustainable, mixed
tenure communities. The relationship seeks to optimise the cost effectiveness of exploiting
these relationships both for housing providers and homesteaders with different levels of
resources whilst reflecting the institutional variability of local contexts.
54
The cost effectiveness principle is embedded within the logic of homesteading and is
derived primarily from the characteristics of low value, demand and dilapidation of the
empty property. For the cost of refurbishment, often involving some level of self- help and
through mechanisms to incentivise and constrain the behaviour of homesteaders, the value
of the property is restored along with its functional use as a dwelling place.
Factors that anchor contemporary homesteading include depressed market conditions and
the sale and refurbishment of empty properties to foster mixed tenure communities. In this
sense, the overarching aim of homesteading is to stabilise depressed housing market
conditions in specific localities rather than seeking a more general solution to housing need.
However, the introduction of flexibilities, including options for refurbishment and a broad
range of different incentives and restrictions means that homesteading may function to
redress housing need by targeting homesteaders with different levels of resources.
Our research found a significant tension between economic imperatives to regenerate local
housing markets and social imperatives to redress housing need. This concern, the political
and ethical question of the distribution of benefit from homesteading (Newberg, 1992) is
ever-present. A pragmatic approach to such questions may enable housing providers to
address the tension between housing need and regeneration through their ability to target
homesteaders using the specific range of incentives and restrictions available to them.
Hence, on the one hand, these may function to subsidise less well-off homesteaders
through access to loans whilst, on the other hand, they may function to lever in private
funding from self-help homesteaders with access to their own resources. Importantly, these
flexibilities provide broad access to homesteading opportunities for people with different
housing needs whilst enabling local authorities and housing providers to contribute to
broader regeneration goals in a way that reflects their resources. Ultimately, the promotion
of homesteading as a homeownership product means that people’s ability to pay over-rides
housing needs, reflecting its primary purpose to stabilise and regenerate housing markets
and local areas.
55
4.3 Benefits and Challenges
4.3.1 Benefits
The limited scope and timing of our current research means that our abilities to empirically
assess the proven benefits of homesteading were quite limited. Nevertheless, the early
evidence from Riverside’s Own Place scheme is encouraging and repeated messages from
primary and secondary sources provide the firm basis for our conclusion that not only does
homesteading work time and again, but that in doing so, it offers social, economic,
environmental and institutional benefits.
The benefits of homesteading are largely intuitive, relying on an asset-based understanding
of empty houses as potential homes that can foster sustainable communities and places. So,
for example, the redevelopment of Wallisblok in Spangen went ahead despite the
knowledge that redevelopment would not generate vast amounts of short term profit; its
value ultimately understood in terms of learning, friendships, homes -the fruits of collective
endeavour - that enhanced the prospects of a local area (Hulshof, 2008).
Social
Crucially, homesteading signifies to communities that an important volte-face from
disinvestment to reinvestment is under way. One should not underestimate the value and
strength of such signals in contexts of neighbourhood decline. Homesteading could, in
effect, be understood as the flip-side of Wilson and Kelling’s ‘Broken Windows’ theory
insofar as it signifies incipient processes of care and repair rather than a lack of care and
abandonment. The use of incentives and restrictions to ensure that households live in the
area for a minimum number of years also contributes to create homes for families and
sustainable, stable, cohesive communities.
Economic
In the context of austerity and the collapse of previous property-led models of regeneration,
homesteading offers a relatively low-tech, low cost approach to bringing empty homes back
into use. Cost effectiveness is embedded within the logic of homesteading whether through
self- help and sweat equity or loans for the cost of refurbishment. Homesteading may also
support the local economy directly through refurbishment activity, the engagement of local
contractors, tradespeople and labourers and other ‘spillover’ investment. Bringing long-
56
term empty homes back into use also attracts New Homes Bonus payments, as well as
generating new council tax revenue.
Environmental
Bringing empty homes back into use represents efficient re-use of the existing housing stock
and takes advantage of the embodied energy that was initially invested in the construction
of the building, thereby minimising carbon emissions and energy use. These gains can be
enhanced through the conservation and reuse of existing materials along with the
installation of the latest energy efficient insulation and heating. The rehabilitation of empty
properties also helps to restore the overall appearance and place quality of the local
environment.
Institutional
Homesteading can take place within a variety of institutional settings from local government
and social housing providers to partnership arrangements with developers, architects and
estate agents. As a niche activity that does not rely wholly on financial resources it requires
innovation, creativity, learning, openness, and engagement with other policy, market and
Third Sector actors, homesteaders and local communities. In the context of localism, this
gives impetus for broader positive institutional learning, innovation and partnership
working.
4.3.2 Challenges
There is currently no central government policy driver for homesteading. Rather, this
complex, difficult work is subsumed, if not confused, within broader empty homes policy.
This does not give sufficient weight or clarity for homesteading to play a more central role in
local responses to empty homes. So far, the success of homesteading has relied upon the
enthusiasm and determination of local champions. This inevitably makes implementation
more difficult since housing officers must secure local and political support before acting. In
particular, in the context of austerity and public sector cuts where officers might be inclined
57
to adopt strategies and practices that are increasingly risk-averse, a robust central
government policy driver for homesteading, that would give political legitimacy, frameworks
for accountability and resources, is all the more necessary for its development and
continued success. The particular challenges of homesteading arise around issues of staff
resources, finance, management and control of refurbishment and ethics.
Staff resources
Homesteading is often perceived as requiring very little in the way of resources. This
mistaken perception is partly a consequence of the lack of research and clear messages as
to how it works. Equally, the internal logic of homesteading, in apparently producing
something out of nothing, can also contribute to this misconception. Homesteading, as one
respondent put it, “takes a bit of work” (DS).
Moreover, the one unequivocal insight from this research is that demand always outstrips
the supply of homesteading opportunities to a considerable degree. At the same time as
giving the clearest indication of the scope for the expansion of homesteading, these high
levels of demand contribute to the challenges of implementation as a limited number of
staff are forced to shoulder a much increased administrative burden.
However, there is also an option to do nothing. This can be a rational choice when the work
involved can appear overwhelming, especially in the absence of a robust policy framework
at a time of public sector cuts. The energy and enthusiasm with which our respondents
have approached their homesteading initiatives matches the hard work that it takes to
achieve. At a time when many local authority departments are shrinking, this is dependent
on having adequate staff resources in place and commitment from senior management and
members. Officers in Stoke, for example, gave credit to the forward thinking of council
members who supported the expansion of their team to implement the current
homesteading programme.
Finance
58
Despite the apparent simplicity of homesteading, access to mortgage finance for
prospective homesteaders can often be a challenge due to the condition of the properties
that are made available. Housing providers and local authorities can overcome this by
bringing the property up to a mortgageable standard but this obviously requires the
investment of public money. Where funds are scarce and this is not possible, several of our
respondents suggested that their efforts to develop successful homesteading initiatives
were frequently hindered by the inflexibility of mortgage and loans providers. Moreover,
housing officers with responsibilities for empty homes reported that they spent
considerable amounts of time trying to develop and/or negotiate suitable loan products.
This suggests that there is a need for mortgage providers to develop bespoke, flexible
mortgage products and bridging loans that support homesteading.
Management and control of refurbishment
In theory, self –help refurbishment is understood as a defining dimension of homesteading.
However, a tension arises in practice when institutions find that, although intuitively, selfhelp refurbishment offsets some of the cost of contracted refurbishment, it also creates cost
and, more importantly perhaps, risks in terms of time and support required to complete
refurbishments to acceptable, legal building standards. On occasion these costs may be
more anticipated than real. The evidence from the HUD evaluation and GLC survey showed
that the standard of refurbishment was high regardless of the degree of self-help.
Nevertheless, in the absence of a robust policy context aversion to risk might be considered
a rational choice. At the same time, as we have shown, the method of refurbishment is also
implicated in the insistent questions concerning who benefits which may be understood for
some as a political risk. The institutions most vulnerable to such questions are local
authorities wishing to dispose of public housing stock whose decisions require democratic
accountability and public support.
Even in practical terms and regardless of the method of refurbishment a level of
management and control of the process has to be decided upon and weighed against
alternatives so that each institutional setting can derive the cost effectiveness that it must,
in order to implement a successful homesteading programme. In reality, the perceived and
59
real costs and risks either in terms of cost effectiveness or political efficacy present
obstacles around the management and control of refurbishment. This requires a clear policy
context that fosters creativity and innovation whilst also offering support and resources to
offset the risks that need to be taken to achieve success.
Ethics
The perennial question of who benefits is one of the most insistent that arises from this
research. It is the product of many interrelated factors. On an emotional and social level
such questions arise because of housing need and the limited resources of the people in
many of the areas where homesteading could make a positive contribution. At an
institutional and political level the question of benefit is more likely to arise when council
owned stock is being offered for sale in a manner that may benefit some but not others. At
the same time, the methods of refurbishment employed - whether contracted or self –help may also mean that inequalities arise. But often these seemingly intractable issues can be
understood in more pragmatic terms,
You know, as long as you’ve got this equality issue, where you’re saying you have to
hit these criteria and then we will choose and select you with one. I mean
somewhere along the line, on any equality policy, as long as you’re open and
transparent, there has to be a choice made. If there are 200 applicants and there’s
only 15 houses, somewhere along the line you’ve got to make a call, you’ve got to
choose. (DS)
Indeed, the bottom line in terms of pragmatism is the very clear message that
homesteading offers a homeownership product in which the market ultimately trumps
equality issues. This is because whatever other criteria are used, the non-negotiable one is
that a homesteader has to be in a position to buy, albeit at a reduced cost.
Nevertheless, and rightly so, the question of who benefits is an important one.
If
homesteading is to be fostered and expanded as a policy initiative, the question of who
benefits must be addressed. This requires greater clarity about the purpose of
homesteading initiatives and detailed reflection on the use of particular eligibility criteria,
incentives and restrictions to target homesteaders with different levels of resources. Such
60
considerations can help to ensure that local homesteading schemes are politically legitimate
and socially responsible.
4.4 Success factors, implications for policy and recommendations
4.4.1 Success factors
In summary, our work suggested that the following factors were crucial to the success of
homesteading initiatives:

clear demand for low cost homeownership

importance of local market conditions

empty houses that are already in public ownership

local political support

local implementation

policy innovation and risk taking

support for homesteaders to access finance and refurbish
The implications of these demonstrable success factors indicate the potential scope for the
expansion of homesteading. But significantly, the current research strongly suggests that
this is more likely to occur within a robust, centrally driven policy environment that
reinforces and resources existing local drivers of homesteading and encourages others,
where appropriate, to transform empty houses into homes.
4.4.2 Policy Implications
The clear demand for low cost homeownership via homesteading is an indisputable insight
from this research, suggesting that there is ample scope for the expansion of homesteading.
In particular, the success of homesteading has been demonstrated when local market
conditions come together with the energy of local actors and political support.
For the success of homesteading, the importance of local market conditions cannot be
underestimated.
However, the role of the market in creating ‘opportunities’ for
homesteading is ironic in the extreme; with recent growth in house prices this might mean
that the optimum conditions for homesteading success are about to recede. Nevertheless,
as practitioners see opportunities for homesteading recede they will, as the logic of the
housing market dictates, inevitably recur at some point in the future. This makes the issue
61
of timely support a really important aspect of the policy environment that could foster
homesteading as and when the particular conditions arise that would benefit from its
implementation.
At the same time, the variability of local housing markets is an important dimension of
housing market conditions more generally (Centre for Cities, 2013). Such nuances of housing
markets mean that locally depressed housing markets may persist even when there is a
general upturn. Thus, in some Northern towns and cities, where demand for new-build
schemes may continue to be relatively modest, homesteading and other options to bring
empty homes back into use may continue to offer the most effective way of responding to
local housing market conditions. Worryingly, evidence is emerging that the Coalition’s
removal of the spare room subsidy (the ‘bedroom tax’) is leading to the creation of a
significant number of new empty homes in the social rented sector in large northern cities
such as Liverpool (Boffey, 2013). The effect of this benefit change seriously undermines the
Coalition’s commitment to tackling the wider empty homes problem. A policy environment
that further acknowledged and prioritised the re-use of existing empty houses, whilst also
minimising the creation of new vacancies would therefore be very welcome, as would the
creation of bespoke mortgage and loan products that are tailored to the needs of
homesteaders.
The success of homesteading in diverse institutional settings is not only a testament to the
creativity and energy of all those involved but also provides a further indication of the scope
for the expansion of homesteading. This local, institutional flexibility is essential. Reflecting
this, national policy should strongly promote homesteading and offer broad guidance
backed by the support and resources that practitioners need whilst leaving the details of
implementation to housing actors and other stakeholders at the local level.
4.4.3 Recommendations
Flowing from these observations and our broader findings, we have developed a set of
broad recommendations in support of a major expansion in the scale of homesteading, both
in the former HMR areas and across the country.
Policy-makers and other relevant
stakeholders should consider the following:
62
1. Further encouragement of homesteading via a national policy framework backed by
continuing funding from the Government’s Empty Homes grant programme with
explicit targets for homesteading in each local authority area;
2. Publication of national guidance on homesteading for elected members, local
authority officers, mortgage-lenders and prospective homesteaders, incorporating
case studies and best practice advice;
3. Designation of homesteading ‘champions’ at national and local level;
4. Development and expansion of Empty Homes’ national Empty Homes Loans Fund to
additionally offer loans to prospective homesteaders;
5. Development of bespoke mortgage products and bridging loans that are tailored to
meeting the needs of homesteaders;
6. The completion of further research to:
a. Quantify the negative externalities of empty homes in terms of their wider
social and economic costs and their burden on the public purse;
b. Understand the motivations, backgrounds and experiences of actual and
potential homesteaders;
c. Document the implementation of current homesteading schemes and
evaluate their effectiveness;
d. Understand the geography of homesteading, its potential for stabilising
communities and the possible risks of gentrification;
e. Explore the scope for more collective approaches to homesteading (as in
Spangen) that link homesteading to Community Land Trust initiatives.
f. Review the extent to which the abolition of the Spare Room subsidy is
contributing to increased levels of vacancies
Building on the recent success of the Building & Social Housing Foundation and self-helphousing.org in raising the profile of self-help housing generally, we would recommend the
adoption of a similar approach to campaigning and advocacy around homesteading to build
networks, foster knowledge transfer, engage with government and generally promote the
approach as part of a balanced strategy for bringing empty homes back into use.
63
4.5 Conclusion
Our research suggests that there is considerable potential for an expansion of homesteading
in England. The Riverside scheme in Liverpool, for example, has been very successful and iss
now being rolled out to Riverside stock in other parts of the country. Alongside the huge
growth in self-help housing for rent in recent years, the level of demand for properties
advertised via new homesteading schemes in Liverpool and Stoke suggests that there is a
huge latent demand for homesteading-type initiatives. Many of the properties being made
available through such schemes are two-bedroomed, Victorian terraced properties and,
consistent with the findings reported by Allen (2008), the demand for these homes
challenges earlier research that suggests such properties are obsolete and unsuitable for
modern living. Moreover, information obtained by Empty Homes suggests that there are
currently around 40,000 properties that were acquired by local authorities under the HMR
programme that are currently standing empty. It is assumed that many of these properties
are two-bed Victorian terraced properties. The longer these stand empty, the greater will
be the resources required to bring them back into use. There is therefore a need to take
urgent action to bring these (and other) empty properties back into use. 8
Different areas may require different approaches to homesteading that are tailored to local
conditions. Our research suggests, however, that homesteading can and does work in a
range of different neighbourhood and institutional contexts and at different times. There is
scope for local authorities and housing providers to work together to develop
neighbourhood schemes that include both self-help housing for rent and low-cost, self-help,
home-ownership opportunities in the form of homesteading.
The expansion of
homesteading should also be underpinned by strict eligibility criteria, residence
requirements and restrictive covenants so as to ensure that it does not turn into
gentrification and/or a speculative opportunity for private landlords. Linking homesteading
to the development of local community land trusts would further reduce the risks of
speculation.
8
We should not overlook the fact that some of these properties were acquired involuntarily via compulsory
purchase and it would be unethical to make these properties available for homesteaders without giving former
owner-occupiers first refusal.
64
With respect to the implementation of homesteading initiatives, we identified a number of
practical factors that were critical to their success and we have attempted to address these
with our recommendations. In general terms, however, we would like to emphasise that
the ethos of homesteading, with its emphasis on the individual and self-help, belies the fact
that the approach requires leadership, commitment and input from a wide range of
stakeholders at national and local levels in order for it to succeed. This includes the
development of appropriate mortgage and loan products by more progressive sectors of the
financial community that have a strong sense of corporate social responsibility.
Furthermore, homesteading needs to be part of a wider asset-based approach to
neighbourhood regeneration that invests in local people, employment, education and
training: it will not work in isolation.
In conducting our research, it has become apparent that there is a dearth of analysis on
previous homesteading initiatives in England and therefore little in the way of suitable
guidance or best practice advice. This is both unfortunate and frustrating and we would
therefore stress the need for more research and evaluation of the current initiatives to
inform the future growth of homesteading. There is a particular need for longitudinal
research that documents the motives, social profile and experiences of homesteaders and
the impact of homesteading on wider neighbourhood regeneration efforts. Allied to this,
there is a need for further research and financial modelling to understand the social costs of
empty homes and the benefits of bringing them back into use, using ‘invest to save’
principles.
Importantly, policy-makers and other stakeholders should not lose sight of the media profile
of homesteading, particularly in relation to the ‘Homes for a £1’ schemes. George Clarke
has done an excellent job in raising the profile of the ‘scandal’ of empty homes in his
capacity as independent advisor to the government. Most of the solutions to the problem,
unfortunately, have less capacity to capture the public imagination: many people quickly
lose interest when one begins to discuss, for example, EDMOs, CPOs, leasing and risk.
Moreover, some of these the approaches are so difficult, complicated and time consuming
that they onerarely used. Homesteading is different. To be sure, it brings it owns set of
challenges but the general principle is readily understandable and the idea has really
captured the attention of the public and press and generated broader interest in issues
65
around empty housing. Homesteading can therefore play a vital role in ensuring that empty
homes remain high on national and local policy agendas.
Finally, it is perhaps reasonable to assert that a societal obsession with the exchange value
of housing means that much of the popular interest in homesteading may be focused on the
‘for a £1’ element of homesteading, in a way that neglects the homes aspect of such
schemes and other, alternative approaches to homesteading (as developed successfully by
Riverside). The individualistic ethos of homesteading and the inevitable focus on the
homesteader and a single, empty dwelling also serves to deflect our attention from the fact
that such homes remain part of a wider community. Bringing empty homes back into use
through homesteading benefits the homesteader but it also generates benefits for those
living in the surrounding neighbourhood as it helps to resist the possibility of more
damaging forms of intervention, such as demolition. With the right criteria and restrictions
in place to guard against the risk of gentrification, homesteading can therefore help existing
residents to remain in their homes and familiar places, close to people that they know and
love, effectively securing their “right to stay put” (Hartman, 1984). That should surely be
one of the principal commitments of any government.
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