The Threshold Centre
Affordable Housing
One of the pioneering features of the Threshold Centre is that it is the first UK cohousing scheme to be created jointly with a housing association partner. Half of the 14 cottages are provided by East Dorset Housing Association, part of Synergy Housing Group, the largest housing association in Dorset. There are four affordable rental cottages, and three shared ownership. The benefits include not only affordable rent or capital costs, but also affordable living costs and the mutual support of an informal community.
For potential residents:
To find out if there are affordable units available currently, and how to explore joining us as a resident, see the Living Here section of the website.
For housing associations and professionals:
A summary of the ways in which this first mixed-tenure cohousing scheme were created, and its benefits, is given below. If you would like more information, you are welcome to join the cohousing-RSL Learning Forum: contact the UK Cohousing Network at www.cohousing.org.uk for more details.
PLANNING REQUIREMENTS
North Dorset District Council planning policies normally require 30% minimum social housing provision for schemes over 10 years. However, the site chosen by Threshold Centre potential residents was in a semi-rural location, half a mile outside the Development Boundary of Gillingham. Since this required approval as an exception to planning policies, local councillors made it clear that they would require 50% affordable housing in partnership with a local housing association as a key condition of such approval.
HOUSING ASSOCIATION INVOLVEMENT
At this stage, the Threshold Centre (TTC) Residents Group approached three of the designated RSLs. Of these, one declined even to meet, whereas Synergy Housing Group showed both enthusiasm and also understanding of the innovative benefits of cohousing. A Synergy project manager was fully involved with the owner-occupiers in working with the architect, preferred contractor and other professionals in creating the designs and budget for the project. Given the many challenges of converting old farm buildings to high-level sustainability within tight cost budgets, input from the RSL throughout this process was crucial, as was joint funding of the professional fees. The scheme was unanimously approved by the North Dorset Planning Committee in November 2007.
HOUSING REGISTER RESEARCH
One of several vital factors in achieving approval was research jointly undertaken by TTC and Synergy to assess levels of interest in cohousing at TTC from people on the local Housing Register. A mailshot was produced jointly by TTC and Synergy, and was then mailed by the District Council to all the 500+ contacts on the local Housing Register explaining what cohousing is, the intended scheme near Gillingham, the special benefits and obligations of cohousing, with an invitation to an open afternoon at TTC. Over 50 households responded to the mailshot, over 30 attended the open afternoon, and 24 households registered a strong interest in living there.
RESIDENT SELECTION
A crucial principle, which was emphasised and checked at all meetings with the District Council, was the ‘double-hurdle’ approach to selecting residents for the social housing. This means that all social housing residents must be screened not only through the criteria of the local Housing Register, but then through the criteria of the cohousing community. This principle was fully accepted in all discussions. The reasons for this second screening include the need, as in most cohousing communities, to have diversity of age, gender, and skills in order to be viable, also the obligations required of all residents (see below) regardless of tenure, would not be acceptable to some people.
TTC had already established a selection process for owner-occupiers, and Synergy asked that exactly the same process should be applied to their households, both rental and shared ownership. This process requires potential residents to spend two weekends or equivalent staying at Cole Street Farm. New resident criteria include balancing the overall mix of the whole residents group with regard to age, family type, skills mix etc.
LEGAL STRUCTURE
As usual in cohousing, a non-profit company owns the freehold of the site and shared facilities, and sells leases on the residential units. At TTC, owner-occupiers buy a lease for 95% ownership of their unit, and a single head lease was used to sell the seven rental and shared-ownership units to Synergy. All of these leases embody the same resident commitments. The ownership body is a Community Interest Company.
Normally, the shareholders in a cohousing ownership company are the residents. A new structure was evolved at TTC to reflect the mixed tenure. Each owner-occupier and shared-ownership household must become a shareholder and has one vote. Synergy owns one share for each of the rental units, but allows proxy voting rights to the tenant in respect of operational matters: the CIC constitution specifies reserved items e.g. borrowing limits, on which Synergy must be consulted.
CONTRACTUAL STRUCTURE
Because the owner-occupiers had already bought the whole property, Synergy concluded that it could not be a joint client with them. Technically, the Threshold Centre CIC, i.e. the owner-occupiers, acted as the developer, and were the client who engaged the contractor and professional advisers. Synergy were a client of the developer, with collateral warranties provided by the contractor and professionals. This is not an ideal arrangement, since it created a lot of legal cost and complexity, and stress for the Resident Group in trying to ensure that the onerous obligations and penalties required by the RSL were fully reflected in the contracts they placed.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT: SYNERGY HOUSING GROUP VIEW
Synergy’s overall satisfaction at being involved with the first UK mixed-tenure cohousing scheme is evidenced by the commitment already made to work with another, larger cohousing scheme now in the formative stages, in Bridport, West Dorset. Much has been learned by the Synergy team from the Threshold project, which will make future schemes easier to achieve.
The key reasons why Synergy chose to get involved are:
- Innovative form of affordable housing
- Supportive neighbourhood
- Improving affordability through sharing resources (capital and living)
- More sustainable
- Integration with local community
- Less demand on Synergy resources post occupation.
Some of the key areas in which new approaches, persistence and adaptability were necessary were:
- Overcoming scepticism within Synergy organisation.
- Need to modify Scheme Development Standards, and vary from other guidelines.
- Creating a different form of tenancy agreement, sharing maintenance liabilities between Synergy and residents’ management company.
- Negotiating with HCA to overcome their doubts and achieve high levels of grant funding.
- Innovative approaches to meet high professional and build costs of the scheme.
- Creating joint marketing and resident liaison with Threshold team, and working with their allocations policy.
- Creating a new model of governance and ownership company constitution.
- Finding appropriate contractual forms for the build programme.
The main learnings for Synergy with regard to future cohousing schemes are to have the RSL involved from the start, and for the RSL and residents group to be joint procurers for the contractor.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT: OWNER-OCCUPIERS VIEW
Some cohousing resident groups are reluctant to work with an RSL, fearing that they will be swamped with bureaucracy and over-ridden by HCA and RSL policies and procedures. Our experience at Threshold of working with Synergy Housing Group has overall been very favourable, and on our cohousing workshops we recommend working with an RSL from the early stages of a project. From the residents’ point of view the main benefits and drawbacks were:
Benefits:
- Development expertise, e.g. specifications, project management, contractual terms.
- Contacts and credibility in recruiting contractors and professional advisers, some of whom are wary of ‘group clients’.
- Funding during the design and application phase, and access to HCA grant funding.
- Convincing the local planning authority that this is a viable, well-grounded project which would deliver affordable housing.
Drawbacks:
- The project was made more complex and expensive by the need to meet or renegotiate numerous policies and procedures from the HCA or the Housing Association.
- Different attitudes to cost: owner-occupiers keen to reduce capital costs and fees, RSL more keen to reduce maintenance costs.
- Different attitudes to risk: owner-occupiers could cut corners on minor issues since they would bear any consequences, RSL has to be very risk averse.