St John’s Church in Keswick in the Lake District made half a hectare of land next to its graveyard that was too stony and waterlogged for burials available to the town’s then newly-formed Community Housing Trust.
The land now has 11 three-bedroomed houses and the trust has gone on to build a further 30 homes in the town on other plots. The latest four – three, three-bedroomed houses and one two-bedroom house – were built on land provided by the Methodist Church on the site of a demolished church hall.
Around half the homes built by the trust are for shared ownership and the other half are let out at rents that are truly affordable in perpetuity – measured in relation to local earnings, not market rents.
Bill Bewley, the Chair of Keswick Community Housing Trust, believes that up to 200 people have been housed as a result of the trust’s work so far with further potential plots of land for housing being explored.
How a plot of unused church land helped families priced out of the housing markethttps://t.co/pwTlF8l8DC #Property #Housing #ChurchOfEngland #Keswick
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