the vision for sshc
The idea of a housing co-op is that it is students working together to create a new alternative to the student housing currently available. Sheffield is a brilliant place to be a student and has a strong student community. We want to offer the opportunity to live in co-operative housing to those students. SSHC will offer not only housing, but also a friendly and supportive community of residents. Residents have the opportunity to take control of their surroundings; help improve the house and reach out to the wider community. By empowering students to look after their own home, we hope that they will not only take better care of it, but also actively work to improve it.
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a conversation between sshc founding members rosie evered, jamie risner and roy clutterbuck |
"A housing Co-op offers an alternative way of owning a property. It is somewhere between owning your own house and renting. The co-op owns the property, and for the time that they live there, residents become members of the co-op. The rent paid by residents goes to the co-op and to paying off the mortgage, rather than going to private landlords. Often housing co-ops are fully mutual which means that everyone in the housing co-op lives together, works together in the house to create a co-operative living environment. Each member has an equal ownership stake in the property."
"The ideology of the co-op is that you’re all working together for everyone’s benefit. One of the things I like is that once you’ve formed a co-op as a legal entity, and once that co-op has bought a house, I really like the idea that that house is going to be owned by the co-op forever, maybe. I mean, you may be there for a couple of years, and there will be a whole line of future members who will each be there for a couple of years. Individuals in the co-op can never sell the house for their own profit. If the house does have to be sold the money goes towards other co-ops. It means that the property is collectively and democratically owned forever."
"Successful co-operatives are built on the foundations of democracy and equality — fostering innovation and community. Unlike when you’re renting from private landlords, the people in a co-op have the freedom to improve their property environmentally or aesthetically. They have more control over how their property functions and looks, and that can contribute positively to the wider community the co-op is within."
"There are many things students could do in a housing co-op that they couldn’t do if renting from private landlords. They could choose to insulate their property, or invest in double glazing or alternative heating systems. They could take the initiative to make an allotment in their back garden to grow vegetables or they could decide they want to build a shed. "
"We visited a housing co-operative in Sheffield a few weeks ago called Fireside. And they’d done that really well. They’d started with four houses and because they can think in the long term they can really invest in their house. They've combined their four gardens and they’ve gone on an enormous spending spree where they've remortgaged half their houses and started a massive extension that spans the four properties. It’s cost them loads of money, but that’s fine because they can think in the long term and they know it will last. And none of them individually have to pay off the mortgage. It’s fantastic."
"The house will have a lot of colour and a lot of character too. The house will have an ongoing story. You will know the people who lived there who lived there before you, and you’ll know, perhaps, the people who lived there the year before that. The house will have quirks and bits of furniture people have found in weird places. There will be posters and pictures and drawings on the wall. There will be stories to tell of things that happened years ago. And there will be parties too, or at least large meals, with all the people who have lived there in the past. I think that would be really fun."
"There’s no incentive for the landlord to improve their houses because they can still charge the same rent because of the way the market is. They can take everything as profit from it, rather than investing in the property. There’s a downward spiral because if the house isn’t being cared for by the landlord, there’s no reason for the residents to care for it either. There are often big problems like leaking showers or broken doors and the students have to live with it for ages. And all this has harmful effects, like the student becoming apathetic about their house – not wanting to go and enter in to conversation with the landlords, because there is no conversation. It gets to the point where students just don’t care about the actual health of the house, even when it’s full of mould and is falling apart. And the landlords get apathetic about students too, I’m sure, and then they feel like they don’t need to step-up their game."
"They don’t need to. Students just aren’t knowledgeable about housing and about choosing the right house. And there are so many bad quality houses out there. Students have never lived in a house by themselves before. So they look at the rent and they look whether it has double bedrooms and, maybe, if it’s got a living room, but probably not, and then they just go for it. And some students, a lot of students, do this and end up in dreadful housing. Then they have to live with it for a year."
"What Sheffield Student Housing Co-operative wants to do is to create an opportunity for students to take responsibility and to actually learn about their local environment and be a part of the community. At the moment this just isn’t a feasible option for many students here. Student houses are very blank and empty. People come and go and it’s really negative the way that nothing is ever added and nothing ever changes. There are whole neighbourhoods that are like that."
"In a way the housing co-op is just like a starting point. The housing co-op creates the base, a sense of identity which comes with networks and ongoing community projects. And we need something like this to overcome the transient nature of the student population. So it’s twofold because the housing co-op in itself is cool because it teaches students about caring for the building they are living in, but on top of that the co-op has a much bigger impact than the house itself. It gives a starting point for new students to get in touch with activism and volunteering for local projects. And hopefully this will help students increase their social consciousness in general."
"The transient nature of the student population has an impact on other student organisations such as a vast number of green or environmentally based student societies. Currently, these organisations flare up for a couple of months or a year or so, then people move on and it doesn’t happen anymore. There should be a continuation of that. It should be an ongoing theme within student communities. There should be a story about it. We want to help make all these things happen. We are creating Sheffield Student Housing Co-op as the first step towards developing an ongoing culture of activism and volunteering. Through sharing and learning from one another and working together this culture’s momentum will grow and grow with each generation of new students."
"The ideology of the co-op is that you’re all working together for everyone’s benefit. One of the things I like is that once you’ve formed a co-op as a legal entity, and once that co-op has bought a house, I really like the idea that that house is going to be owned by the co-op forever, maybe. I mean, you may be there for a couple of years, and there will be a whole line of future members who will each be there for a couple of years. Individuals in the co-op can never sell the house for their own profit. If the house does have to be sold the money goes towards other co-ops. It means that the property is collectively and democratically owned forever."
"Successful co-operatives are built on the foundations of democracy and equality — fostering innovation and community. Unlike when you’re renting from private landlords, the people in a co-op have the freedom to improve their property environmentally or aesthetically. They have more control over how their property functions and looks, and that can contribute positively to the wider community the co-op is within."
"There are many things students could do in a housing co-op that they couldn’t do if renting from private landlords. They could choose to insulate their property, or invest in double glazing or alternative heating systems. They could take the initiative to make an allotment in their back garden to grow vegetables or they could decide they want to build a shed. "
"We visited a housing co-operative in Sheffield a few weeks ago called Fireside. And they’d done that really well. They’d started with four houses and because they can think in the long term they can really invest in their house. They've combined their four gardens and they’ve gone on an enormous spending spree where they've remortgaged half their houses and started a massive extension that spans the four properties. It’s cost them loads of money, but that’s fine because they can think in the long term and they know it will last. And none of them individually have to pay off the mortgage. It’s fantastic."
"The house will have a lot of colour and a lot of character too. The house will have an ongoing story. You will know the people who lived there who lived there before you, and you’ll know, perhaps, the people who lived there the year before that. The house will have quirks and bits of furniture people have found in weird places. There will be posters and pictures and drawings on the wall. There will be stories to tell of things that happened years ago. And there will be parties too, or at least large meals, with all the people who have lived there in the past. I think that would be really fun."
"There’s no incentive for the landlord to improve their houses because they can still charge the same rent because of the way the market is. They can take everything as profit from it, rather than investing in the property. There’s a downward spiral because if the house isn’t being cared for by the landlord, there’s no reason for the residents to care for it either. There are often big problems like leaking showers or broken doors and the students have to live with it for ages. And all this has harmful effects, like the student becoming apathetic about their house – not wanting to go and enter in to conversation with the landlords, because there is no conversation. It gets to the point where students just don’t care about the actual health of the house, even when it’s full of mould and is falling apart. And the landlords get apathetic about students too, I’m sure, and then they feel like they don’t need to step-up their game."
"They don’t need to. Students just aren’t knowledgeable about housing and about choosing the right house. And there are so many bad quality houses out there. Students have never lived in a house by themselves before. So they look at the rent and they look whether it has double bedrooms and, maybe, if it’s got a living room, but probably not, and then they just go for it. And some students, a lot of students, do this and end up in dreadful housing. Then they have to live with it for a year."
"What Sheffield Student Housing Co-operative wants to do is to create an opportunity for students to take responsibility and to actually learn about their local environment and be a part of the community. At the moment this just isn’t a feasible option for many students here. Student houses are very blank and empty. People come and go and it’s really negative the way that nothing is ever added and nothing ever changes. There are whole neighbourhoods that are like that."
"In a way the housing co-op is just like a starting point. The housing co-op creates the base, a sense of identity which comes with networks and ongoing community projects. And we need something like this to overcome the transient nature of the student population. So it’s twofold because the housing co-op in itself is cool because it teaches students about caring for the building they are living in, but on top of that the co-op has a much bigger impact than the house itself. It gives a starting point for new students to get in touch with activism and volunteering for local projects. And hopefully this will help students increase their social consciousness in general."
"The transient nature of the student population has an impact on other student organisations such as a vast number of green or environmentally based student societies. Currently, these organisations flare up for a couple of months or a year or so, then people move on and it doesn’t happen anymore. There should be a continuation of that. It should be an ongoing theme within student communities. There should be a story about it. We want to help make all these things happen. We are creating Sheffield Student Housing Co-op as the first step towards developing an ongoing culture of activism and volunteering. Through sharing and learning from one another and working together this culture’s momentum will grow and grow with each generation of new students."