Dear George Clarke,
This is a letter written by the ‘How to Build a House’ class which Transition by Design teaches at Crisis Skylight Oxford. The class teaches practical skills and facilitates discussion on community-led housing with people who are experiencing homelessness.
Dear George,
We’ve watched all of your TV programmes and have especially enjoyed Council Housing Scandal. We think you’re doing a great job and are brave to say what you are saying.
We’re a group of people who have been working together for a year, thinking about what sort of houses we would like to live in and how we would like to be involved in helping to make better decisions about the type of housing that should be built.
We are very excited to see your plans for a new council estate and we have some suggestions for you;
- We hope you will build to the original space requirements of the Addison Act, including the per centre increases over time.
- Please design for families, with a community space and space for children of all ages to play.
- The houses should be cheap to live in.
- We would like our own front doors but would also like to have shared spaces and some facilities like laundry, shared bins and a community space.
- Please do your best to make sure these homes stay very affordable for people to rent.
- We think these should be homes for life.
- We are practical and skilled people and would like the option to help with finishing touches.
- We think grey water systems are good, have you considered installing one?
- We would like to have a green, communal space where children can play and which the houses face on to. We would like vehicle access to be at the back.
- We want to be part of a resident management organisation.
- Everybody needs to have an equally nice view.
- We want a mix of different sized houses so that we could move house within the same area in case our situation changes.
- We want to be able to move around the estate as we need without paying bedroom tax.
- We want there to be flexibility to adapt our own homes, expanding them if necessary.
We are fans of your programmes and would love to come and visit your site. We would love to chat to you about how we might be able to help; with ideas, or skills, or in learning from our experiences. We recognise that this one estate isn’t going to fix the problems we have with housing, we wondered if you would consider being cloned?
Best of luck & we’re right behind you,
The How to Build a House class of 2019 at Crisis Skylight Oxford.