People Powered Homes and Same Skies Think Tank celebrate Mayor’s funding award to help ease housing crisis
We are thrilled to announce we have been awarded a £60,000 grant from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority for an innovative solution to the housing crisis. The grant is to support the development of community-led housing projects in West Yorkshire.
The funding will enable People Powered Homes to offer support and guidance to local people who are interested in starting their own housing project in their community.
Community-led housing (CLH) is the design, building or management of new homes by community groups to solve local housing problems. This can lead to houses built where people want and need them but where other models of housing development are not viable.
We are holding our first two events in March at which local people can find out more about CLH.
- Meet the Community-led Housing groups: 12th March in Leeds https://peoplepoweredhomes.org.uk/2025/02/meet-the-groups-event-12th-march/
- Introduction to Community-led Housing: 19th March Online https://leedscommunityhomes.org.uk/introduction-to-community-led-housing-online-event/
The award from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) will help People Powered Homes bring forward more potential community led housing projects to help meet the need for affordable local homes across West Yorkshire.
The funding award is the result of a five year process run by Same Skies Think Tank which has brought together the expertise of citizens, researchers, third sector organisations, and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority using a range of creative methods including film making and screenings, writing, group walks, public meetings and expert practitioner workshops.
Tracy Brabin, the Mayor of West Yorkshire, said:
“Here in West Yorkshire we have an ambitious fifteen-year housing strategy to boost supply, build new affordable homes, improve our existing homes, and create vibrant communities.
“By investing in community-led housing, we’ll empower local people with the skills they need to build high-quality homes, while ensuring they have a say over the kinds of homes that are built and where.
“Our funding award to People Powered Homes will enable more community-led housing sites to come forward across West Yorkshire, as we work to deliver a housebuilding revolution and build a greener, more secure region.
Neil McKenna, who initiated and coordinated the Same Skies process, said “This announcement of funding for People Powered Homes to develop community-led housing in the region is brilliant news; it has come from a really innovative and beneficial process of learning collaboratively. It means that in the future more housing will be built in sustainable and well-connected neighbourhoods that support the wellbeing of residents.”
Jimm Reed, Director of People Powered Homes said “I would like to acknowledge the work of the Same Skies Think Tank who have tirelessly advocated community led housing with the Combined Authority over the past five years and who played an essential role in facilitating this funding, as well as helping to achieving recognition of the future role of communities conceiving of and creating their own homes, within the recent regional Housing Strategy. This funding will help keep West Yorkshire at the forefront of the community led housing movement across the UK.”
Leeds and West Yorkshire has a groundbreaking history of community-led housing over three decades, with nationally recognised expertise through projects such as Frontline community self build, LILAC and Chapeltown Co-housing.
The funding award will allow People Powered Homes to continue this success story, with the aim of identifying, supporting and bringing forward a number of new exciting community led schemes to site, and also building local capacity to support and encourage more local people to have an active role in shaping new homes in their communities across the region.
