Please note the change of location for this event – it will be at Coachwerks.

Brighton and Hove house prices are nearly 5 times more expensive in 2015 than in 1995 (from £50,000 to £295,000 on average) and it has the highest share of privately renting households (32.5%) of any town and city in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Rip-off rents and letting fees, damp housing, overcrowding and evictions are all too common.

Housing co-operatives are one of many ways to create more genuinely affordable and secure housing in the city.

On Tuesday 29th November at 7PM at Coachwerks, Mutual Aid in Sussex have organised three people to talk about how they set up their housing co-ops and how they work:

* Andrea Jones, as project manager, is currently helping set up Bunker, a housing co-op for low-income families. She is involved with the network of Co-operative Housing in Brighton & Hove (CHIBAH).
* One of the members who fairly recently helped set up Skylark, a housing co-op for young people.
* Helen Russell helped expand Two Piers, the largest and longest-running housing co-op in Brighton & Hove. Helen has clocked up 33 years of co-op living, warts and all. She is the Secretary of CHIBAH, the Chair of the Brighton & Hove Community Land Trust Steering Group, and initiated the rebirth of the Confederation of Co-operative Housing in 1991.

There will be time for both an introduction to housing co-ops as well as more in-depth advice on how to set them up. Space will be given for questions and networking.

If you’re sick of paying for the holidays of the 2% of the adult population who are landlords, or just want more affordable and secure housing, come along to this talk!

Tuesday 29th November at Coachwerks. The talk will start at 7pm. FREE.

A brief introduction video to what is a housing co-op (focused on student housing co-ops, but relevant to all housing co-ops)