Self-help housing

Self-help housing, sometimes referred to as organised self-help housing (OSHH) or mutual self-help housing, works on similar principles to self-build and community led housing, empowering low-income individuals and families, many with immediate housing needs to actively provide dwelling places for themselves. Self-build often (but not always) applies to new build projects, whilst self-help today is often (but not always) in relation to refurbishment projects, usually gaining permission to take over empty, run-down or unused properties in local neighbourhoods. and bring them back into use for the parties engaged in their renovation.

There is some indication that the first self-help programme was a government public housing finance scheme created in Sweden as early as 1904, but generally it became more common from the 1920s. After the First World War the Soviet Union and various European countries used self-help as a route to engaging communities and repairing building stock, in particular within cities, such as Vienna and Stockholm. The 1930s saw early US examples of self-help housing stemming from a Quaker groups, in the 1960s farm worker dwellings were built, with aid of state loans by the farm workers under what was termed as mutual self-help housing, with Self-Help Enterprises (SHE) an organisation to promote and support self help projects in the US was established in 1965.

In 1972 a book called Freedom To Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process, written by MIT and Harvard professor Don Terner and co-edited by John Turner, documented self-help housing examples around the world. It highlighted that many US single-family homes were often built by their owners, arguing that the same owner involvement could be applied to multi-family apartment buildings in urban areas. In New York widespread real estate abandonment, and a 10 year grace period before repossessions, lead to many thousands of apartments laying empty for long periods. Similarly the 1970s, UK cities saw an ever increasing number of properties laying unused and empty due to market forces, alongside an increasing problem of homelessness.

The UK Self Help Community Housing Association was formed in the UK in 1974 by a group of homeless people, in response to the situation and a route bringing propertied back in use and tackling the worsening homelessness crisis. In the US city of New York by the late 1970s the grace period for repossession had gradually reduced, from 10 years to as little one year, meaning more repossessions and more opportunities for self-help projects. In just one year in 1978, the city reclaimed 11,000 buildings, 4,000 of which were still occupied, which equated to some 100,000 apartments, making the city itself a significant landlord, almost overnight. In collaboration with what was called The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) self-help was use as a route to managing and keeping these buildings in use and providing much needed housing.

Today self-help projects continue to provide a successful route to, not only helping maximise the use of existing building stocks but also engaging and empowering local communities to become pro-active in solving housing issues. Whilst today many cities do not have the number of empty apartments that existed in the 1970s, commercial real estate, through changing working patterns, is in some areas at crisis point, leading to some governing bodies considering the possibilities of converting empty commercial buildings in to residential. Finance and organisationally supported self-help programmes could indeed yet again play and important catalyst role in these transitions, whilst continuing to combat the ever increasing shortage of housing and in particular truly affordable housing provision across cities.

For further information about UK self-help programme visit https://www.selfhelpha.co.uk/about-us/

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[edit] External links

Slipping through the Cracks: The Origins of Aided Self-help Housing, 1918-53 Richard Harris

https://www.selfhelpenterprises.org/blog/a-look-at-the-history-of-self-help-housing/

https://urbanomnibus.net/2012/12/self-help-housing-the-story-of-the-urban-homesteading-assistance-board/

https://www.selfhelpha.co.uk/about-us/

Organized self-help housing: lessons from practice with an international perspective. Arroyo Ivette , strand Johnny