People Powered Homes' story
People Powered Homes is the Community Led Housing enabler Hub for West & South Yorkshire, supporting groups through the process of creating the homes that their communities need.
Leeds Community Homes was co-founded in 2015 by Paul Chatterton and Steve Hoey, and was constituted as a Community Benefit Society in November 2015 by representatives from Empty Homes Doctor, Social Business Brokers, LEDA, Canopy, LATCH, GIPSIL, and LILAC, to build and enable more community led, affordable, environmentally sustainable housing in the Leeds area.
Community-led housing is a growing movement of people taking action to create decent and affordable homes themselves for their own communities. We call these People Powered Homes.
People powered homes can take different forms: cohousing schemes where people with shared values agree to live together as an intentional community; Community Land Trusts where communities come together to create permanently affordable homes for people in their area; Community Self Builds, housing co-ops and other forms of self-help housing.
We held our first community share offer in 2016-17 and raised £362,000 in community investment which was to be put towards our proposed acquisition of 16 affordable homes at the Climate Innovation District.
In January 2018 LCH was nationally recognised as the first funded community-led housing enabler hub.
In April 2021 we restructured, with People Power Homes Ltd forming as a wholly owned subsidiary company which assumed the responsibility for running the enabling hub as a regional service.
In January 2024 we acquired the first phase of our affordable homes at Climate Innovation District.
In October 2024 we launched our national report “Community Led Housing For All.”
Useful learnings from People Powered Homes
Anyone can start, volunteer and deliver a community led housing project. You don’t need to work in housing, you don’t need a degree in architecture, you don’t need to be a builder. If you think a change is needed, you can lead that change.
People Powered Homes' metrics
- Number of homes built or brought back into occupancy.
- Number of members.
- Money raised through share offers.
- Number of people engaged through events and networks.
