The Living Wage Joint Venture partnership between Brighton & Hove City and Hyde Housing to deliver 1000 affordable homes for the city has now been signed.
The unique partnership is aimed directly at local people who cannot afford market rents or to buy on the open market.
Half the homes will be rented for working Brighton & Hove residents earning the new National Living Wage, including young people and families. The other half will be available through a shared ownership part-rent, part-buy scheme aimed at local buyers who cannot afford the deposit and costs to buy a home outright.
Proposals to set up the joint venture were agreed in 2016 and the business plan setting out how the partnership will operate was agreed at the council’s Housing & New Homes committee in September.
The Housing & New Homes committee approved the business plan at a special meeting on Monday 25 September. The committee also agreed the first three priority sites to look at for potential development opportunities – three council-owned sites in Clarendon Place in Portslade, Coldean Lane, and north west of Whitehawk.
The plan received final approval to proceed at the Policy, Resources & Growth Committee on 12 October.
Councillor Anne Meadows, chair of the Housing and New Homes Committee, said: “Building affordable rented new homes for local people is a key priority and this is a major step forward. There is a huge demand for housing in the city and with the supply of low cost rented homes not keeping pace with demand, we’re having to look at innovative solutions to build much-needed new homes.
“Alongside our New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme building new council housing, the joint venture will deliver decent and genuinely affordable homes for local residents and create a significant number of jobs and apprenticeships.
“This is the biggest commitment to affordable housing in the city for a generation and it’s taken a lot of work to make sure the venture’s business and financial models are robust. Once the foundations are in place and agreed, we can start looking at potential sites to build the 1,000 new homes.”
