Church report praises Quaker partnership
'Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, who commissioned the report, believes housing is one of the biggest crises facing the country.'
A Church of England report into the UK’s housing crisis has highlighted a partly Quaker-funded housing initiative in its pledge to build affordable homes on church land.
The ‘Coming Home: Tackling the housing crisis together’ report refers to a housing scheme set up by Keswick Churches Together as an example of what it wants to achieve.
The non-profit Community Land Trust (CLT) has been funded by Quakers, the local council, and the government’s Homes England agency, as well as £1.1m in loans to help local people priced out of the property market. About half of the eleven homes are for shared ownership, while the rest are rented out at affordable rates in line with local earnings.
The vicar of St John’s church offered to sell CLT the land next to the church graveyard.
The report has led to the appointment of England’s first ‘bishop for Housing’, the bishop of Chelmsford, Guli Francis-Dehqani, who has pledged to build affordable homes on church land.
The Church of England is one of the country’s biggest land owners, with around 200,000 acres. Just over half of that is owned by the Church Commissioners (worth an estimated £2bn) with the rest spread among forty-two dioceses, and more than 12,000 parishes.
Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, who commissioned the report, believes housing is one of the biggest crises facing the country.
