Church of England to set up major housing association

The Church of England has announced plans to set up a housing association to become a “major provider of social housing” nationally.

The new plans, designed to “challenge and disrupt” the housing market, are further to existing proposals, unveiled a year ago, to build up to 30,000 homes on surplus CofE land.

Speaking at a conference to mark one year on from its landmark “Coming Home” report on the housing crisis, the CofE’s first bishop for housing, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani (pictured, left), said the plans will see the church buy up social housing “on a significant scale” as well as set up an in-house land management and development service to help deliver church housing projects.

Bishop Guli said the plans had been developed in response to the realisation that the church did not have the capacity in-house to make use of its 200,000 acres of surplus land-holdings to address the housing crisis, despite a widely shared desire, because of fragmented ownership and a lack of skills and resource.

>> See also: The Church embarks on its affordable housing mission

She said: “We’re now embarking on a development phase designed to overcome some of those obstacles. [We’re] taking steps to set up a national housing association.

“This will enable the Church of England to become a major provider up and down the country in a way that challenges and disrupts the housing market.”

She said that the degree of social change the CofE was aiming for required more land and buildings than it currently owned. “We’re proposing to buy social housing on a significant scale, using low interest debt, secured on the properties we purchase. This will enable us to deliver housing beyond our existing inheritance,” she said.

In addition, she said that creating an in-house shared land management and development service was designed to overcome the “core issue of a lack of capacity and skills”. She said: “Overcoming this obstacle should unlock huge financial and missional potential of the church,” adding that she wanted to “rebuild some of our languishing post war churches into vibrant mixed-use centres, meeting social, relational and spiritual needs”.

Bishop Guli’s comments came after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, stressed the need for radical imagination in tackling the crisis in a speech to the same conference. He said, “The housing crisis is getting worse rather than better because of high levels of inflation. If you’re building a more just society, housing is one of the main building blocks.”

The Church Commissioners, the body which manages Church of England investments of over £10bn, is currently overseeing a development programme of 30,000 new build homes on church land, of which 9,000 will be affordable, in response to the publication of last year’s Coming Home report.

It called for the church to do more to address the housing crisis as part of its broader mission to help the poor.