slides from session at national UK cohousing conference in November 2015 that suggested innovative and creative ways in which cohousing initiatives might finance their development (sadly the stories that accompany them are all verbal only...)

1. Looking down the back of the sofa...
Ideas and options for financing cohousing
feasibility and developments
http://about.me/adrianashton

2. Why am I here?
• National reputation for #socent #coops
#startup
• Train specialist enterprise advisors on financial
planning
• Part of national programmes to support sector
growth, acting as lead on finance

3. So you’ve got a great idea...?
• Grants and gifts
• ‘Crowdfunding’
• Commissions from HA, LA, etc
• ?SITR (up to 50% tax relief for supporters at
this stage as investment would be unsecured
– no property yet)

4. Grants

Lead time

Restrictions on use

Cash-flow implications

Admin time/cost in monitoring & reporting

Risk of 'claw back'

Risk to credibility
A word of caution about grants...

5. Crowd funding
http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/understanding-alternative-finance

6. Crowd funding
http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/understanding-alternative-finance

8. How to find the pots of money?
• What have other people had success with?
• Who do you know? (and who do they know?)
• What are local priorities of wider bodies?
(Council, LEP, etc – note to self: tell them the
story about the Cambridge incubator)

9. So you need to build it...?
• Debt.
– But comes in lots of flavours: loan, equity, loan
stock, community shares, quasi-equity, mortgage,
bonds, ... Many of which could (in theory) offer tax
relief for the investor
• Possibly some grant support (but would need
to evidence specific criteria)

11. What’s been used in #cohousing
before? (an incomplete list)
• Founder member using own savings/personal
mortgage – Springhill Cohousing Community
• Founder members collectively invest personally -
(Lancaster cohousing)
• Wider community ownership via #comshare –
(various CLTs and housing #coops)
• Part support from Housing Association – (Threshold
Centre in Dorset)

12. Where do we go from here..?
• Define what we’re happy to manage on what
terms
• Swap stories with each other
• Don’t be afraid to experiment (student
housing coops, Personal Budgets to support
shared housing for people with long-term ill
health,...)