‘This is the dream’: These Londoners built their own homes to beat sky-high house prices

It’s taken 15 years for community group Rural Urban Synthesis Society to build their own homes in Church Grove, Ladywell – in that time London house prices have doubled on average.

“I laid all the pipes in this house and I helped fit the kitchen. I have only held a drill twice in my life,” says Lisa de Liema sitting at the table of the spacious flat she shares with her partner Ahmad Dayes and their two children. 

They part-own it. It’s built to fit their needs with the layout tweaked to suit their lives. That’s a rarity in London’s eye-watering property market. But there is a simple reason why it’s possible: they built it themselves.

The block of 36 homes at Church Grove in leafy Ladywell, Lewisham, are the culmination of 15 years of community and voluntary action, of some hardcore DIY and a dream to do housing differently.

Ahmad is a co-founder of Rural Urban Synthesis Society alongside his brother Kareem and what started as an idea funded by record sales snowballed into a multi-million pound project backed by Big Issue Invest, Big Issue’s social investment arm, and supported by the local council.

Greater London Authority, the Cooperative Development Society and Triodos Bank also helped to bring the dream to fruition.

“We were having meetings around our dinner tables and pubs going back to 2009,” recalls Dayes, who, handily enough, works as an electrician.

“RUSS was the brainchild of my younger brother Kareem and, at the time, we were in a group called United Vibrations and the ethos of the group was: ‘Let’s change the world.’”

“We set up a record label structured as a community interest company called 12 Tone and through that the brainchild of RUSS came.”

Dayes digs out the record for the band’s single Ra! out of the cabinet to show the Big Issue. Etched onto the sleeve, it says: “All profits go towards building a self-sufficient, carbon negative housing co-op in London.”

It was more than just noise.

For the Dayes brothers, self-build is in their blood.

The pair grew up in a home built by their parents out of timber at the Walters Way self-build project pioneered by architect Walter Segal across Lewisham.

“I saw my parents build that house,” Dayes says.

“We felt like we fully benefited from that community and that kind of outlook from the beginning.”

That project was innovative back in the 80s, offering self-build homes for people on council house lists.

But the property boom and house prices in London have gone nuclear, with the average property price up to £501,880 in April 2024, according to the Land Registry. Those homes have been sold off for significant sums in recent years, according to Dayes.

There was a dream to do it better, to build homes for the community that stay affordable in perpetuity. That’s where RUSS comes in.

There are four tenures covered in the metal and concrete Church Grove structure: 16 fixed equity homes for buying outright, 12 shared ownership properties with a mix of equity and rent, two shared flats with six tenants paying London Living Rent at 60% of market rents and six social rent homes.

There’s even a community hub which can be rented out by locals and planning permission for a playground also accessible for the surrounding community. 

The homes are protected against speculators to remain affordable in perpetuity with a covenant in place to limit resale prices based on RPI inflation.

RUSS has more than 1,000 members with people able to join for as little as £1 while the people power behind the project has largely been voluntary.

Families moved into their homes back in April this year – more than a decade after RUSS first identified a site and approached Lewisham Council to secure it.

Initially, a ballot was held to decide who would get a home and that saw a surge in membership, even if it left some people disappointed.

“I don’t think we could have achieved it, had we not swelled the numbers, managed to get the help and volunteer manpower to see it through,” says Dayes. “If it had been a smaller group, I think people would have run out of steam.”

Dates and De Leima missed out on the ballot and were placed on a waiting list until they finally learned they would get a place years later.

Then came the realisation that they would be building their own home with the help of on-site training.

“I guess in our minds it had always been about the self-build,” says Dayes. “A project of this size is not so common to have self-build elements because of the timescales. It’s got to be knocked out.

“But it was like we’re going to do it because if we don’t do it now, we never will. So we went all in and we’ve ended up with something that represents the dream I think.”

“We’re definitely houseproud,” adds De Leima.

“It’s like there’s this new kind of magic fairy dust that has sprinkled over our lives.”

How self-build and community land trusts can tackle soaring house prices and the housing crisis

RUSS is a community land trust (CLTs), giving people from local communities the power to build affordable homes where they most need it.

Big Issue Invest (BII) has been a big investor in the model. The Big Issue’s social investment arm invested £1.275m in RUSS and has also backed Citizens House in Lewisham, which delivered 11 permanently affordable homes last year. 

“We are proud to have supported RUSS and contributed to their development at Church Grove,” says Glenn Arradon, BII’s investment director for housing.

“These 36 quality homes will remain affordable for generations and serve as a prime example of what community-led initiatives can achieve. Our hope is that many similar projects will follow on RUSS footsteps over the next five to 10 years. Community land trusts play their part in tackling the chronic shortage of genuinely affordable homes, and as social investors, we are committed to playing our part in making their projects possible.”

The UK has more CLTS than anywhere in the world, according to the Community Land Trust Network. As of last year there are 468 CLTS in Britain with 250 in England and Wales covering 1,711 affordable homes as well as 5,413 in the pipeline as of last year. There are a further 118 CLTs in Scotland.

With the right support from government, an additional 278,000 CLT homes could be built, the CLT Network estimates, with 80% not possible without the model.

Tom Chance, CEO of the Community Land Trust Network, said: “With the right backing, community led development has the potential to deliver 5% of housing in the UK, equating to 15,000 each year and £1 billion in community wealth.

“RUSS is a pioneering community land trust. Their hard work has helped to pave the way for others, particularly in urban areas, showcasing how CLTs can bring people together to create the homes neighbourhoods want and need.

“Lewisham Council, the Greater London Authority and many other organisations have played their part in helping RUSS succeed. We want to see more regional authorities, housing associations and developers working with communities to get more high-quality homes built. We need a system that values community agency. We are calling on the new government for policies that support communities to play an active role in turning their local economies around.”

With Labour pledging to reform the planning system and deliver 1.5 million homes over the next five years, Starmer and co could certainly benefit from an influx of housing where it is needed.

The community engagement of CLTs is a good way to get around the NIMBY v YIMBY attitudes which often clog up the current planning system.

For Church Grove resident Sydney Thornbury, the projects also offer security.

The Big Issue finds Thornbury relaxing and listening to jazz with dog Benny when we arrive. Her spacious flat is decorated with art all over the walls. She looks right at home.

Thornbury, originally from Los Angeles, says she thought the idea for Church Grove was just an “urban myth” when she first heard about it.

She got involved on the RUSS board for two years before stepping down due to work commitments and moved into her new home in April.

“I’m 57 so I’ve been thinking about downsizing because I was still paying a mortgage and it looked like I was going to be paying a mortgage for the rest of my life,” she says.

“I’ve worked in the arts my whole life so there’s not a huge pension or anything like that. So I don’t know what I would do without it really.”

The freedom Thornbury’s move has offered has convinced her that the CLTs can bring a wider shake-up to the housing market too.

“I think the more that we set up these community land trusts, the more we challenge this idea that housing is about wealth creation because that just hasn’t worked,” says Thornbury.

“I mean, I say, that hasn’t worked as somebody who’s benefited from it so it sounds really hypocritical. But the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t work. So we need to start rethinking how we do that and if we’re creative there are a lot of ways to do it.”

The Labour government has talked up plans to boost housebuilding but chancellor Rachel Reeves’ admission that they will lean on the private sector rather than directly building council housing raised eyebrows.

The potential of CLTs and self-build projects offer an alternative untapped resource.

“It will continue being a small movement until you get real political leadership,” says Thornbury. “And the only way you can get real political leadership is if you can convince a vast amount of people that this is not a threat to them, it’s not even a threat to wealth creation.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. This Christmas, you can make a lasting change on a vendor’s life. Buy a magazine from your local vendor in the street every week. If you can’t reach them, buy a Vendor Support Kit.