Why the Church of England has faith in social housing

This 2014 docuseries claimed – not without controversy – to have found a road in Birmingham in which 95% of residents were unemployed. Yet Newbigin House is likely to be a showpiece in forthcoming months, as the 16 new homes built in the grounds of the former vicarage makes it one of the first developments to emerge from the Church of England’s project to develop social and affordable housing.

In 2021, the estate agency Knight Frank assisted the Church of England (CoE) in an audit of its property holdings. It seemed that, despite being one of the country’s largest landowners, no one was exactly sure what the Church did own. It turned out to be 200,000 acres – an area more than half the size of Greater London – and, while much of that land was in use, a significant proportion was not or it had the potential to be used more efficiently.

The subsequent Coming Home report outlined the CoE’s plan to use some of that land to provide affordable housing and become an exemplar of its own Christian mission. 

Now, four years later – and with little fanfare – the first of the initiative’s houses are starting to appear. Earlier this year as well, the Church Housing Association (CHA) was registered as a housing provider. 

At the forefront of this undertaking is Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford and the inaugural Bishop of Housing. It is an apt appointment as, perhaps uniquely among senior clergy, she experienced homelessness when her family sought refuge in the UK after escaping revolutionary Iran. She bats away any suggestion of equivalence, however: “I hesitate to call it homelessness,” she says. “It was more a loss of home.”

After their arrival in England, they were eventually housed in a flat belonging to the Church. “It gave us the base from which to rebuild our lives,” she says. One can’t help but admire the neatness of the circle: she is now campaigning for the CoE to provide more housing for those in need. 

Central to the Coming Home initiative is the idea that any new homes the CoE builds should include the five S’: housing that is safe, stable, sociable, satisfying and sustainable. It’s quite a contrast to the dilapidated homes that characterise much social housing stock or the grudgingly-built mandated units from private developers which are often less well-appointed and may even feature so-called 'poor doors'. 

“We’re looking at quality,” says Francis-Dehqani. “We want healthy communities and at the heart of those are good quality, affordable housing.”

Nevertheless, the torrent of houses that such a supply of land might have implied, has been more of a trickle. In an article in The Church Times earlier this year, Francis-Dehqani wrote that progress had been “slower and more challenging than hoped”.

Part of this might be due to what she politely terms the CoE’s ‘decentralised’ nature – to an outsider, navigating the dizzying level of stakeholders looks all but impossible. It includes, for example, 42 dioceses made up of 12,500 parishes, CoE schools, the churches themselves and the associated ‘glebe land’ that comes with them (land belonging to the CoE separate from a church building), plus a variety of residential housing, often, in the case of parsonages, sitting on large plots. 

Then there are departmental bodies such as the Church Commissioners, the purpose of which is to ensure the ongoing funding of the Church, the Archbishops’ Council which can fund projects such as Coming Home (and does offer micro-grants), the Church Development Agency, the above mentioned CHA, the Church Housing Foundation and a Forum for Church Housing. 

Part of the reason for the gentle pace is, Francis-Dehqani says, that the CoE “lacks expertise, the liquid assets to develop”. Instead, it wants to partner with organisations which will ensure its resources are used wisely. This is no bad thing – there have been a series of disastrous cases of public bodies, such as councils, setting up property development wings which failed and wiping out reserves with risky property investments.

Part of his work is to assess sites for development – “we’re looking at parsonage back gardens, glebe land or rural exception sites [land within a village envelope that can only be developed for affordable or social housing].”

Despite the CHA’s cautious ambitions, Mayes says that there are 30 projects in the pipeline which will result in 900 homes within his West Midlands stomping ground. These projects include work with Birmingham City Council which could potentially provide 300 units and, separately, the Nishkam Centre, a Sikh community group in the city’s Handsworth area, to develop housing. It is worth pointing out that any homes developed by the CoE will be open to applicants of any religion – or of no faith at all. 

Yet, if you heard about Coming Home and thought that the CoE would be more or less donating its land to build housing for those in need, in much the way that wealthy individuals historically built almshouses, Mayes corrects this perception. He has to give Red Book valuations of any land assets and to work with partners to realise those assets, sometimes to reinvest the money in dilapidated church buildings. 

He gives the example of St Michael’s in Hall Green, Birmingham, a “1970s church with a flat roof that was leaking like a sieve”. Mayes suggests that the land around it can be built upon “and the capital reinvested in the worshiping space”. It’s a neat solution although perhaps one that doesn’t sit entirely comfortably with the Christian zeal of the initiative. But, with thousands of parish churches to maintain, and with some leaders reluctant to develop their churches’ land, perhaps this offers a motivation that it would be hard to argue against.

More controversially, his pragmatism extends to being relaxed about some Church land being used for non-social housing. “It’s certainly an option,” he says. “The remit was to develop affordable housing and we could develop private housing which will unlock social homes. It’s a balance. On a larger site, there might be a blend of tenure.”

Mayes accepts that the Church’s image may well make developing sites easier for him than many private developers. “Even in our most affluent communities, there’s a realisation that people cannot afford to buy in the villages where they grew up,” he says. “With a trusted partner like the CoE, there will be a quality scheme delivered and we’re not doing it for commercial reasons. There are a lot of social benefits.”

Chief among those will be the opportunity to create stable homes for a section of society who have become used to the fragility of the rental sector. Not only are the bishop and Mayes promising high-quality homes and – eventually – plenty of them, they are determined that rents should not just be affordable but fair. In the UK, the definition of an affordable rent is somewhat slippery, and is meant to be “at least 20% below local market rents” but this has mostly been interpreted as 80% of the market rates with the legal ceiling becoming a very solid floor.

“The definition of affordable [has become] a little bit meaningless… I often say, the affordable definition is only a guide and anyone can choose to redefine that,” says Francis-Dehqani, who suggests that there are different approaches to working out how affordability can be assessed. “I would like to see us concentrating on social rented housing which means we can remain involved in the lives of some people who live there [offering support].”

Mayes agrees: “The part of Coming Home that I really liked wasn’t just about building homes, it was about building communities.”

The subtitle of Coming Home is “tackling the housing crisis together”. The government’s enormously ambitious target of 1.5m new homes in this parliament must mean they are crying out for credible development partners. Have there been any talks? “I believe there are conversations to be had between the government and the Church,” says Mayes. “Regardless of that target we want to deliver homes, and where we can partner, we will.”

Francis-Dehqani, however, sounds a more sceptical note. “There’s a real danger that focusing on numbers – the language of ‘units’ betrays the emphasis on quantity – will lead to a sacrifice of quality,” she says. “There are already too many poor-quality homes being built, which is why the Coming Home report sets out what good housing looks like.