Hudswell Community Charity: Making homes affordable and sustainable

Read how this 350-year-old charity is helping Yorkshire families.

Social Need

While holiday homes can bring benefits to local economies, they can also drive up house prices, making properties unaffordable for local families. As a result, many people are forced to move away from the area they grew up in.

Organisation

Hudswell Community Charity was founded in the 17th century to support people in the small village of Hudswell, just outside Yorkshire Dales National Park. The charity owns and manages several properties, which are rented by people with a connection to the village who would otherwise struggle to afford a home in the area. It also offers small grants and is in the process of working with the local community to transform an unused church into a hostel.

Loan

Hudswell Community Charity has built six of its nine affordable homes with the help of two loans from Charity Bank. The most recent loan, of £300,000, helped the charity to build three timber-framed modular homes. Two of the bungalows are being let out at an affordable rent, and the other has been part-purchased by a young family through a shared-ownership model.

The homes are powered by the solar panels in a nearby field, and they’re heated by infrared panels concealed in the roofs. The sustainable technology was funded using a £58,000 Green Loan and £39,140 grant funded by Access and facilitated by Charity Bank.

Impact

All the residents of the new properties have family members in the area and were struggling to find affordable accommodation nearby. One of the bungalows is now home to a couple, their son and their grandson. The house the family moved from was old, damp, too small and not suited to their needs, as the older man needs a mobility scooter. Their new bungalow has been purpose-built to be fully accessible and can be adapted as the family’s needs change. The three-generation family are much happier and more comfortable in their new property and will be able to live there for as long as they choose, with no risk of the rent rising above what they can afford.

“Housing is so expensive throughout the Yorkshire Dales now. People on average incomes simply can’t afford to live here. In some parts of the Dales, three-quarters of the properties are now second homes. In other places, the population has become skewed, with elderly people moving in and young families having to move out because they can’t afford the rent. With these affordable homes, we’re helping to avoid that happening here in Hudswell.”

Martin Booth, Secretary of Hudswell Community Charity