Land stewards

This post was written back in February 2017 as a follow on to Next Stop ... Prime Minister, but remained in my drafts as I couldn't find the last few photos I wanted to include. It followed a theme of providing alternative options to deal with some of the problems we face. Even though so much has changed since then with Brexit and now Covid-19, I think it is still relevant now. Let me know what you think.

The remarkable beauty of an old slate quarry

After my 4th child was born, I made the commitment that I didn't want to work long hours in a stressful career anymore, for a company that just churned out products as cheaply as possible. I wanted to have an interesting, fulfilling and meaningful career, which was completely flexible around my family and allowed me to spend more quality time with them, when I chose to. Securing a future for all our children, by acting to prevent catastrophic climate change, felt like a worthwhile goal, so I signed onto a masters course, to arm me with the knowledge to go out into the world and battle greenhouse gas emissions.

The University of East London (UEL) had teamed up with the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) to provide the perfect hands on course for me. For each module you spent a week living at CAT, having lectures and practicals all day, often until late in the evening, then the rest of the month was spent at home preparing essays and presentations before the next module.

Old stone building with a green sedum roof and sunken garden at CAT.

At this point I need to describe CAT. It started out life with a small community transforming an old slate quarry on a very wet hillside into a beautiful, organic, sustainable, off-grid home. 30 years on the focus had shifted to being an educational facility promoting a low impact lifestyle, powered by micro-hydro turbines, wind turbines, solar panels and biomass. The award winning cafe on site served vegetarian food, a lot of which was grown intensively on site, and included an abundance of seasonal vegetables, herbs and flowers. The traditional thick stone-walled buildings, that had served the quarry many years before, were renovated to make them more efficient, but also opened up to bring in lots of natural daylight, improving the feel of the indoor spaces. Additional buildings demonstrated different techniques of timber and straw bale construction, but my favourite was the shop. The beautiful rammed earth walls, with their striated texture felt so warm and grounded, and designed with natural light flooding through the rooflights, it was a peaceful and calming space. Even more so because it was packed with hundreds of amazing and inspiring books that you wouldn't see anywhere else! (CAT publish their own books) The weeks were always so full that there barely seemed enough time for really enjoying this space.

Rammed earth walls and large roof lights for natural light in CAT's shop

With no mobile signal and very poor internet, we spent the week cut off from the outside world. I remember the shock of many arriving to find themselves with quite basic shared accommodation, completely cut off without news, TV, processed food or meat, in the constant downpour of cold, deepest, darkest Wales. A few jumped back in their cars and drove straight back home. But there was delicious hot food waiting for us and as we all sat on long benches full of strangers, from the most varied backgrounds you could imagine, aged from 18 to 70. Yet it was noisier than a playground full of primary school children. Everyone was immediately drawn into deep conversations with their neighbours, because suddenly you were surrounded by people who share your passion and dreams for a better world and are eager to learn more, yet have a lot they can teach you. These conversations only stopped whilst we listened attentively to the absorbing lectures, or when overcome by sleep in the early hours of the morning.

The strawbale lecture theatre, surrounded by welcoming open spaces.

After just one week I was filled with the confidence that we can do so much.... I can do so much. The negativity of climate change was blown away, by the knowledge that so much has already been demonstrated and achieved. I felt it wasn't good enough to just try and save energy as a job, but I needed to try and incorporate sustainability into every aspect of my life. Its funny that it all seemed such a big challenge then, like how could I ever grow my own food with a small garden and 4 young kids, yet I started growing just a few tomatoes in pots, then some peas and beans, and now I have an allotment full of vegetables.

The eco-cabins at CAT

I was really inspired to leave our cramped, 1980's "noddy house", devoid of character and not designed to support a sustainable lifestyle. I wanted to design and build a home for ourselves. Not just a home, but a lifelong home, designed to be flexible to our needs at every stage of ours and our children's lives, whatever changes befell us. Internal walls would not be structural and would be constructed in panels to allow the spaces to be re-arranged as easily as changing the decor. The doors would be wide and spaces would be clean and flowing to enable wheelchairs or baby walkers to access all areas. Walls would be super-insulated and glazing would maximise solar gain in winter, so it could keep us warm and sheltered even in the event of severe poverty. There would be a garden to give freedom for children to play, and that was sufficient to produce food when times were hard. Materials would be local and sustainable, so that maintenance involved digging up some clay to patch up the walls or replacing timbers. And when the world moved on and our home no longer met the needs of future generations, then the roof could be removed and the house would be washed away by rain or slowly decompose, so that a few years later little more than a weedy mound would show where our home had once stood.

The eco-cabins at CAT

It would be nice to place all the blame for not achieving this dream on the planning system, one that allows low impact buildings when they are intended to be used as holiday homes, but makes it extremely difficult to build something similar as a home to be lived in. Or place blame on the predominance of large house builders, who buy up the land and smother it with ugly developments of roads, drives and brick buildings, that concrete over nature and just leave handkerchief-sized lawns, with no space for trees or wildlife or craftsmanship and beauty. But if I am honest, and I do try to be, it is scary to step out of the comfort, security and conformity of that noddy house, and into unfamiliar territory filled with self-doubt, with a family in tow. So here I remain stuck until my courage and resolve return.

And so, in a very long-winded way, I come to addressing the comment from Rory on my last post regarding the lack of affordable housing in the UK, and the first step of my solution would be Land Stewards.

The Native American people have a belief system that we don't and can't own the land. In the millions of years that the earth has heaved and turned, we are but a passing whim. How can we own the land when our time here is so short and who owned it before us to say that we are now the owners? The earth had no borders before we evolved and will not after us, these are figments of our own invention, rules and constrictions that we have made for ourselves that form our own chains. 

Ownership has allowed the rentier class to develop. Most people earn a living working each day, providing goods or services, such as nurses, plumbers and factory workers. The money they earn is constricted by the hours they have available to work. The rentier class earn money by owning things, whether land or property or money, their income comes from loaning them out and charging a fee for it. So we pay them to live in their property or for the use of their money, not for the work that they do. Their earnings are not relative to the work they put in, but are more dependent on how desperately people need a place to live.

I would like councils to be able to apportion 1 acre plots of land to people who wish to be Land Stewards. As a Land Steward you are responsible for looking after that land in a sustainable manner and are entitled to use of the land for as long as you continue to do so, but you do not own the land. When you die your partner or children can apply to be the Land Steward in your place, or the land can be returned to the council to be re-allocated to another person. You would be entitled to build one dwelling and outhouses on the land as long as they are low impact, so that they can either be wheeled away or left to melt back into the landscape when you leave, with no long term damage to the land. No concrete would be allowed, not even for foundations, so drives would need to be gravel or wood chip or just tracks. Do you see where I am going with this?

If you offered a homeless person, or anyone, the right to their own piece of land, there is the potential that with support and hard work that they could make a life for themselves. Land gives people the opportunity to grow or raise some food for themselves and to build a shelter, but also the opportunity to learn new skills in the process. It encourages creativity and craftsmanship and re-skilling. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but that's fine. If all people get a basic income as discussed here and there are more flats and properties becoming available in the cities due to the surge in working from home, then there will already be a boost to city accommodation and reduction in demand should help affordability too. Then a shift for some people back to the countryside, and becoming self-builders or using local tradesmen, would enable a boost to rural communities. 

In addition the housing that Land Stewards build could not be tied to a mortgage, a loan of money from the rentier class, because there is no land ownership as a security to back it. This would mean that most stewards would have to build truly 'affordable' homes, using local materials or recycling. It would give people a chance to have shelter without the need to be on the property ladder. If people can build something special for themselves, then the demand for noddy houses would diminish.

Individual beach house

If you are wondering what this kind of affordable house building would look like, then walk along many of the beach roads in the UK. There are wooden beach houses, temporary holiday dwellings, often unique and individual and beautiful, even if sometimes in a shabby rundown sort of way. Or walk along the river bank and there are similar properties.

Another beach house in Norfolk

The landscapes that were painted by Constable showed small cottages dotting the landscape made of local materials with their thatched roofs. It is the surviving quirky, individual dwellings that we love, that makes a scene picturesque, something that our housing estates will never be. Let us give people back the opportunity to build beautiful homes and celebrate the diversity that will come from it. Lets do something that reduces peoples burden to the rentier class. Lets promote living sustainably from the land without damaging it for future generations