Blog 3 —Response of Interview
On the 21st of October, our group met with Jerry Drake who is the member of West End Housing CO-OP. We asked a series of questions of her daily life and their organization, and then noted the key responses:
- With her previous experiences she informed us that there is a lot of trouble regarding land and grants and she experienced many barriers during the process of self-built housing. She also struggled with finding available land that the government would provide to build on.
- the West End Housing CO-OP are all equal members within their society and are all involved within their community as they all occupy the houses they own.
- Before the housing co-op began to build, in the areas they were planning on doing so they vigorously asked the local community within that area. Finding out the local opinion and then questioning them how they felt it would affect them.
- When the housing co-op began a regenerative project, Jerry said that the council were very helpful and supportive of projects like there’s. In addition, Newcastle council are interested in this form of project, along with Your Homes Newcastle owning the majority of the land available within the Newcastle.
- Jerry made it clear that throughout the process that the West End Housing CO-OP went through to complete their self-build homes they had many issues along the way such as: time constraints on the planning side, financial issues for housing to rent, acquiring the land, the cost of self-build housing.
- The housing co-op runs off a democratic model with every member as equal as the other. The co-op they run makes for a cheap living as they occupy their own properties they are their own landlords.
After this interview with Jerry, we found that the suitation of self- build housing is not as good as the other housings (like socail housing).Self-built housing is not the mainsteam housing in UK and most of the public are not familiar with this new type of housing. So we thought that engaging more people to have their own self-built housing can improve the current environment. In the next step, we try to create a new website for the West End Housing Co-op, because we found that the current website is not useful for the public to understand the process of self-built housing clearly. Therefore, in the new website we will provide more links for the public to contact with the Co-op. Also, we will try to create a bridge for both the experts and non-experts to join and cooperate in the design process of self-built housing.
Hi team, thanks for the feedback and reflection on the interview with Jerry. The interview reflections are a good start and provide good insight into the key needs and concerns that Jerry faces. Please do supply the interview schedule (W2 post) to outline the rational and the structure of questions you were asking and why.
In the final reflective log make sure you explain the rational on the basis of which you selected questions to post to Jerry and why Jerry is involved in the first place. Where does this kind of cooperative sit within the wider context of self-build is also another good question? Did she say anything about how many other organisations there are like hers in Newcastle? Also, you could try to bring in more detail on your conversation by expanding on every bullet point a bit more… especially how exactly the West End Coop engages with its residents and the neighbourhood? Did you not mention, they have an architect working for them on an on- and off-basis also.
I am wondering if it would be worth to do a separate blog post that looks a bit further into the development site that they’ve been looking at and / or considering to built on. It would help understand where they are based and the local context in which the West End Coop operate in.
As for the basis of your further choices, you could reflect more deeply on the interview and some of the background materials. I remember having some conversations within your group that demonstrated some of the difficulties of choosing a focus for the project and possibly revise the project goals, and it would be nice to have this reflected in your post.