Liverpool has the most cooperative housing outside of London. So why does no one know about them?

There’s not much that Sylvia French dislikes about her home in L8. Except the tiles. She certainly does not like the new white tiles, she tells me over a cup of tea. In the 82-year-old’s eyes, they bring a real “chip shop vibe”. 

When she moved into her two-bed bungalow off Crown Street in 1995, she was able to pick out her own colourful tiles, as well as cupboards for the kitchen. That’s because she was moving into a housing cooperative, a little-known alternative form of housing where homes are owned collectively, not privately. Tenants are their own landlords.

Sylvia looks back on those early years fondly. The community was tight-knit; cooperative members took collective decisions about rent, repairs, even who would move in and become their neighbours. But that familial atmosphere and autonomy is waning. Sylvia’s home has since been transferred to a housing association, removing that self-governance and leaving her to like or lump the furnishings. 

Remarkably, Liverpool still has the highest number of cooperatives outside London: an estimated 50 organisations operate across the city. In fact, Scouse cooperatives are amongst some of the oldest and largest in the country, with some, like Alt Street or Lodge Lane East, overseeing hundreds of houses. 

Currently, nearly 13,000 people across Liverpool are in dire need of social housing, as both the city and the country face a national housing and cost of living crisis. With their cheaper rents and opportunities for communal living, could co-ops pose an answer to the problems we now face? 

‘It’s mutuality in a nutshell’

If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you might think that the residents of Lodge Lane really like painting their doors red, or you might notice a high density of mosaic house numbers towards Hartington Avenue. In fact, these signify these houses as co-ops. 

“People seem to think every few months you have to go and camp out in a field with all these hippies,” says Ed Gommon, who has lived in a co-op house in Toxteth for more than a decade and regularly finds himself trying to clarify what they are to people he meets. “I’m constantly saying no it’s not like that, I’ve got my own house.” 

The majority of Liverpool’s housing cooperatives were established in the 1970s and 80s in response to the dire situation in the city: slumlords, depopulation, housing abandonment, and then the riots — which were partly a response to the housing situation in L8, as well as blame for lack of quality housing being erroneously directed at the neighbourhood’s diverse population. 

“So there was this uprising of people taking control of their own housing situations,” explains Kevin Wan, the finance director of North West Housing, a user-owned social business that manages many of the city’s co-ops. “Particularly after the riots in the 1980s — the local context was the catalyst for the development of cooperatives.” 

Hundreds of houses were transferred to co-ops at the time, because depopulation meant that there was an excess of property, albeit in awful condition. 

Many of the biggest cooperative projects — such as those around Lodge Lane — focused on refurbishment and the transfer of assets to the community. This was facilitated by a favourable policy environment, particularly Labour’s 1974 Housing Act, which provided generous grants to housing associations and cooperatives for refurbishment projects or new constructions. 

In general, housing cooperatives mean that the body as a whole owns the housing assets. Tenants are a member of the cooperative, sometimes as nominative shareholders, with democratic rights to governance but without benefiting financially. 

Instead, the rent paid into the cooperative goes into maintaining the houses. Any excess funds might be used to support the expansion of the cooperative. This structure entirely removes the profit motive and puts tenants in control — a radical change from the slumlords that used to dominate L8.

“It’s mutuality in a nutshell,” as Joe Corbett, a former member of the Weller Street cooperative, puts it. He also sees a further benefit in cooperatives that other forms of social or public housing fail to provide: agency. Co-ops are typically managed by a committee of tenants, ensuring that everyone has a say. But the scale of some of the larger cooperatives in Liverpool reduces the pressure on constant involvement and weekly organisational meetings. 

According to Matt Thompson, urban geographer and author of Reconstructing Public Housing: Liverpool’s Hidden History of Collective Alternatives, the cooperative movement in Liverpool democratised housing. It changed the focus from what the ‘experts’ (be that politicians, architects, developers or even city planners) wanted or thought would be beneficial, to what was important to residents and local people.

“There was no community-based strategy amongst the council at that time,” Corbett elaborates. “All they had was what I describe as demolition and dispersal: knock the streets down and scatter people wherever. You re-house them six, seven, eight miles away from their neighbourhood, family, or work.” 

Corbett was involved in something called “purpose-built cooperative projects”, which adopted cooperative principles but applied them to new housing for local people. This approach meant that tenants had a say in the design of their future homes, and could shape them in line with their priorities — quiet streets for kids to play out on, say, or front porches so that the door would open directly into the living room, saving space on a corridor. 

The contrast to council developments was stark. “Municipal housing lost its legitimacy,” Corbett says. “It was very badly designed, badly built, badly managed and badly maintained with an emphasis on high rise and high density. No soft landscaping ever.”

Designed by the community

Sylvia’s current home was the product of a new-build project between the community, the council, nearby housing associations as well as Liverpool University and Liverpool Cathedral Estate.

“A group of women from L8 wanted something better for themselves and their kids,” she explains, “they were doers, motivated by excitement, adrenaline and pride that they would build something for themselves. It was really cool to be out there with them.”

“Can you imagine the meetings with the architects?” she asks, laughing at the memory. "In the design and the build of the houses, all they knew from the very beginning was what they wanted from the space: we wanted it to look like a little village.”

Looking at the three cul-de-sacs owned by the cooperative, it certainly feels different from the surrounding developments — not least because they are all blessed with both a front and back garden, a rare feature in Kensington. Each house has its own unique character: brightly coloured front doors, deck chairs in the dappled shade of front gardens or, in anticipation of the weekend's celebrations, a cardboard cut-out of Alan Hansen barrelling through the front garden with strings of red and white bunting. 

 As we stroll around, Sylvia points to each home and tells me the history of the people who have lived there. We chat briefly to an original member, David, out in the sunshine helping to cut his neighbour’s grass. Before he moved into his co-op home, David was living in a private property with “slum conditions” — forced to place tubs on their living room floor to catch leaks. Sylvia points to another of the houses on the street, and tells me about Maria, who swapped houses with a neighbour to avoid leaving the beloved co-op when she wanted to downsize. 

The community spirit is so strong here that when the oldest of the original members, Carrie, was offered a care alarm to be installed, she decided against the idea. Instead, she asked for an alarm that would sound outside the house, trusting her neighbours would be round in a flash to help her in her time of need. 

Some of the architects involved in cooperative projects saw the potential of the new build approach that involved future residents in the design process with the architects. 

Peter Gommon, Ed’s father, was first involved with the cooperative movement himself as an architect working on refurbishments. His deep enthusiasm came from working on Hesketh Street, a new-build cooperative in Aigburth made up of around 40 units. Peter’s architecture firm designed the cooperative in collaboration with future residents, leaving him personally committed to working on more user-inclusive forms of housing development. 

New builds of this size were achievable because the plots of land were too small to be of interest to volume builders, but worked very well for smaller co-op projects. 

And what helped further? Most of the people involved in the Hesketh Street co-op came from the local area. “They weren't ideological, but they were very, very focused on staying together, delivering for each other, and they all had different needs,” Peter explains.

Cooperatives built in collaboration with residents were often constructed to a far higher standard than required by building codes — decisions taken at the time, like a few extra inches of insulation, kept the houses not just warmer, but also more economical. And the commitment to cyclical maintenance ensures that this remains the case in the long term. 

“You may ask, if the cooperative movement was such a good idea, what stopped it?” Joe Corbett says, taking the words out of my mouth. The broadly agreed consensus? The 1988 Housing Act, which eroded funding for development, cut off grant opportunities and semi-privatised the funding network. This left cooperatives subject to far less stable mortgage terms; they lost their appeal to residents.

Many of the early cooperatives turn fifty in the coming years. And despite the challenges faced by residents, the success and viability of cooperative housing in Liverpool is not in question — even if the sector’s momentum stalled. 

A community protected

“There’s this phrase that gets banded around loads now: ‘affordable rent’,” Michelle, living in one of Liverpool’s older cooperatives, tells me with a palpable sense of frustration. “You see it everywhere, but really it's relative to the marketplace — it’s not actually affordable.”  

She’s been living in a two-up-two-down property in one of the city’s oldest co-ops with her partner and young son for the past few years.

“When we moved back to Liverpool, we were just homeless,” she recalls. Any available housing was extremely competitive and far beyond what she and her partner could afford. “We were staying on the sofa in someone’s living room because we didn’t have anywhere to live.” 

She was recommended North West Housing services, and through them was able to find her current home. The rent is just over £400 a month, which also covers any maintenance work. It's a price that makes me wince — I was paying the same price for a bedroom in a five-bed house without a living room just two streets away. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Ed, a younger tenant of the same early cooperative as Michelle. “I’ve been out of the housing market for 13, 14, years now and everything I hear about the rental market is shit. It sounds fucking shit, so yeah, I’m not going there.” 

Yet low rental costs are not the only benefit of co-op housing. Low tenant turnover in Liverpool’s cooperative sector also provides a more stable community. 

“Cooperative ownership means that the houses can’t just get snapped up by private landlords, or turned into student housing,” Michelle says. “The community’s protected.” 

This lower turnover means that community interactions can develop over time, with close-knit relationships forged compared to areas with more transient student populations like Wavertree, where people seldom know their neighbour’s name.

On my old street in L8 — a mix of privately owned and cooperative housing — the relative sense of community emanating from the latter was clear. From various holiday well-wishes, to reprimands from neighbours whenever they’d spot me cycling without a helmet, the closeness was undeniable. 

“When we had the baby, people were bringing food over, my neighbourhood took care of me,” Michelle adds. “It was really beautiful – and I know that my son will grow up walking our streets and so many different people will know who he is, people will have an eye on him.”

As luck would have it, the first signs of renewal of Liverpool’s cooperative movement may be emerging. At North West Housing Services, Hayley Hulme, the incoming chief executive, views the growth and expansion of the sector as a priority. 

“One of the greatest strengths of our co-ops is their sustainability and longevity,” Hayley explains. “Many are still populated and led by the original members. It’s brilliant, in terms of commitment and passion.” Hayley does, however, harbour some misgivings: “I think some of the cooperatives have become a little bit more cautious and risk averse. It’s one of the things I’ve been grappling with.”  

Cooperative housing was one radical solution to the particular set of issues faced by communities in Liverpool. The long-term benefits of less than two decades of concerted cooperative building are still felt by the original members, newer generations and the wider communities, not least by removing vast swathes of housing stock from private hands — removing profit as a motive and providing genuinely affordable living. With enough will, could this be the case again?

“If we can start finding ways as a city, or even as a community,” Michelle considers, “to invest in more cooperative developments amongst all these empty houses, and if the council worked with North West Housing or an old co-op? It’s a no brainer.” 

We hope you enjoyed today’s piece by Ella. Let us know what you think about Liverpool’s cooperative housing in the comments below.