Mayoral Question Time this morning has again promoted the idea of introducing Community Land Trust's at the Olympic Park.
The Trusts are non-profit making property trusts, popular in the US and Scandinavia, which aim to benefit the surrounding community by ensuring the long-term availability of affordable housing.
Andrew Boff asked the mayor whether he supported Baroness Ford's interest in the idea of installing a Community Land Trust at the Olympic Park.
The mayor was clearly supportive of the initiative but accepted Boff's warning that there was a danger that they could produce closed communities if managed poorly.
Johnson added: "We want to encourage CLTs for the community with a wide range of family housing and the rest of it."
There is clearly momentum behind the idea of using the Olympic Park as a kind of test-bed for CLTs in the UK although of course Ford and Johnson have been promoting the idea for some time.
Here they are talking in June 2009 at a London Assembly meeting:
Margaret Ford: I would like particularly to pick up the point about community land trusts. I am very interested in the concept of community land trusts. I spent two or three years some time ago working with two or three different organisations at that time, predominantly rural organisations, who are very keen that affordable housing stayed in that sector and that houses that were once affordable did not then get lost to people who needed to access affordable housing. So if, at the end of the evening, the lady who mentioned that would like to talk to me about it, I would be very keen to talk about the opportunity to try and do a community land trust or some element of that on the park.
Boris Johnson: I would just add to what Margaret said. I also share her enthusiasm for the community land trust model because it seems to me that in all the evidence from where it has been tried in America and Scandinavia, it produces a real sense of community, people's sense of obligation to the neighbourhood, and there is a real noticeable impact in terms of the upkeep of houses and, of course, they have been better looked after; the neighbourhood looks better and it is safer to live in. I just say one thing about the affordable component of the Olympic village: people should realise that these would be very good looking buildings, designed and built to a very, very high specification. But there will also be a high proportion of family-sized units with 3 or 4 bedrooms. It is absolutely vital we have a very high proportion of family sized units in the Olympic village.
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