Meera Bedi, Head of Development (New Build) at The Barnet Group looks back at the early days of Opendoor Homes
Opendoor Homes is a relatively new entity, registered as a Housing Association under the umbrella of The Barnet Group just over eight years ago. At that time local authorities were not doing much new development of their own, most new housing was being delivered by other housing associations and through planning permissions where developers are obligated to provide a certain amount of affordable homes on every project over ten homes. However, The Barnet Group saw itself as providing solutions to the Council’s housing needs, hence decided to take on a New Build function in order to build high quality and secure accommodation on Council owned estates through the newly formed Opendoor Homes. The new homes that Opendoor Homes developed would be at affordable rent and used to house families on the Council’s waiting list.
It made sense to look at Council owned estates and land as Councils cannot compete on the open market with developers who would be building for sale and therefore could afford to pay more for sites. Instead, we looked at underused and hidden areas such as abandoned garages which often encouraged anti-social behaviour and hidden wasteland areas.
This meant that Opendoor Homes built a wide variety of schemes depending on the opportunities presented. For example, one project might contain one or two bungalows for wheelchair users on an abandoned plot of land behind existing homes managed by Barnet Homes. Such a scheme not only provides suitable homes for those in priority need, but also provides increased security to the back of the existing houses. Both new and existing residents have been delighted with the results. Below are two photos of a such a scheme showing what was there previously and what was built for a family with a wheelchair user:
Before
After
In other places Opendoor Homes was more ambitious and bought out current leaseholders in order to re-provide more homes for the Council. The example below is where four flats were demolished in order to build fifty that are all let at affordable rent.
Before
After
These examples demonstrate the various routes both Opendoor Homes and the Council are taking in order to combat rising homelessness across Barnet.
Opendoor Homes is also trying to offer the Council a viable option to not selling off some of its sites. In order to be competitive, it is working with developers on mixed tenure schemes that deliver affordable rent, shared ownership and outright sale. By introducing the market sale element, Opendoor Homes is able to provide the Council with a site value plus an opportunity for some to get on the housing ownership ladder through shared ownership and provide a community that is more like Barnet’s streets, where homeowners live next door to social renters and those that rent privately. Some believe that these communities are more sustainable than developments of just one tenure type.
For the next few years Opendoor Homes has identified a programme of future schemes on Council land. Opendoor Homes has been successful in receiving substantial levels of grant from the GLA in order to deliver these projects for those in housing need so new residents can set down roots and, hopefully, support Opendoor Homes to do more in the future.
In addition, Opendoor Homes has taken on the buying of street properties in order to provide temporary and long term accommodation for homeless families. So far Opendoor Homes has bought around 455 existing properties and developed around 400 new homes.