The company helping Hastings residents fight gentrification

Thanks to rising house prices, people in the coastal town are struggling to afford homes. Hazel Sheffield speaks to Living Rents, a firm ensuring they aren’t pushed out forever

Adam Clements and John Brunton in Rock House, a former office block that has been transformed into a living and working space with capped rent (Hazel Sheffield)

When Felicity Laurence and her husband Richard Wistreich moved to Hastings five years ago, they were drawn by a strong community of artists and the town’s alternative ethos. But as out-of-towners, they were only too aware that by moving, they were contributing to gentrification that was destroying that same spirit.

So when Dr Laurence and Professor Wistreich encountered White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures, a local developer dedicated to creating livable and workable spaces at capped rents, they saw it as the perfect way to invest in affordable housing for “the sort of people who give Hastings the character it has ... who are not interested in money but need somewhere to live”. Laurence invested a substantial amount of her retirement funds into Heart of Hastings, the land trust that holds the developer’s land and properties, at a 3 per cent fixed interest return, which has gone towards building a portfolio of properties that now includes a derelict newspaper building called the Observer Building into a living and working space with 15 flats.

The flats will be let out by a subsidiary of the developer called Living Rents, a letting agent which prioritises people on housing benefit and with other barriers to renting. It has over 100 people on its waiting list, and 100 per cent of its current tenants claim housing benefit.

“I had just retired, and I couldn’t think of anywhere better to put my funds,” Laurence says. “It was entirely ideological. That’s what’s nice about Hastings, this community of people who have other values rather than how much money people have.”

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House prices in Hastings and neighbouring St Leonards have gone up around 30 per cent since 2015, compared to around 25 per cent nationally. Concern about this locally has skyrocketed during the pandemic as people “down from London”, or what locals call DFLs, have abandoned the city for the coast. Demand for properties in Hastings rose 56 per cent when lockdown ended in the first two weeks of June 2020, according to Rightmove, faster than anywhere else in the south, fuelled by government incentives that made properties up to £500,000 exempt from stamp duty.

Meanwhile, homelessness in Hastings is rising. Those with barriers to renting, such as people on housing benefits or with criminal convictions, are finding it harder than ever to get a place to live. Hastings Borough Council says homelessness will cost it over £1m in additional costs in the next two years.

“Hastings is not affordable for local people,” says John Brunton, general manager at White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures. “There’s a massive demand for affordable housing. There’s still a huge stigma renting to people on housing benefit and despite what the law says, they are still being excluded.”

We don’t want to push up prices. When we heard about the investment scheme we thought, we do absolutely want to support this and be part of the solution

It is unlawful and discriminatory for landlords to put blanket bans on renting property to benefit claimants under the terms of the 2010 Equality Act, a judge ruled as recently as June 2020. In 2019, online property listing sites Rightmove and Zoopla banned the term “No DSS” – or Department of Social Security, an old fashioned term referring to people claiming housing benefit. Nonetheless, private landlords are more likely to avoid tenants claiming housing benefit, fearing that letting their property to people on benefits is too risky, studies have shown, despite a 2019 YouGov survey of renters receiving housing benefit showing that 95 per cent of respondents were not behind on their rent.

“People on housing benefit are seen as unworthy,” Brunton says. “There’s still this idea that they are scroungers.” Living Rent has to pay more in housing insurance because it lets to people on benefits, plus it has to submit details of the benefits its tenants claim to the insurers. But once a tenant has a flat with Living Rents, they can keep it for as long as they need it, Brunton says. “It’s in our ethos, we’re not going to proactively evict someone,” he says. “We would never evict someone under Section 21.” Under Section 21, landlords can end tenancies and evict tenants with just two months notice – although there is currently a ban on such evictions because of the coronavirus lockdown that ends on 31 May 2021.

House prices have gone up around 30 per cent since 2015 (iStock)

Living Rents is now working with Hastings Council to house more difficult cases, as well as with local support agencies, especially those that house older people. “Often they have heartbreaking stories,” Brunton says. “That’s what drives people to contact us.”

Adam Clements has rented a flat through Living Rents since 2016. “Renting anywhere – in Hastings or London – you never feel settled, you always feel like you are a month away from homelessness,” he says. He moved into Rock House, a former office block which has been transformed by White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures into offices, a co-working space and 15 flats. Tenants are encouraged to have a say in the way the building is run through a shared online portal and a decision-making platform called Loomio, which means everyone gets a vote on changes.

“It's unlike anywhere else,” Clements says. “The mix of work and living spaces makes it unique on a front-facing level. The rent is capped, and that is very reassuring. But the main thing is the relationship I have with them. It doesn’t feel like a normal landlord-tenant relationship.”

Clements works freelance in video and animation and has bipolar disorder. The combination of a poor credit history and not having regular work means he would likely fail some of the checks for privately rented accommodation. At Rock House, when he fell behind on rent, Brunton sat him down and helped him write a budget to get him back on track. “It was about sorting me out first and then recovering the debt, and that was amazing,” Clements says. “Because when I had missed a couple of months I felt scared to say it and I felt like I didn’t know how it would go down.

Read more: The artists moving out of London in the wake of the pandemic

White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures has just handed the keys to the builders to renovate a former newspaper building next to Rock House, which will also contain a mixture of office space and flats to be let through Living Rents. Meanwhile, Living Rents has started working with its first private landlord, Will Stevens. Stevens, who came to Hastings from London six years ago and now runs a successful cafe on the seafront, is one of the local people behind Changing Hastings, a dialogue between renters, landlords, locals and newcomers about gentrification. In January, 150 people attended a Changing Hastings event on Zoom to discuss gentrification in Hastings, including recent house price rises, second-home ownership, homelessness and the growing number of Airbnb properties on the market. Stevens says: “The conversation was about acknowledging everyone's implication in the changes taking place, and asking whether, as a small, independent-minded community, we have any collective agency to affect these changes.”

Laurence agrees that although there is a category of people who are viewed suspiciously because they come down with money, those same people have an opportunity to invest in White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures to counterbalance the impact of their presence. “We don’t want to push up prices,” she says. “When we heard about the investment scheme we thought, we do absolutely want to support this and be part of the solution, not the gentrification.”