After reaching over £100,000 in investment, national body Student Co-op Homes (SCH) is extending its community share offer to raise more capital to invest in housing.
The share offer was launched in October to enable SCH to support the creation of more student housing co-ops, and grow an ethical alternative to the private rental market.
With the capital, SCH plans to buy properties and lease them to student housing co-ops that have been set up in Glasgow, Brighton and Nottingham. There are also plans to increase the number of beds offered in student housing co-ops from 120 to 10,000.
“Student co-op homes are a solution to the high-cost, poor-quality private rents that drive up debt and exacerbate poor health,” said SCH director Scott Jennings. “Today’s students in higher education face increasing pressure, debt and mental health challenges. Student housing co-ops can break that cycle.”
Housing co-ops are not-for-profit homes that students manage and maintain themselves. There are no landlords and everyone works together for mutual benefit. They are more affordable than private rented homes – which can reduce the financial pressure on students and make higher education accessible to more people.
SCH says this kind of housing provides the conditions to nurture new generations of resilient, healthy graduates who can enter the workforce and shape society from a stronger position.
Vivian Woodell, director of SCH, said: “We hit the £100,000 target for the share offer to succeed within 50 days. Now we’re ready to start working with our members to help put them in homes, but we think there’s more we can do.
“Whilst we’re ecstatic at the amount we’ve raised so far, we believe that we can look further, and work harder with this first offering to help invest in more homes and build co-operation.
“So we’re extending the share offer for another 8 weeks, to try and give every student a chance to get what they really want for Christmas – safe, secure homes that they really have a say in.”
Community share offers are a popular approach to raising finance, in which people and organisations invest large or small sums of money and become co-owners of vital enterprises – from affordable housing to community pubs to green energy.
The SCH community share offer is now live at studenthomes.coop. Follow the campaign on and Facebook.
