PAST

Almost all of us in the beginning had taken a permaculture design course run by Steve Jones of the Sector39 Permaculture Design Academy and it is him we have to thank for educating us on the subject of housing co-operatives and how they function.

He had us imagine being able to manage the place we live – being able to set the rent levels, improve and decorate and have a say about just about everything that happens in the community. He had us imagine being able to create an intentional community with whatever ethos drove us at front and centre. And we did just that. We put permaculture and community at the heart of our practice and our whole reason for being. And, thanks to Steve, we ended up here, at Tan y fron (tan uh vron).

We’d seen Tan y fron up for sale by auction back in 2010 and decided that we could not form a proper co-operative (takes around four weeks) and get a mortgage offer with which to bid in the very small amount of time available before the auction date (around two weeks). We looked, we liked, but we had to let it go. It wasn’t until one of us was in the estate agent’s the Monday after the auction (looking at another property) that we found out Tan y fron hadn’t sold and, if we could offer the guide price (£175,000) the owners would accept. We raced up to look at the place, two of us deciding to put the offer in on the phone as we could always withdraw and then letting everyone else know what had been done. Could we manage to scrape the money together? There was some tense calculations but then we decided yes, between us we could do it – we were in the hugely privileged position to be able to pay cash for the place.

This, dear reader, is NOT how it usually happens. Usually, the co-op would form, they would secure a mortgage offer, then they would go looking for a place, etc. We were ridiculously lucky in that some of us had sold property and had enough resources between us to do it. Our offer was accepted, our solicitor decided what cash percentage each of us has contributed and so we collectively became the owners of Tan y fron. From there, we now had to work backwards.

We applied to form the Tanyfron Housing Co-operative Ltd using Catalyst Collective, a worker’s co-op who support the development of co-operatives, collectives and community-led housing. Once our Industrial & Provident Society was formed and official, we got back in touch with the solicitor and handed over Tan y fron to Tanyfron Housing Co-operative Ltd., in exchange for loanstock – a type of investment usually used to kick-start enterprises such as this one. But, as already mentioned, we did everything backwards and while the group of us has been living here since November, 2010, we weren’t actually officially a co-op until December 2010. Just a blip, but an important one!

So the upshot was that we were legally sorted out, but as for the buildings, the grounds, the woodland, there remained a huge journey ahead. The house barely had electric, barely any rooms that were nicely habitable, we had no running water, no toilets, no bathrooms, no cooker and we were heading into the coldest December for a hundred years along with record snowfalls that winter to boot. But these are the conditions under which community thrives and grows and is tested and we’re still here, twelve years on!