Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation – Affordable Housing Challenge Grant for 81 High Street Preston

In late 2020 Northern Community CareWorks in partnership with Property Collectives Advisory received an Affordable Housing Challenge 2020 grant from the Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation (LMCF).

The grant allowed us to conduct a feasibility study on Northern Community's 81-91 High St Preston site, exploring options to deliver a 100% affordable housing project of circa 80 apartments on a leasehold land basis.

Our challenge was to arrive identify a sustainable model to deliver as much affordable housing as possible, while providing new facilities and some residual income for Northern Community CareWorks to underpin their critical community focused social mission activities. These activities are targeted to provide relief and assistance to people in need, focusing on at risk and/or disdvantaged members of the community.

The vision we explored included:

• around 80 apartments comprising a broad range from studio apartments through to large family or cluster apartments for complex living arrangements
• on site housing for pastoral care support
• a guest house with priority for visiots or guests and flexibility for commercial use
• a flexible congregation space which can also provide for community events and support current food relief and community meals programs
• a "neighbourhood resilience hub" to provide safe, thermally comfortable refuge during extreme weather events
• a modern opportunity shop including furniture repair workshop and value-add recycled products
• a community workshop and makerspace
• a commercial kitchen for broader community or small business with potential to support a social enterprise cafe

Click here to read our Final Report on the outcomes of the feasibility study.

We are now working with Northern to form a joint venture with a Community Housing Provider to deliver the project.

The Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation Grant has been a critical enabler to explore how we could create an exemplar affordable housing project on the site.

Thanks in particular to Erin Dolan from LMCF, David Toscano from Northern Community CareWorks, Andy Fergus, Katherine Sundermann , Craig Westblade from C3S Consulting, Fieldwork architects, and Tract for making this project happen.

Community meals hosted at Northern Community CareWorks