Three of Assemble’s Turner Prize-winning Granby houses will be sold in Liverpool for £92,000 – with an ‘anti-gentrification clause’ as part of the bargain.
The 18-person architecture collective – who scooped the £40,000 art prize last year for the project, regenerating derelict houses in the city’s Toxteth neighbourhood – has completed eight houses for the the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust on Cairns Street.
Now five of the two-bedroom properties will be rented out and three will be sold with a clause stipulating they must always be resold below market value. Rates will be calculated using the median wage for the city’s workers (where the average house costs around £121,000).
‘The process from the beginning was always to try and make the houses affordable and ultimately for people based in the area,’ says Assemble member Anthony Engi-Meacock.
Would-be-buyers must demonstrate a connection to the immediate Toxeth neighbourhood in order to snap up the houses.
Engi-Meacock adds: ‘Once you take a house out of being primarily an asset, it makes a very different attitude to who buys it and why they want it. There’s a real value in that.’
Assemble is currently working on two more houses on the street, and Granby Four Streets CLT’s website says five properties will ultimately be offered for shared ownership.
The practice is also converting two houses that are beyond repair into a winter garden, while a derelict corner shop is being turned into a permanent workshop.
Buyers and renters can register their interest at the Granby Four Street CLT website.
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