The first affordable, ecological cohousing project in the U.K, LILAC addresses three major issues of our time: climate change, current financial challenges and community fragmentation.

The triple bottom line for business is people, planet, profit. What is it for housing? A group of people in Leeds, England have built a cohousing project that sets a triple-benefit bar for housing projects by prioritizing three core tenets: the environment, affordability, and community.

The first affordable, ecological cohousing project in the U.K, Low Impact Living Affordable Community (LILAC) addresses three major issues of our time: climate change, current financial challenges and the fragmentation of communities.

By building low environmental impact homes using a prefabricated straw bale building system, having homeowners pay a set 35 percent of their income for their housing, and focusing on building a strong, healthy community, LILAC is a model for cohousing of the future. Its residents and designers hope that it will be the first of many such projects.

Cohousing is nothing new but many cohousing projects are cost-prohibitive. LILAC demonstrates that there is an affordable way to live lightly on the planet and be connected with a community of people with shared values.

Six years in the making, LILAC is home to 20 households of inter-generational families who co-created the project from the ground up. As one LILAC resident says, “It’s a great example of ordinary people taking control of not only the way they live, but also their housing.”

The initial vision for LILAC

LILAC resident Paul Chatterton’s TEDx talk about the recently-completed project

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