The need for community housing in Hastings has never been greater. The time to do it was ‘already by now’. Luckily we’ve been getting on with it, but there’s a lot more at stake. The Hastings Commons community land trust was the result of a series of local meetings back in 2016 asking “is gentrification happening? If so, is it a problem? If so, is there anything we can do about it?”. The answer we came up with was to bring property into community ownership and cap the rents forever at 1/3 of average local income. We now have 12 flats at Living Rents or below, but it’s very far from enough.