BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Lemon Leopard was established in 2020 with a simple guiding principle: we are all related.

Our lives, opportunities, and flourishing are bound together not only with human kin, but with the wider living world.

Yet in practice, opportunity is often determined by circumstance. Access to housing, education, and security is uneven, leaving many excluded not for lack of talent or effort, but because the structures of support simply aren’t there.

Lemon Leopard is a Charitable Community Benefit Society, meaning we exist for the benefit of the wider community, not for private profit. Decisions are made by, for, and with members ensuring that our projects directly respond to the obstacles communities face in living from a place of interrelatedness with each other, their neighbourhoods, and the wider environment.

Our founders came from very different, often marginalised communities, each having faced barriers in housing, education, or finance.

Initially, these struggles seemed separate, but they soon recognised a shared truth: the systems that closed doors for one group closed them for others too.

From this insight, Lemon Leopard was born with a commitment to turn interrelatedness into practice and to create structures where solidarity replaces inheritance.

Our model has grown not from theory alone, but from radical co-production with members across London, who help identify the places, assets, and opportunities that can be reimagined for collective benefit.

Between 2019 and 2023, supported by Community Led Housing London, the Greater London Authority, the National Lottery Communities Fund, and LandAid, we delivered a pilot demonstrating our approach.

• Shoe Factory: Identified by community members as a derelict site with potential. They envisioned a common ground for cultural and social activity on the ground floor, with reimagined housing above. 
• Tall Tales: Tested the Rent-into-Equity model in a small-scale residential project, proving both concept and viability.

The pilot provided evidence of social and financial feasibility, and built the business case for Rent-into-Equity. While successful, the site was too small to support a full housing community offering vital learning for the next step.

London faces a severe housing crisis: rents are unaffordable for a large portion of the population, homeownership is increasingly reserved for those with family wealth, and welfare costs are rising as people rely on housing benefit to meet basic needs.

Key challenges:

• Deposit barriers: Many prospective homeowners cannot save enough for a deposit without family support.
• Home ownership depends on access to the “Bank of Mum and Dad.”
• Renters pay high costs but build no stake.
• Rising welfare costs: With rents far exceeding average wages, the state subsidises the affordability gap, increasing public expenditure.
• Wealth inequality deepens with each generation.

Without intervention, these factors perpetuate intergenerational inequality, reduce social mobility, and lock people into insecure renting.

Lemon Leopard delivers housing through a federated co-operative structure:

At the block level:

• Independent, fully mutual housing co-operatives.
• Resident-members govern democratically.
• Co-ops manage daily operations (maintenance, community agreements, selecting new members).
• Equity accrues collectively in the co-op, not the CCBS.

At the federation level (the CCBS):

• Holds legal ownership and mortgages while finance is outstanding.
• Issues tenancy agreements and manages compliance.
• Supports and enables growth of new co-ops.

Long-term:

Once mortgages are repaid, assets are transferred to the co-op on a long leasehold, ensuring permanent resident ownership while the CCBS continues to safeguard the federation.