Forty years ago, a small group of students and university dropouts living rough had a novel idea. What if they pooled meagre savings and jobless benefits for a modest terrace house, rather than rent a run-down flat?<\/p>\n
They raised a deposit for a \u00a33,200 mortgage on a neglected two-bedroom property in the Victorian terraces of west Hull<\/a>, running down to the quayside of a once-thriving fishing port, from where boats used to trawl the north Atlantic.<\/p>\n Their enthusiasm for punk bands \u2013 the Clash, the Specials and New Model Army \u2013 belied a determination to work the system rather than fight the class war in a city evoked by the late poet Philip Larkin, former University of Hull librarian: \u201cSpires and cranes \u2026 ships up streets.\u201d<\/p>\n So began the ultimate counter-revolution for a group, driven by what Martin Newman, a founder, called \u201cgreen, practical anarchism\u201d. After largely teaching themselves bricklaying, joinery and plumbing, they asked a simple question: in solving their own accommodation crisis, why not help others sleeping rough?<\/p>\n A workers\u2019 cooperative was thus born as Giroscope \u2013 fittingly named after the ubiquitous giro benefit cheques of the high unemployment 1980s. Pooling these partly funded their first acquisition and laid the foundations for what is now a multimillion-pound charitable social enterprise, headed by the tireless Newman.<\/p>\n Their tentative steps into property development soon became a campaign for more housing renewal in a long-neglected inner-city area in a country with some of the oldest housing stock in Europe: more than a third of English homes, for instance, are well over 80 years old.<\/p>\n Martin Newman in St Matthew\u2019s church. Giroscope is due to open the Grade 2-listed building as a workspace and social centre for the community. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n But the group\u2019s inspiration emerged from the unlikeliest ideology: Thatcherism. Deregulation of the mortgage market early in the late PM\u2019s premiership led to looser borrowing, with banks giving loans alongside building societies. \u201cShe was encouraging people to make money, so we hatched this plan to organise and achieve rather than bring down capitalism first,\u201d says Newman, pragmatic punk turned social property developer. \u201cCredit became easy. Lots of funny money \u2013 sort of like the wild west. Plenty of brokers, \u2018Jack the lads\u2019, happy to fill in a form on our behalf. So why not work the system?\u201d<\/p>\n Soon their \u201cborrow to rebuild and renew\u201d philosophy had gained credibility with the Co-op bank and other lenders \u2013 and their property portfolio grew. A big break came after 2012 when they were given \u00a31m from the coalition government\u2019s short-lived empty homes community grant programme \u2013 and, on the back of that, they borrowed \u00a31.2m to buy and renew scores of repossessed properties. Newman says: \u201cA bit of quality in the streets began to show people who\u2019d long felt forgotten that someone did care, that we\u2019re in this for the long haul.\u201d<\/p>\n By judiciously borrowing, Giroscope now has assets of at least \u00a310m, 23 staff \u2013 housing professionals, building specialists, case workers \u2013 and a wide-ranging property portfolio, underpinned by 140 properties housing 350 people, from terrace houses to small blocks of flats. It now embraces two centres for small businesses, a work training and construction arm delivering scores of new jobs, shops for rent, a vegetable smallholding for teaching gardening skills, a bike repair and sale business, and PC and laptop repair outlet.<\/p>\n Martin Newman outside St Matthew\u2019s church in Hull. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Most importantly, it has concrete plans \u2013 literally \u2013 to continue growing. A newly opened community centre and enterprise hub in a converted 19th-century church is its latest \u2013 and largest \u2013 project so far. Built in 1870, the creamy white and red brick of St Matthew\u2019s<\/a>, south-facing roof covered in solar panels, closed in 2013. Subsequently offered for sale by the Church of England, and lying empty for five years, Giroscope paid next-to-nothing for a church with the tallest steeple in Philip Larkin<\/a>\u2019s Hull of spires. At a restoration cost of \u00a31m, it has now become an illuminated beacon for the charity, prominent on the skyline.<\/p>\n Inside the centre, plans for a winter garden and events space in the former West Park Palace cinema nearby underline its ambition. Scaffolding around the building will go up next week, as a prelude to a renewal programme costing at least \u00a31.2m. Funding, it hopes, just might be in place for Giroscope\u2019s forthcoming 40th birthday.<\/p>\n Looking back, Rob Amesbury, the only other active founder of the original cooperative, who helps manage the charity\u2019s housing portfolio, can only reflect on the \u201crun-down neighbourhood\u201d they encountered in the mid-1980s \u2013 and its transformation today. He says: \u201cYou could feel it going downhill \u2013 houses in a poor condition, a lot of elderly people, buy-to-let landlords moving in trying to make a killing \u2026 now it\u2019s much more settled.\u201d<\/p>\n