Two Up Two Down
Two Up Two Down is the new name for Homebaked Community Land Trust – a community-led organisation rooted in the neighbourhoods of Anfield and Everton in Liverpool.
We started with a simple belief: that we all deserve to live well. And a genuine curiosity about what that means – and how we experience it – in our local neighbourhood. For us, that means warm, healthy and affordable homes, good jobs, quality local shops and services, and welcoming spaces to get together, share and learn.
Good quality, affordable housing is a global issue, but it looks different depending on where you are. Here, it's made harder by previous regeneration attempts that rarely centred the people who live here. We are losing family homes: the combination of low property values and our proximity to Liverpool Football Club means a developer can snap up a house and make more money from an Airbnb on match days than renting to a family. We don’t accept this and are focused on showing there’s a viable alternative – another way of doing things where we set our own bar.
Two Up Two Down is a community land trust (CLT): an organisation run by and for local people that buys and protects property to develop affordable housing, workspaces and community assets. That property remains in trust permanently, keeping it genuinely affordable for future generations. Because, when the community is the landlord, money and power stays local, and is invested back into the neighbourhood.
Our story begins in 2010, when artist Jeanne van Heeswijk – who remains involved in our work and is the inspiration for our new name – asked how the people of Anfield could take the development of their neighbourhood into their own hands. For years, our community had been subject to top-down regeneration attempts: homes bulldozed and our community scattered – without any meaningful input from people who live locally. Things had to change.
In 2012 an internationally-backed campaign helped us save our iconic local bakery building from demolition and renovate the space. We supported the bakery and our neighbour Kitty’s Launderette to start up and thrive on our high street, and created a home for four people above the bakery – secure, affordable, and rooted in the community we'd worked so hard to build.
For a number of years we pursued the purchase and renovation of the empty properties next to the bakery building, as a springboard for community-led regeneration, before the council's priorities changed and they sold it to a private developer. It was a setback, not a defeat. Our ambition has always been about the neighbourhood, not a single block – and that’s clearer to us now than ever. We want to buy back Anfield and regenerate the neighbourhood house by house, brick by brick, keeping investment where it belongs.
A lot of what we do is about the glue (or in our case, the mortar!) – the invisible infrastructure that places need to thrive. Litter picks, markets, local festivals, horticulture training, advice on keeping homes warm: the things that make a place cleaner, greener, healthier and happier. Without them, our wellbeing suffers. With them, communities start to shape their own futures, build confidence and generate wealth locally.
Two Up Two Down takes its name from the terraced houses that characterise these streets – the homes that have been the foundation of this community for generations. This is where it starts – after all, home is a basic human right. But our ambition goes far beyond four walls – we want everyone in our community to be able to live well here.