A Brighton home

Welcome to our crowd funding page, thanks for looking!

We are a married couple with a cat in Brighton, and we would love to buy our own home. To do this, we need your help to fundraise for a deposit.

Here are a few reasons why you might want to support us:

• Hospitality is really important to us. We love having people to stay, and are very happy hosting both friends and strangers. In the past, we have housed: asylum seekers, students, protesters, and anyone else needing a bed – for both short and long term stays.
• As part of this, we are currently housing a Ukrainian family fleeing the war: Anna and her 13-year-old daughter.
• Stephen has ME and long COVID and so hasn’t worked for over a year. Before then, he worked part-time with spells of unemployment due to his health. This means that we haven’t been able to save up for a deposit. He has recently (finally) started receiving benefits, so thankfully he has money to live on, but no more.

We are currently renting a 3-bed home in Kemptown which we can’t afford. Anna and her daughter have one room while Stephen and I have the other. The other bedrooms is my study (I work from home part-time), and has a single bed which we use for guests. Currently, when we have more than 1-2 guests, Stephen and I sleep in a tent in the garden so that guests can have our bed as well as the bed/floor in my study.

We would be happy to downsize to two bedrooms if it made a mortgage affordable. I am paid enough to cover monthly mortgage repayments, as long as it is less money each month than our current rent, which shouldn’t be too difficult.

Why do we want to own a home?

• Rent is so expensive. It is unjust that rent is more expensive than buying; and that we are prevented from buying just because we cannot save for a deposit.
• We want a permanent home that we can settle into, make our own, and be always able to host people in. Being settled somewhere will help with Stephen’s health, since worrying about money is something that takes a lot of energy from him.
• Anna and her daughter would love to stay with us for the foreseeable future if possible, and we would love to be able to give them some security. Since we can’t afford our current rent, we might need to ask them to leave if Stephen and I rented somewhere else without room for them.
• We love Brighton! We want to make it our forever home, since we have good friends here and we love the city and the sea so much.

How much money do we need to raise?

• We are debt-free but have no savings. The bigger a deposit we can raise, the more space we will have for hosting strangers and friends.
• The least amount we need is £10,000. We might be able to get a 5%-deposit mortgage with this amount of a deposit.
• 2-bed apartments with a bit of outdoor space (eg a balcony) and within walking distance of the sea (I swim before work) are around £250-350k. Hence a 10% deposit would be £25-35k.

What can we offer in return?

• If you donate more than £200, you can come to stay with us for 2 nights in Brighton (or Hove, depending where we can buy), with your partner and children. We will make sure that we have room for you. Brighton is a great city with amazing vibes and is of course by the lovely seaside.

Thanks for reading and for considering donating to our home.

Jenny (Jelly), Stephen, Anna and her daughter, and Satine the cat xxx