I had an exciting opportunity to join a study tour along with about 30 Canadian non-profits. We ventured to London, England where we toured and learned from some of London’s largest social housing providers about how they operate. I was floored by the size of some of the providers – some owned more than one hundred thousand units along with amenities such as community centres, parks and gardens. Many offered unique programs and wellness supports for their residents. I took a few pictures of three housing providers. 

Located across the street from Westminster Abby, Peabody Estates is a 162-year-old social housing organization. They operate about 100,000 units across London – about 40% are social housing, about 20% are market rent and the remainder are shared ownership. They use the revenue from their market rent units to continue buying properties and fund maintenance. They also own 1,200 hectares of open green space, 14 of which are nature conservations. They believe strongly in their community’s well-being and have advisors to help with accessing benefits and a food hub where residents can purchase low-cost food. Their facilities have beautiful shared spaces including well-being cafes to combat social isolation.  

Poplar HARCA is an award-winning housing and regeneration community association in east London. They own and manage over 10,000 homes within a 5 km radius. Half of their flats are larger units for families. With partners, Poplar HARCA is leading a £2.5 billion place-shaping program including new homes, education, healthcare, faith buildings, business and community spaces and they invest about £4 million each year helping people into work and training, providing state of the art creative spaces for young people, initiatives to improve health and well-being, events, networking and affordable workspace. Pictured above is an illustration of their youth facility “spotlight” that includes a theatre, game room, gym and is staffed with doctors, nurses, therapists and sexual health professionals. It was designed through the advice of a youth board.    

A social purpose driven organization, L&Q owns 105,000 social housing units. The needs of their residents are their primary focus, and they invest in their homes, local communities and services. They have different types of housing depending on incomes and stages of life, for private rent, shared ownership and outright sale and a subsidiary for supported living. All profits are reinvested into helping their residents. This year they have earned $278 million in revenue from new home sales. All surplus funds go back into the development of more housing and amenities.​ 

Here are some interesting facts about social housing in London: 

18% of the UK’s total housing stock is social or affordable housing (In Canada this number is 3.5% and there’s even less in Calgary). 

The high rate of social housing is attributed to the rebuilding efforts undertaken by the UK government after World War 2, along with policy changes in the late eighties that introduced private finance or ‘mixed’ funding for housing associations. Several local councils transferred their social housing stock to community housing associations.​ 

In 1998, social housing associations were given new powers to borrow from the private sector, as grant funding declined. This gave them a competitive advantage over local authorities.​ 

I was so pleased to have had the opportunity to learn about social housing in the UK.