Organisations urged to bid for £38million housing pot

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Unmesh Desai

City & East London Assembly Member, Unmesh Desai, has called on local groups to bid for a share of a new £38million community-led housing fund.

Mr Desai has praised the scheme, launched by City Hall, and said that it “will put local people at the centre of tackling our housing crisis”.

Over the next four years, the London Community Housing Fund is set to deliver 500 community-led, affordable and social-rented homes across the Capital.

The funding pot will be shared among successful projects to enable resident groups to have direct involvement and oversight in the building and delivery of new homes, through co-operatives and community land trusts.

The pool is one of the measures being taken by City Hall to kickstart the building of 116,000 “genuinely affordable” homes by 2022.

However, City Hall modelling shows that the Greater London Authority still requires an injection of an additional £1.8billion per year from the government to meet demand for affordable homes in the Capital.

Mr Desai said: “Though a small part of London’s overall housing mix, with the right support community-led housing schemes can play an important role in delivering the genuinely affordable homes we need.

“I am delighted that this new funding will put local people at the centre of tackling our housing crisis, and I would urge as many community groups as possible to get their bids in.

“Despite the wide range of measures being taken by City Hall, there is a substantial funding deficit that the government needs to urgently fill if we are to meet the full scale of the demand for homes in London.”