Affordable London homes
The importance of affordable homes in London was highlighted in a recent article in the Guardian featuring a resident of a property owned by Dolphin Living.
The article focused on a luxury development at Millbank Quarter, where apartments are being marketed from £1.75m for a one-bedroom flat up to a penthouse at £35m. 13 of the units in the development however are owned by Dolphin Living (a trading name of Dolphin Square Charitable Foundation) and rented to workers in Westminster at an intermediate rent.
Kwame Agyekum, who earns £34,500 a year as a business management officer for the House of Commons, pays £862.42 a month to live in one of these units. Speaking to the Guardian, Agyekum said “I’m very, very, very fortunate to not only have an affordable rent scheme, but in such an incredible location and in such an incredible building… I couldn’t be more grateful.”
Olivia Harris, the chief executive of Dolphin Living, said: “We believe that more needs to be done to support the delivery of affordable housing for workers on modest incomes, particularly as we look to the city’s recovery post-pandemic and how we attract and retain key workers in central London.”
“Over the last two years many key workers had to take lengthy commutes into the city while so many homes in the centre of capital sat empty. The pandemic has made us sit back and reconsider what we need from housing in London; it’s glaringly apparent that we need more affordable housing for key workers near to their places of work.”
Dolphin Living raised £25m through an RCB bond issue in 2017.