About us
| Set up in 2006, Local Space Housing Association turns Housing Benefit into bricks and mortar to add 500 affordable homes a year to the social housing stock in London's East End. It has done this through a partnership with the London Borough of Newham that changes temporary housing into permanent homes for homeless people. The Association buys ten properties a week on the open housing market with a Royal Bank of Canada loan of £200 million and a Housing Corporation grant of £25 million. The homes are brought up to the Government's Decent Homes Standard before they are let to tenants nominated by Newham. Housing Benefit services the loan through tenants' rents. Providing extra permanent homes makes more sense than paying huge sums of public money to private landlords in Housing Benefit (£600 million a year in London alone) for temporary accommodation with no long-term social benefits. Local Space supports the Government's sustainable communities agenda by developing mixed-tenure communities, filling empty homes and contributing to neighbourhood regeneration. A registered not for profit charity, the Association's activities are monitored by the Housing Corporation and the Audit Commission. Savills, a leading property services group with many years' experience of working with housing associations, independently monitors all Local Space property buying activities to ensure probity and value for money is achieved. To date, it has given the Association a clean bill of health.
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