A group of tenants has criticised a charitable foundation’s decision to increase rent as part of a policy update.
The tenant beneficiaries of the Richmond Foundation published the letter last week describing the charity’s rent changes as a “textbook campaign of institutional gentrification and working-class displacement”.
The south-west London-based Richmond Foundation has 66 residential properties, 56 of which are let as charitable housing.
The tenants in March told Third Sector that the charity was looking to charge some of them 70 per cent of current market rent.
The Richmond Foundation said one tenant faced a rent rise of 180 per cent after they were found to be no longer eligible for charitable housing, and the charity filed a serious incident report with the regulator in March following public scrutiny and media attention.
The Charity Commission in July said it was assessing concerns about the charity after tenants submitted a complaint.
The tenants said they had published the open letter because the charity’s chief executive Philip Barron has allegedly “explicitly informed us that any direct correspondence sent to you regarding our housing concerns will be intentionally ‘disregarded’.”
The letter says: “On 27 July this year, the tenant beneficiaries submitted a comprehensive submission of complaint to the Charity Commission.
“The data documents how the trust is actively dismantling affordable housing, forcing rent increases ranging principally between 50 per cent and 188 per cent without tenant consultation or agreement.
“The mathematics behind the foundation’s new criteria exposes a severe contradiction that completely undermines any progressive mandate.”
The Richmond Foundation said it rejected any suggestion that it had sought to silence tenants.
“Residents can raise concerns with the foundation and its trustees,” the statement said.
“We have simply asked that correspondence is not sent to trustees at their private home addresses but through the foundation’s appropriate channels.
“This respects the privacy of our volunteer trustees while ensuring concerns can still be heard.”
The letter says using a 240-year-old charitable trust to “extract inflated rents from the public purse” is not social justice, but instead “the exploitation of public infrastructure for corporate-style asset management”.
The charity said it took tenants’ concerns about changes to its charitable housing arrangements “very seriously” but it “does not accept a number of the claims made in the open letter”.
The statement said: “It is also incorrect to characterise our charitable rents as ‘inflated’.
“Rents are at Local Housing Allowance levels or below. For eligible tenants on standard charity rent, rent is set at 70 per cent of the property’s agreed market value, with additional charitable subsidy available where affordability is a concern.
“Significant increases are phased to reduce their impact.”
Eligible charitable housing tenants continue to receive subsidised rents, the charity said.
The Charity Commission has been asked for an update on its correspondence with the Richmond Foundation.