PRS Owners To House Grenfell Tower Families

A group of owners of London private-rented sector apartments have come together to help rehouse families who lost their homes in the recent fire at Grenfell Tower in West London.

Bravo Investment House Chief Operations Officer Roy Eden has been liaising with the housing team at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the British Property Federation. The latter sent out a letter on his behalf to members calling for professional landlords to put forward one or two units in their developments for anything between 12 weeks to 12 months at no cost.

Bravo is pulling together a database of available units and providing them to the housing team at the council. Thus far many of the families have been housed in hotel or hostel accommodation and the drive is aimed at providing homes for the families even if only on a temporary basis.
 
A source who has seen the letter told Bisnow: “Many of those involved do not want to publicise their involvement as they are simply doing it because it is the right thing to do. Seeing the sector coming together to provide part of a solution is heartening.”

So far the details of around 30 apartments in purpose-built PRS developments and other professionally managed blocks have been provided to the council, with the hope that others will come forward to provide space too.

According to the letter, corporate landlords with suitable space they are willing to provide free should contact the Bravo Investment office.

The official death toll for the fire at the tower block on 14 June in West London is 79, and is likely to rise further. It is not known how many people were living in the block at the time, with estimates ranging from 400 to 600.

The U.K. government and local authority have been working with the private sector to rehouse families as close to their previous homes as possible. Berkeley Homes accelerated the construction of social housing units at a block it is developing nearby and sold them to the local authority ahead of schedule.