I mean, it's not exactly the poverty line, but I can understand him not being delighted the deal includes subsidising the maintenance of facilities for the exclusive use of his wealthy neighbours.
The whole thing sounds about as financially responsible as putting a large down payment on a leased car.
In recent years it has arguably been too lucrative to be a landlord which has pushed back against home ownership and pushed up values; that's changing a little bit. Shared ownership schemes are a band-aid over a more general problem.
All of these schemes do that, because they address the housing market from the government-preserving invariant condition of "We can't ever let the market drop, we'd be voted out in a second"
So they come up with schemes and financial products to allow more people to access home ownership in some form or other without impacting property values. See also stamp-duty holidays. More or less by definition these things increase demand and push house prices up further.
It's insanity. It's also massively to my benefit as a homeowner who is about to leave the UK...
It's not "common", but it's becoming increasingly necessary for some as prices rise far beyond what most people can afford, even on a high-interest mortgage. You're far more likely to see it in Central London than anywhere else in the UK, though.
Do people want to do it? No. It's a situation forced on people by property owners and the housing market. "Financial responsibility" can't be everyone's first priority when talking about housing.
FTA:
> They stress that the affordable housing blocks are managed by Peabody and Optivo, which “had the option to choose which facilities they wanted to buy into for their residents”.
> Spokespeople for Peabody, Optivo and L&Q all say that it is never their intention to make any community feel excluded, and that their policies do not include access to the private amenities in order to keep the service charges to a minimum.
Embassy gardens is very fancy compared to how most Londoners live.
If I had the money for flats there, I'd prefer to spend it almost anywhere else in London - either somewhere smaller somewhere with more character, or something much larger further out. I can't imagine the conditions that'd make me consider living there.
A lot of the developments along the river (both sides) that stretch will end up with significant modifications over the coming decades, as so many of those areas are just soulsuckingly dead and awful.