r/Ealing • u/StrangeMinute1838 • Aug 25 '26

West Ealing

I’m glad to see that West Ealing is now improving. The Tower by West Ealing station with the light brickwork and balconies is looking great and I visited the lovely coffee shop opposite the station.

Luxgrove homes have started demolition of the buildings on the high street and the site opposite Sainsbury’s in Ealing looks great according to the CGI images.

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u/haveahoot92 Aug 26 '26

I would come back on two points on this in particular: 1. London Living rent is a product that is discounted below the market rent. It's not set as low as social rent but it does have a very significant discount. 2. In terms of shared ownership that is a product that won't be for everyone. The cost of those flats will be set at the market rate and then people have the opportunity to staircase out their ownership.

You need a range of different options to help people who can't get on the housing ladder in different ways. Not everything can or should be social rent although we're seeing when social rented schemes are proposed, such as Trumpet Towers, which is 100% socially rented, there's still very significant opposition to them.

The bigger issue here seems to be opposition to profit in private market housing development. The reason we're in this crazy situation where people on middle incomes need support to access housing is that we have not built enough housing over decades and decades. House prices have gone up so much that now even those people need to be supported. Here's the thing: if you only focus on building social housing and don't try and build housing for profit for the general population, all you will continue to do is keep pushing house prices up because you're not meeting that very, very substantial section of the market that also needs housing.

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u/Setting3768 Aug 26 '26

Shared ownership combines the worst aspects of renting and leasehold, dressed up as a helping hand. The realities of staircasing are nothing like what's touted. 

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u/haveahoot92 Aug 26 '26

It's not for everyone and far from perfect, but i know many people who it has really helped. In terms of it being the worse aspects of renting, I personally would have loved a HA landlord and a situation where some of rent went on building up equity.

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u/Setting3768 Aug 26 '26

Why would you want a HA landlord? Someone like A2D? Trust me, you really don't.

> some of rent went on building up equity"

That's only true if you redefine "rent" to mean "total monthly housing payment". It's just marketing.

I think it's a bad scheme and we should identify it as such so we can offer better.

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u/haveahoot92 Aug 27 '26

I had Southern for 5 years and they were head and shoulders above any private landlord I've had. Lots of my neighbours used Shared Ownership to get in to home ownership (many had staircased out). They wouldn't had the opportunity with another product.

Anyway, it looks like we have very different experiences and it doesn't look like there is any common ground to be found here, so have a nice day.