The Mayor of London has allocated funds to a city-based, non-profit project geared towards providing homes specifically for “LGBTQ+ people [so they] can live safely, joyfully, free from oppression.”
The Mayor’s office is listed by First Brick Housing (FBH) as one of its two funders, the other being environmental organisation Greenpeace. A series of other groups are labelled as “supporters.” Members of the public are also asked to donate money because “we are a small and diverse team, but if we are ever to lay our first brick, we need your help.”
Mr. Khan has signed off on £5,000 (€5,800) for the project, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph. London funding documents seen by the newspaper indicate that the money is for
Homes for marginalised LGBTQ+ Londoners. Project that seeks to provide homes where this community can live safely and free of oppression. The project will facilitate dialogue around the topic and inform future decisions to demonstrably influence and shape direction and the housing they will eventually provide.
FBH organisers say they are connected by “the feeling that something isn’t quite right about the housing that is currently on offer.” They add that “the homes we live in” were not “made for” or “designed by” gay and transgender people, or others described as LGBTQ+. That they “weren’t the place we wanted to call home.”
Funding is coming from the Mayor of London’s Building Strong Communities Fund. But Howard Cox Lindon, who is running to replace Mr. Khan on behalf of Reform UK, told the Telegraph that financial support for the scheme amounts to “virtue-signalling causes based on fashion not on need.” He added that “if we go down the route of each identity group getting its own housing, we will see a more divided society.”
Mr. Khan did not respond to the paper’s request for comment.
