A housing association that was slammed for selling off a Mitcham home has backed its decision.
Mitcham man Alan Suttie had previously told the Wimbledon Times that he was shocked to learn that a property at 7 Spring Grove, which is part of the same estate that he lives in, had been put up for sale by Peabody.
The Spring Grove, which had recently been vacated, had been used for social housing. But the sale meant it would become privately owned.
"There is a need for social housing and especially in this area," Mr Suttie said.
"It just isn't right to be selling it off for private accommodation."
Now Peabody has responded with its reasoning behind the move.
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“We are investing more than ever before to provide quality homes for people on low incomes across London," a spokesman for the company said.
"When older properties become vacant, we review them to make sure they are still suitable for rent, and to understand how much we need to invest to bring them up to the standard we expect.
"There are times when we choose to sell the properties as they are no longer suitable.
"The proceeds enable us to invest in maintenance and building more homes. There are other times when it is viable to convert former market homes to social tenancies.
"From April we will be doing this on re-let which over time will provide hundreds of new social rented homes."
One of Mr Suttie's main concerns was that if people were forced to leave their home for an extended period of time, such as a lengthy stay in hospital, that they would have no home left to come back to. He believes other residents in the area are now worried about what will happen to them in the future.
But the Peabody spokesman said these concerns were unwarranted.
"Each year we sell a small number of properties out of our stock of 56,000 homes," he added.
"Some of these were previously intermediate market rent or market rent tenancies, rather than social housing.
"We are building thousands of new homes each year, two-thirds of which will be for social rent or part-rent/part-buy.
"We do not sell tenanted homes and our plans deliver far more new affordable homes than would be possible without sensible asset management.
"Our approach is the standard for the sector and entirely in line with our social purpose."
The Spring Grove home is due to be sold today (February 19) and housing website Zoopla had estimated the property's worth at £327,000.
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