Origin Housing started as St. Pancras House Improvement Society, a charitable organisation founded by Father Basil Jellicoe in 1924. Father Jellicoe believed that good quality and affordable housing is a foundation for a successful life. Origin Housing came to be thanks to a series of mergers with other organisations including the Humanist Housing Association.

We are a registered housing association, managing over 7,800 homes in London and Hertfordshire and working in 14 areas. Our aim is to provide affordable housing in communities that people are proud to live in. Housing is a long-term commitment, so it is important to us that we build quality property and continue to invest in keeping homes at modern standards over many decades.

On 16 April 2024, we completed a merger to become a subsidiary of Places for People.

About Places for People

We are Places for People, the UK’s leading Social Enterprise. We change lives by creating and supporting thriving Communities.

Our business consists of complementary companies that are market leaders in homes and Communities, regeneration and development, investment management, property management and leisure.

We own or manage more than 240,000 properties that are homes to around 500,000 Customers right across the UK.

We operate 100 leisure facilities that support the health and wellbeing of our Customers with an average of 1.9m visits a month.

Using the power of partnership and working collaboratively, almost 11,600 colleagues in more than 20 specialist companies create Communities and provide People with opportunities and choices in a way that few organisations can match.

What sets us apart from other organisations, is that beyond providing housing or leisure opportunities, we have a genuine commitment to improving people’s lives and Communities as a whole. Through our social impact work, we use our precious resources to make a real and lasting difference through schemes that offer support with employment, health and wellbeing, finances, homelessness prevention and more. In 2022, our social impact work delivered £272 million in wellbeing value to Communities and £300 million in 2023.

Great homes: places where people are proud to live

We buy land to build homes for rent and for sale as well as buy properties directly from private house builders. The homes we provide are for letting at a subsidised rent, part-rent part-buy (called shared ownership) and outright sale. All of the profits from our sales and lettings support our charitable objective. We finance this by raising loans, proceeds from sales, along with a small amount of government grant.

We strive to be a top-performing landlord, property manager and provider of care and support services. Customers are our priority and we want them to be positive about the services we provide.

We want our communities to be places where people feel safe and proud, and can reach their potential. To help achieve this, we run and support initiatives to encourage inclusion and involvement, helping people to become actively involved in building sustainable, healthy and vibrant neighbourhoods. Our goal is to provide support for people to find sustainable employment, manage their money, and stay in their homes for longer.