Past, Present & Future

This year Rosemary Simmons Memorial Housing Association is 50 years old. We’ve come a long way since we were first set up by the Simmons family in Esher. They had sadly lost their daughter Rosemary in a traffic accident and wanted to mark her passing in a way that would help others. Since then, thousands of people in south-east England have benefited from that kind decision, renting or leasing homes built or bought by RSMHA.

The last few years have seen us extend that service to families in need of a good home they can afford to rent. We’ve also been investing heavily in bringing our older properties up to modern standards. Recently we’ve also developed and first shared ownership properties which have proved very popular with local buyers.    

Like almost all associations we’ve noticed a big drop in demand for traditional sheltered housing schemes for older people, with many now preferring to stay living much longer in their own home and community. So we have been changing our accommodation and services to help make that easier. The downside of this has been that over the last two or three years there’s been a period of upheaval for residents in older properties that are no longer fit for purpose or too expensive to upgrade.  This process is almost at an end and we are immensely grateful to those residents affected for their patience and understanding.  

In 2008 RSMHA secured significant funding to develop 300 more new homes across Surrey, West Sussex and Berkshire within the next five years. As a developer our aim is to be a good neighbour, building high standard homes on a small scale that local residents will welcome and that meet local demand for affordable housing.

We are always looking for ways to find money to build new homes and improve existing ones. The Homes and Communities Agency http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/ is the government body which gives most of the money for major building projects, but it does not generally work directly with organisations as small as ours. To increase our chance of getting grant, we have recently joined a group of like-minded associations who have come together to bid to the HCA for development funding. The group is called the Wayfarer Consortium. We hope that in this way we will be able to keep moving forwards with our programme of building and making improvements.