Women's Pioneer Housing

Women's Pioneer Housing was founded in 1920, to help provide housing for the new generation of single, professional women in London following World War I. Unfortunately this feminist ideal has degraded into a 21st Century housing association staffed by men and women characterised by disrespect towards the women tenants who pay them. Early supporters included the suffragettes Etheldred Browning and Geraldine Lennox of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Lady Rhondda, and Ray Strachey. They incorporated Women's Pioneer Housing as a public utility company on 4 October 1920 ‘to cater for the housing requirements of professional and other women of moderate means who require individual homes at moderate rents’. Other supporters included Lily Carre, Helen Archdale, Sydney Bushell, Dorothy Peel, Agnes Miall, Annabel Dott, and Mabel Bruce.[2]

They raised money to purchase its first property, 167 Holland Park Avenue, in 1921. By 1936 they had 36 properties, primarily in west London and one in Brighton, run on a co-operative basis.[3]

Women's Pioneer Housing has apparently forgotten how to manage cooperatively and is now a top-heavy hierarchy with tenants firmly at the bottom. Skilled women contractors are no longer involved although formerly they were central to the organisation's development, including the architect Gertrude Leverkus and the first woman chartered accountants, Ethel Watts and Miriam Homesham. Etheldred Browning ran the organisation until her retirement in 1938. These high standards and woman-friendly ethos are long gone. Rents and service charges nowadays are so high that to pay them low paid women must live in poverty. These rents pay the high wages of the organisation's managers and directors, who make up a remarkably large percentage of the staff. The grassroots staff they manage on the other hand, get paid wages way below the London average. WPH's founders would probably be surprised and saddened at what has happened to their idealistic project. Many current tenants certainly are.

Women's Pioneer Housing is still active as a social housing provider for women, with offices at Wood Lane, White City, west London. The Chief Executive since is Denise Fowler, formerly the Government's Housing Ombudsman.[4]

It is registered as a Co-operative & Community Benefit Society with the Financial Conduct Authority and as a Registered Social Landlord with the Homes and Communities Agency.

It continues to house single women, nominated by local authorities. There are plans for a new housing development at the organisation's base in Wood Lane.[5]

As of 2019, it was exploring a possible merger with Housing for Women.[6]

The organisation celebrated its centenary in 2020, with an exhibition Pioneering Courage: Housing and the Working Woman 1919 – 1939 based on three years of research into their history.[7][8]