Whoever said landlords were evil property moguls hogging all the property should have been watching Channel 4 last night.
A landlord who went from sleeping on a park bench as a boy with his mum to building a £25m property empire has given away one of his houses for free.
Marco Robinson was the focus of a heartwarming Channel 4 documentary last night, How to Get a House for Free, as the 49-year old tried to find the most deserving recipient of a £120,000 three-bedroom flat in Preston, Lancashire.
There were 8,000 applicants over eight months and the programme focused on three of the main candidates.
First there was 48-year-old Jo, a visually-impaired emergency services dispatcher who works 60 hours a week, doesn’t earn enough for a deposit and worries that if she loses her job she will be unable to pay rent.
Viewers also met 18-year old single mum Holly who lives in social housing with mould on the floor and walls and often goes hungry so her newborn daughter can eat.
Lastly there was the Ali family, a dad and his two sons who had fled Syria but have had their asylum application rejected in the UK and are homeless while it is being reconsidered. None of them can get jobs while their immigration status is being looked at.
Robinson meets each candidate over the hour, expressing his wish to “give people a leg up instead of a handout.”
With his decision made, he goes to meet each person, starting with Jo.
She didn’t get the house, but instead Robinson offers to pay for a deposit on a new home.
He then meets the Alis to say he can’t give them the home while their asylum application is under consideration but did offer to put them up temporarily in one of his other properties.
Finally he goes to see Holly and delivers the good news that she is to be given a free home for her and her daughter, which will mean living closer to her mum and making it easier for her to go to college to get an education.
Robinson said: “I didn’t have the easiest of upbringings, at one point my mother and I were forced to sleep on a park bench, but through extremely hard work I have been fortunate enough to reach a position where I now own a number of properties around the world.
“Now I want to give something back to someone who needs my help and would love to find someone for whom receiving this flat would be a life-changing event.”
Love stories highlighting good people who “pay it forward”.
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‘Pay it Forward’
Still not recognised by enough people to make it the one single policy that will change the world forever if adopted by enough
A must see film with this policy at its heart for those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about.
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It is a very sad state of affairs that we now have an “X-factor” type competition to get yourself a free house imho.
To see people literally begging for the house for public entertainment I found distasteful. They were all very worthy causes and how can anyone make that choice as to who deserves the house the most? However social services have to make such choices on a daily basis and that is probably the main take-away from the programme for me.
I would also point out that £120K is very cheap publicity – you could not buy an advertising campaign on C4 for that money.
If you google Marco Robinson you will see that not all is as claimed and there is a shady past, his actual name being Mark Robinson. His property portfolio is currently in receivership for starters.
One thing I did appreciate about Marco was that he did not flash his wealth and there were no shots of flashy cars, nor did he wear his wealth like landlords/property investors have been doing in other recent programming.
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So when are you going to give away a 120k house Vanessa?
Sure you do it all the time without any publicity.
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It’s heart touching but very inspiring too.
If big businesses like Zoopla, RightMove, Purplebrick, countrywide etc would adopt policies to offer their fare shares in helping to the homeless or people are about to be homeless, wouldn’t it be great ? If they would put, say for example, 1% of their gross or net profit, together, by putting all of their rivalries and hostilities aside, would solve hundreds of families/people’s problems every year. That would mean to bring smiles to thousands of struggling young,elderly, men,women and innocent children’s face!Probably business bosses holidays would be blessed by all those people’s heartfelt well-wishes thus more enjoyable and meaningful as part of a community of the best human beings on earth !
Perhaps, we are not living in the ideal world so it sounds as dreamy as Disneyland movies!
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Big businesses like those you mention like to be seen to do good. Some are generous and others are just greedy and incapable of paying it forward.
Some prefer rallying the goodwill of their employees into raising money through their own efforts and/or making salary contributions in the name of charity. The PLC then feel good when they get to put their PLC name on the oversized donation cheque for the cameras; that their employees worked hard to accumulate.
The annoyance is the amount they wish to raise over the year from their employees pockets and charitable work could have been collected in just a few days had they donated just a £1.00 per day per software licence they have issued – (based on their advertised size and numbers)
Greedy PLC’s.
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I more sceptical. It’s the same as The Secret Millionaire or Undercover Boss. It’s great publicity for the business and peanuts in terms of give away. If these people are so concerned for other well being they can do it without fanfare or being filmed. If you really mean it do it quietly.
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