Currently, Prince Charles is the largest land-holder in the UK. The real estate and farm land is not held by him personally – the bulk of “his” land is held by the Duchy of Cornwall, which is where Charles makes most of his money. The Duchy owns everything from commercial properties, historic mansions, farms, villages, etc. Charles has used his position to force Duchy farmers to go organic, to combat urban sprawl and go green in many cases. At some point, Prince William will take over the Duchy. That will happen concurrently at William’s investiture as Prince of Wales, which will happen after Queen Elizabeth passes. No one really knows if William will keep up with all of Charles’ many projects and visions for the Duchy estates. But the Telegraph reported that William does have one little scheme he’d like to work on: using some of the property to house the homeless.
Prince William is reportedly interested in using royal properties to help the homeless when he becomes the Prince of Wales — a title he’ll inherit when his father Prince Charles becomes King. The royal, 39, has asked his team to explore how buildings that are part of the Duchy of Cornwall — the estate that was set up around 700 years ago by Edward III to provide funds for the heir to the throne — could be used to combat homelessness, according to The Telegraph.
A source told the outlet that the idea was currently in an investigative stage but confirmed, “The Duke is interested in finding ways to help alleviate the homelessness situation in any way he can.”
Under Prince Charles, the Duchy of Cornwall has been turned into a multi-million dollar enterprise, providing income to run the Prince of Wales’s office as well as Prince William’s family. It currently includes property in London and more than 130,000 acres of land — with 160 miles of British coastline — in 23 counties of England and Wales.
“I’ve started to think about how I will inherit the Duchy one day,” William told farmers in Prince Charles: Inside The Duchy of Cornwall, which aired in 2019. “Well, rest assured I’m not going to rock the boat; I’ll do much the same as what my father’s doing. I’m not so into the architecture — that’s the only thing.”
I mean… I’m not a homelessness expert, but I think the priority (in general) should be on affordable housing and better-paying jobs and making real estate investments accessible to middle-class and low-income families. All of which is antithetical to the Duchy of Cornwall – those are rental properties, and people are not able (in many cases) to “own” the land they farm, or own the homes they’ve lived in all their lives. It’s a bigger issue than simply shuffling some homeless peeps into Duchy apartments.
Photos courtesy of Instar.
#PrinceWilliamAffordableDogging
LOL.
It might work for temporary housing, but not a permanent solution like affordability and better paying jobs.
So in effect he’s talking about after his grandmother dies. Not nice of him. With William, it is all talk about “what he will do” and no action.
As I’ve commented below, this will never ever happen. A) because william DGAF and b) this story was purely an exercise in SEO optimisation fiddling to try to override #princewilliamaffair with #princewilliamaffordablehousing
^^ True, plus it’s just grandstanding, and likely someone else came up with the idea to blunt what was happening on Twitter. So unfortunately, not only is William uninterested in actually helping the homeless, he’s using them for the purposes of trying to make the hashtag seem legitimate. As well, we know William never comes up with any project ideas in the first place. It’s his staff.
Just like Earthsh!t, if anything ever comes of this ‘affordable housing’ charade, William will have relied on others to do all the research and development. Then he’ll sashay around taking credit, solely for p.r. and embiggening purposes.
I don’t see it happening for several reasons. The first being that most duchy properties will already be rented out and in high demand. Almost all large private landowners rent their residential properties at a fraction of the cost of the money making private landlords in the UK and come with far better term attached. If you can get an estate property, you’re very lucky because they’re on a similar level to local authority rentals.
That in itself already helps prevent homelessness because they’re more affordable and you’re generally not worried about huge rent increases or being evicted because your landlord decides they want to sell.
One way he could make a difference, if he really wanted to, is to use some of that land to build more rental properties and keep those rental prices low. If you’re homeless and you manage to secure a property, the local authority will pay your rent until you secure a job with a certain level of income, providing you don’t already have huge rental arrears. They could even be given a rental break to give them time to pay back any arrears before they begin paying rent on the property.
Is this the same person who does not want to take over the Prince’s Trust. Or did not even complete a 10 week course about Duchy Management?
Since we’ve now seen how the Prince’s Trust is funded, I don’t blame William for staying hands off.
No, the sketchy stuff from this summer was about the Foundation, not the Trust. I think. (that’s not to say that the Trust is funded completely above board, just that the particular story from the past few months with Fawcett etc was about the Foundation.)
Yes, the Prince’s Trust was founded in the 1970’s. The Prince’s Foundation was established in 2018, when the trust overseeing Dumfries House was merged with several of Charles’ other educational/environmental charities. Presumably that’s when Fawcett got his job.
Don’t know how the Trust is funded these days, or how transparent it is, but the concerts circa the 1980’s had some lineups.
^^ @Mac, William doesn’t want to manage the Prince’s Trust or the Prince’s Foundation because he’s lazy, not because he has any misgivings about financial shenanigans. William has allegedly engaged in financial sleight-of-hand himself with the Royal Foundation finances (he tried to siphon off funds from the sell of the Together Cookbook — M&H stopped that money grab).
Also, William showed no interest in taking over the Trust and the Foundation well before the ‘pay for access and honors’ scandal broke. As a result, Charles tapped his cousin, the Earl of Snowden (David Linley), to manage the Prince’s Trust.
Snowden may also take over the Prince’s Foundation (or maybe that organization will be dissolved when Charles becomes king). The Trust is much more well-established, so it’s nice to see the running of it go to better hands than William’s. Snowden is the son of Princess Margaret.
Didn’t he do a counseling course too?
And the agriculture course. And the spy course lol
Ok. Sure.
This was purely so that #princewilliamaffair was replaced by #princewilliamaffordablehousing on search engines. Obviously it has not worked and no one believes this is a genuine initiative that has sprung up from nowhere.
Drop a vague idea. Take credit for having vague idea. Do nothing to implement it. Pretend you never said anything years later.
He did this so that when people Google “prince william aff”, prince William affordable housing pops up, not prince William affair. It’s so sad that his vision is informed by switching SEO results.
You guys are starting to sound QAnon-ish. There’s enough real shady crap glong on with the royals. No need for this nonsense.
How bizarre to equate theorising about this stuff to Qanon, when the last few years have showed us the way the palaces and royal adjacent media operate…
The practice of intentionally putting stories out there to replace ones that need burying is common and well documented.
It’s because Twitter literally took down the offending hashtag and replaced it with just “Prince William.” There was clearly manipulation going on behind the scenes.
Plus, the royal family does collude with the English media all the time.
@winnie
You can’t be that blind, no need to think, this all of a sudden thingy is/was a distraction, from the affair. I mean these people take they don’t give.
We all watched the dragging real time and it was glorious. Try to blame Meghan for an intruder and this the reward, #princewilliamaffair was viral for hours globally.
I just typed Prince William Aff into my browser. I got Prince William Affordable Housing, which took me to a Prince William County, MD website, and Prince William Affair 2019. PW County, which is just south of me and locked down that SEO years ago. Investigate conspiracy theories before you believe them.
Hello KP Staff. We know the devil works hard but you work harder. You called people bots, now they are QAnon level conspiracy theorists. Don’t you have bigger fish to fry with your bosses’ name being dragged into Andrew’s mess?
There is no Prince William County in Maryland.
that said, I also just entered “Prince William aff” and all my results were about the affair, nothing about affordable housing popped up.
The pro-W&K trolls are out in force on here today. Must be their new year resolution kicking in.
LOL, the council of Prince William County in Maryland has been discussing ways to increase affordable housing.
@Winnie – once again William is trying to polish the turd that he actually is and he’s been caught. These are just weasel words to cover up the latest scandal he’s involved in.
Sorry, Prince William county is in VA. Across the river from Prince George’s county in MD. I live in DC and get the suburbs confused sometimes.
You’re right Becks1, it’s in Virginia. I should know this because I lived in Fairfax County for many years. But when I googled it along with affordable housing, I got an article about the county council looking to create a plan to increase affordable housing. The BM are so ignorant about anything in the US, I can imagine them seeing “Prince William” and assuming it’s the actual prince. And Will is such an opportunistic moron that I can imagine him saying, yeah sure whatever. In any case, what I can’t imagine is that he would ever actually do it.
Thank you all for proving my point. I think William is a pos and he and Kate can jump off a bridge. That has nothing to do with how insanely ridiculous you sound.
And seriously, if you Google “prince William affordable housing” it’s literally all about Prince William county, the richest county in the US.
Okay Winnie, then how do you explain why Twitter removed the trending hashtag #PrinceWilliamAffair and replaced it on their list simply with his name? Is there a logical explanation for that? Is that common practice?
Winnie, if you factor in Twitter deleting the hashtag PrinceWilliamAffair and leaving PrinceWilliam, and then a new hashtag PrinceWilliamAffordableHousing popping up that seems far from a conspiracy theory. Twitter was really bashed for that.
Also, there are any number of ways to express your disagreement with others, but when you start accusing them of “QAnon-ish” conspiracy theories you better be ready for the backlash. IMO that’s defamation of character (to say nothing of slander), that’s how insulted I am.
OK, since I used to live in the Northern VA suburbs, I couldn’t resist…I googled ‘prince william aff’.
Results (in order):
1. Prince William affair
2. Prince William affair
3. Local Prince William County VA Firefighters Event
4. This exact Celebitchy article!!!
Don’t think that helps Q, it definitely doesn’t help Wills.
My first hit was “Prince William Affair 2019”. “Prince William affordable housing” came in 3rd on the list. You can run, but you can’t hide, wanna-be Slick Willy.
His affair was the first thing that popped up for me too. (BC)
Keens are gonna keen. Of course he likes the idea of helping the homeless . Actually helping the homeless is another story.
There it is, that’s who he is. A talker not a doer.
Cough he’s a lover not a fighter as he sings along with Superinjuncted Rose!
Sure Jan.
If he truly wanted to help, he could be doing all kinds of homeless projects right now. Like, today.
Right?! He has so many resources and nothing but spare time! Why is he at least not out there helping at food banks and blood drives and vaccine clinics and so on (& Kate!)? The royals could get so much goodwill if they were really interested in doing something tangible to help people, as opposed to puffing themselves up and looking down their noses.
Princess Sofia of Sweden (admittedly she, or rather her husband, is not the direct heir) actually went and volunteered in a hospital during the pandemic. It made it seem like she actually cared about helping her fellow people. And she had small children.
No, don’t get me wrong, nobody would be a better friend to the homeless than William. Nobody! He just… can’t do it right now, okay?He’s working hard on ideas, tremendous ideas, to maybe someday help with that, but you see his hands are tied by not owning the properties. Yet. What’s that? If his ideas are so great, why couldn’t he get the approval of his father to implement his plans right now? Well…er…
Isn’t this more about making twitter come up with #PrinceWilliamaffordablehousing than #PrinceWilliamaffair? (Looks like I’m not the only one thinking this?)
The Duchy of Cornwall is well managed so I don’t imagine they would leave any housing empty for long? Or certainly have the space to create housing for the homeless?
The issue of homelessness is worse in the bigger cities, like London. Now, I wonder where they could house them? Just where has lots of bedrooms that are not being used? Hmmm?
But, seriously, if there were jobs in the smaller towns and in the north of England there would not have been so much of a drift south, to London? I’d rather William focused on stopping people becoming homeless rather than doing something afterwards? Just a thought?
“The Duke is interested in finding ways to help alleviate the homelessness situation in any way he can.”
So he’ll be moving out of those two massive homes and in to a small apartment at Windsor Castle then?
He will try another stunt of “sleeping in the street” like the HOmeless, with security people watching him.
Should convert that 775 room Buckingham Palace where none of them seem to actually live into accommodations then!
No he doesn’t. He needs to stop lying.
Nah, this is just SEO clean up #Princewilliamaff…ordablehousing….lol
I hear they have two kitchens at the palace apartments themselves…maybe he and Kate could go make some chutney for the homeless in one of them
Sadly just like jam with Kate, chutney is on her to do list for tomorrow, not today!
As others have pointed out, this is all to cover up “prince william affair” with “prince william affordable housing”. The only new thing I’ll contribute is my personal experience browsing the internet that day.
#PrinceWilliamAffair was trending on Twitter, which quickly became #PrinceWilliam. “prince william affair” was being searched, then that disappeared, and “prince william aff” ONLY gives “prince william affordable housing”. All in one day.
This is why I think it was a clumsy move to cover up the affair and not just a random theory.
@Jenna this was my experience as well exactly on the day.
Princewilliamaffair to princewilliamaffordablehousing. He went from zero to hero in a day, only the kp staff could do it, I swear that’s the team I want if I were running for office.
William will inherit the Prince of Wales title and control of the Duchy automatically when the Queen dies. The investiture is the official ceremony. Charles wasn’t invested for a decade after his mother became Queen but he was already known as the POW and he was already running the Duchy. That transition is going to be very interesting because William is such a lazy f up that Charles is probably dreading the idea of him having control. That being said. It’s a good idea. One that wouldn’t even require a lot of work. The Duchy could simply partner with a homeless charity that provides services including transitional housing. This could be done. Invictus partners with veteran groups that provide housing to veterans and their families. As for the story being an attempt at changing the SEO. That is not some conspiracy theory. The manipulation of the hashtags happened in plain sight.
THe title Prince of Wales is not automatic. Charles has to officially confer the title on him when he becomes King. I hope Charles makes him wait. He will be Duke of Cornwall and he never seemed at all interested in the Duchy. Charles already let William take control, when he forced Harry and Meghan out. Charles was still in school and a child when he heard he was named Prince of Wales. He did not step up to work on the Duchy until he was older. He also worked on establishing the Prince’s Trust when he was a y oung man.
^^ Right @Tessa, and @Becks1 and @Feeshalori below. I caught that immediately when I read the opening intro. The PoW title is not automatic for William when the Queen dies. But the Duke of Cornwall title and the Duchy are immediately William’s.
As noted, and as has been discussed on Celebitchy previously, Prince Charles has the power to decide when/if he will bestow the Prince of Wales title on William (which would give Kate the Princess of Wales title, if they’re still married at the time). Kate will probably lap it up should that happen. LOL!
Although she has the PoW title as Charles’ wife, Camilla knew better than to allow herself to be called Princess of Wales, when it has been so famously associated with Diana.
No, that’s not accurate and its not accurate in this post.
William automatically inherits the DUCHY when the queen dies, he does not automatically become Prince of Wales.
Prince Charles became the Duke of Cornwall in 1952, when his grandfather died and he became the heir apparent to the throne. He was not named prince of wales until 1958 and then not invested until 1969.
Thanks for the correction I was sure that I had read old articles and/or books from that era where he was referred to as the prince of Wales but maybe that was an example of experts not being so expert which we have seen examples of and current crops of expert certainly talk about it as if it is automatic. That certainly will be interesting to see if Charles makes William wait for the title. I think the BM will put the pressure on for it to happen quickly.
Princes of Wales have not always been the eldest son of a reigning monarch, but the Duke of Cornwall is always automatically the eldest son of the monarch and that will be William’s inheritance when Charles becomes king and then George if William ever gets to the throne. The POW title can be conferred on William at Charles’ discretion at any time and hopefully that will be a while in coming to him.
Making plans for a property that’s not even his and won’t be for maybe another 15-20 years. So 25-30 years from now (it will take 5-10 years to actually formulate a real plan) William will provide housing for the homeless.
Two years ago they went to a seaside town in England, I forgot the name, and walked around with a shocked look on their faces at how dire things were and promised to come back, and as Kate said “bring the kiddies”. They’ve done nothing since. Such a missed opportunity to work with maybe Habitat for Humanity, the UK tourist board, and a number of other organizations especially now when vacationing within your borders is a thing. That would have been a good project for him, but no instead let’s pretend we care about homeless people and announce plans to help them sometime in the future future.
My palace source ( my default when I can’t remember where I read something) told me that private developers focused on 1 & 2
bedroom homes for decades and previous council controls that required 2 & 3 bedroom homes were lifted/waived. You can get away with that in the US and not have it be devastating to the country. The UK is like the size of Texas and families have no where to live.
A converted former stable on a duchy property could totally work for some. I am sure the royal family will pay for renovation, rents will be very affordable and their won’t be any gov’t subsidies that will go into the royal coffers. Ha.
I can’t believe this guy is going to be head of state one day.
If he was really interested in doing this it’s something he could be tackling now. However there is already an initiative in place for new residential projects to have a percentage of them allocated to low income housing. What he should be doing is talking it to his mates who are buying up properties in London to also allocate some money to refurbish some parts of the property to low income housing as a first step to help people off the streets. Even before the pandemic there were loads of office space properties in london sitting empty. So he isn’t doing anything, his Dad is a pain in the butt with his commentary on Architecture, but at least he has shown an interest, and the princes trust does have an architectural side I have a friend who works there. I don’t think they will be the next Richard Rogers, Norman Foster or Zaha hadid
“He is simply bored of homelessness.” If you don’t get it together before he’s Prince of Wales then he will start letting out rooms.
It’s always “we’ll do this later” instead of now with both W&K. William is the patron of centrepoint. Why can’t he dedicate let’s say foundation money to that instead of *maybe* doing that *in the future*. He’s second in line to the throne, he doesn’t need the Duchy to work towards ending homelessness.
This idea shows that William has no understanding of the workings of the Duchy and he thinks that putting homeless people in Duchy properties would solve this issue.
Agreed, this is like the most simplistic way to try to solve the unpleasant spectre of homelessness by just scooping people up and putting them where you won’t have to see them, but addressing precisely none of the surrounding circumstances and with no supports in place. That’s a recipe for failure, and we know it would not be William taking the blame. He was just trying to help!
There are certainly examples of carefully implemented “housing first” policies, but they involve coordination of social services, buy-in from unhoused community members themselves, and most of all careful long-term planning. This is not that. This is a bored rich dude trying to get credit where none is due.
I have some experience with the homeless as I volunteer at a homeless shelter and outreach centre in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Victoria has an enormous homeless problem and every time affordable housing for them is created — usually from old hotels and unused buildings that undergo refurbishing — crime goes up in the neighbourhood, drug use and dealing is carried on in broad daylight, and property damage skyrockets. I’m not saying that all homeless people are junkies and thieves, but there is that element that needs to be carefully managed, usually by increasing the number of social/outreach workers and more policing. So William better be prepared with a LOT of research and a team of professionals before he makes a promise he can’t keep and ends up battling the NIMBY folks in the Duchy simply because he wants to cover up *affair* with *affordable*.
In addition to possibly attempting to mislead the SEO (last I checked, twitter groups wanting to discuss the affair had updated to #princewilliamffirdablehoeing, lol) I’m sharing again my tinfoil tiara theory that there’s a power play going on with the titles, which is why we’re seeing them mentioned more conspicuously by the Cambridges.
There’s been an uptick in references to the keens as “The future prince and princess of Wales” lately, which makes me wonder if William is really so sure he’ll be invested with the title right away. I wouldn’t blame Charles at all if he was like “You get the title when you can average 350 engagements a year, now get off the couch and get out there!”
Jay, l wouldn’t be surprised at all if Charles was using a carrot and stick approach with the POW title to get William to work more. And if William is cooperating or collaborating at all with Charles, Charles may wait till the Cambridges divorce so Kate will remain the Duchess of Cambridge and William then gets invested as POW and his possible next wife gets to be the Princess of Wales. That’s a theory that’s been speculated here.
I read this slightly differently to some. I read it not just as Will affordable housing covering up for william affair that twitter blocked, but a double whammy making Chaz th bad guy for not doing this. it’s his ‘new thing’ which we know he won’t actually do. god knows the homeless can’t move into royal properties!