Schroders Capital and Civitas Investment Management have closed their UK social supported housing fund after receiving £192m (€225m) in total capital commitments from investors located in the UK, US and Singapore.
The companies said the Social Supported Housing Fund (SoHo), which has had its third and final closing, has been backed by investors including public and private pension funds, insurance companies, charitable foundations and family offices, “with several contributing from specific impact investment allocations”.
SoHo, launched in 2019, will forward-fund the development of specialist supported housing units in the UK, purpose-built to provide safe, lifelong homes for adults with significant physical and mental health conditions.
Robin Hubbard, head of real estate capital at Schroders, said: “We are delighted to have raised almost £200m for Schroders’ first social impact real estate development strategy. This follows on from the successful IPO of the Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust PLC in the public market at the end of last year.
With leverage the fund will have over £300m of capital to invest of which more than £150m is already invested or committed to projects, Hubbard said.
Hubbard said: “This success highlights investors’ interest in Schroders and Civitas’ capabilities in this field and that impact has risen up investors’ agendas over the last year, not just in the UK but globally, as fiduciaries as well as their underlying beneficiaries and policyholders seek social and environmental returns alongside financial targets.”
Prominent investors with an impact-focused commitment include The Church Commissioners for England and Jonathan Rose, a developer of innovative housing communities in the US, through his Lostand foundation, Hubbard said.
Andrew Dawber, group director at Civitas Investment Management, said SoHo’s prime objective is creating new specialist property supply for some of the most vulnerable individuals in society and with 11 schemes already operational and another 50 in the pipeline, the fund looks set to generate genuine ‘additionality’, alongside an attractive risk-adjusted return.
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